Jokes about Reality Shows

                                                                These men are CLONES!

Sub-titles for seasons of Finding Bigfoot:


Season 1: "He's Out There"

Season 2: "These Things Take Time"

Season 3: "Trust Us, We're Making Progress"

Season 4: "This Is Taking Longer Than Expected"

Season 5: "What an Elusive Son-of-a-Bitch"

Season 6: "We Found Him--and He's Surprisingly Small!"

Season 7: "False Alarm, It Was Just Robin Williams"

Season 8: "We've Wasted Our Lives"

Spin-off: Fuck It, Let's Go Find a Leprechaun



Sub-titles for seasons of Doomsday Preppers:

Season 1: "Hooray for Doomsday"

Season 2: "The Calm Before the Storm Continues"

Season 3: "Apocalypse Soon"

Season 4: "OK, Apocalypse Sooner or Later"

Season 5: "The Reckoning of the Broken Clock"

Season 6: "The Betrayal of the Broken Clock"

Spin-off: Therapy for Sad Freaks


Fun Facts about Storage Wars:


1. At a New Year's Eve party to close 1995, Barry and wrestling legend Ric “Nature Boy” Flair drunkenly agreed to masquerade as the other for the entirety of '96. It was not until recently that the lookalikes confessed their ruse. Consequently, Flair was denounced by middle-aged virgins across the nation for “being part of a sham,” and Barry had to confess that he slept with Xena: Warrior Princess under false pretenses.

2. Historians now regard the Storage Wars as “The most bloodless of all the world's wars.”

3. The cast members never err in their swift estimations of the items they find in the storage lockers, as evidenced by Dave's $800 assessment of a Fanny-Pack stuffed with twigs and the time Darrell pointed at a pile of blank tapes and exclaimed, “I'm a millionaire!”

More on Santa: A Message to My Nephew

I had a column ready for print, but before it got a chance to reach that stage, the newspaper (which endured but never quite flourished) went under. The loss of two graphic designers and a general sense of apathy seemed likely causes. The column, which is merely on this blog and nowhere else, is titled “Down with Santa.”


To further explain my anti-Santa stance, and backpedal on it a   tad--since I do enjoy smiling children (especially my nephew) and the causes of their smiles--I decided to do a sequel to "Down with Santa," and this one is not as Scrooge-like because I don't aspire to become too much of a grouch, or—God forbid—an ultimate grouch: a curmudgeon.

It's just that I can't get past the notion of lying to kids in order to give them cheer. That's a puzzling tradition to me, and when I encounter things I don't understand—which is just about everything—I ask questions and crack jokes.

For instance, does part of the fun of Christmas revolve around the fact that kids are gullible? Generations ago, was the mythology started by some rascally dad who fed spontaneous nonsense to his children purely to see if they'd accept it as the truth?

And did he, by chance, talk it over with his wife later?

“Guess what, dear? I told Susie there's a jolly fat man in a sleigh led by flying reindeer who delivers presents to millions of people across the globe on Christmas Eve. And here's the best part: She bought it! Ha!”

I bought the fib, too, but when I found out the truth, I got distraught. It felt like a cruel prank. My seventeenth birthday was ruined.

Just kidding.

Anyway, I realize that kids really get a kick a out of their imaginations, and it's a shame how adults forget what that's like; in fact, that's part of the reason they tell kids about Santa in the first place: to relive that wonder.

And even though I've shown no inclinations for fatherhood in my 20s, I've lucked into becoming an uncle, and I feel a great sense of loving duty for my nephew. The father/ uncle dynamic is as Batman-to-Robin as they come, but any time I'm needed for an assist, I want to be there to fight the crimes this world may have in store for my nephew.

Furthermore, since I'm pretty sure my brother and sister-in-law will indulge my nephew in the Santa mythology, I have no right to be a Scrooge about it. For his sake, I'll go along with the Santa malarkey for as long as required.

I do have a message for him, however, after he has learned the truth—from his parents, friends, self, or whomever. When I catch wind of his enlightenment, this is the message I'll send him.

Hey Buddy,

If you're reading this, that means you no longer believe in Santa. I hope you don't feel disillusioned about it all like I did. Your mom and dad were mainly trying to grant you joy and excitement, to get your mind  marveling about this life, and while what they told you was not 100% honest, when you're my age, you'll find that discovering the false nature of Santa is far from the worst thing that could happen.

Now that you know about Santa, I think you're old and mature enough to be let in on a few other fibs Uncle Nick either participated in or started. Are you sitting down, pal? You should.

You know that unicorn stable I've told you so much about but never brought you to? Well, that doesn't really exist, either. Those pictures I gave you from time to time of me on a jet-pack feeding deep dish pizza to my airborne unicorns were photo-shopped. I still think you're very smart, but to be honest, I'm kind of surprised you didn't call “Bull-crap” on Uncle Nick last Thanksgiving.

To come clean about another fib involving air-travel, I don't actually own a gigantic gumdrop hovercraft that disappears whenever I say the magic words. That was not the truth, and I told you otherwise because I wanted you to think I was a really cool uncle. In reality, I generally get from point A-to-B in a Honda Accord.

Finally, I was not captured by leprechauns who spun me around in a swivel chair for hours until they finally believed me when I said I didn't know where their gold was hidden when I acted funny at that family get-together. Truthfully, it was St. Patrick's Day and I got awfully drunk. Heck, aside from the designated driver whose identity I can't recall, we all did. Also, those leprechauns I mentioned are fictional, and the same goes for both dragons and my brief yet lusty marriage to that actress who played the Catwoman...but if it makes you feel any better, the jury's still out on Bigfoot.

Sorry. These fibs adults tell tend to snowball on us all. Please don't be mad at me. When you were a year old, because your cheeks were puffy with flesh and inflated with glee, I took to calling you “Chubby Cheekers.” By the time you were two, though, you got to be so word-savvy and verbal that I had to retire that nickname—out of fear that I might hurt your feelings.

The point is, I had to change as you got older. We had to change. It's all around us and unavoidable, and at the risk of sounding like too much of an optimist, 51% of the time, it's for the better.

You're a lot different than you were when I sometimes called you Chubby Cheekers, but my God, your ample jawline was proof that you were as jolly as Santa Claus, and you're still jolly to me. You so often bring a smile to my face and I can think of no finer way to define jolliness.

And, unlike the gumdrop hovercraft, that's no fib. It's the truth.

Love,

Uncle Nick

Bitch Objects to Being Called Ho

CHICAGO, Illinois (Associated Press)--

What began as an ordinary shoot for a rap video bound for YouTube erupted in calamity on Saturday, May 14th. Prior to filming a scene in the parking lot of a Red Roof Inn, local rapper Choco Ballz, 34, was harangued by Bajama Jones, a 22-year-old bitch, for referring to her as a “ho.” At the peak of the dispute, Choco Ballz, born Clarence Ivory, was thrown to the concrete and beaten. Jones later offered the following account.

“(Ballz) started ego-trippin' between takes, tryin' to get the bitches in my group all hot and bothered about his broke ass. He shouted, 'I wanna see some enthusiasm outta you hoes!' And I'm like, 'What? How dare you call me a ho! I'm a bitch.'”

Though Ballz describes the gaffe as “a damn shame,” he maintains that he tried his best to distinguish the bitches from the hoes at the video shoot.

“In the rap game, it's frowned upon to mistake a bitch for a ho and vice versa and I get all that, but hear me out: my director clearly asked all the hoes to form a line to the left of the Cadillac I borrowed from my cousin. So, either she can't follow directions, or else she really is a ho.”

Jake Hostetler, a recent Film graduate from Northwestern University and director of “South Side Joy Ride,” accepts a degree of blame for the misunderstanding.

“While I do adore the hip hop genre, I'm not quite certain how to differentiate a bitch from a ho,” Hostetler admits. “Perhaps I should have emphasized the difference between regular-left and stage-left.”

The apologetic speech Hostetler gave Jones did little to quell her indignation. Jones immediately posed a rhetorical question to the director. 

“First off, how can a 'left' be anything other than a regular left? And secondly, if that hipster don't know that a ho is like a mercenary who'll fuck any dude no questions asked, whereas a bitch is a loyal soldier who'll kill for her man, he shouldn't be directing rap videos in the first place.

“Pasty-faced punk,” Jones added.

The Hostetler/Ballz collaboration got testy not long after filming began. In response to a lyric in the song's first verse, “I got a bald head like my name was Horace Grant,” a nearby Jones howled with laughter and then booed Ballz for what she deemed “a weak-ass rhyme.”

“Who the hell is Horace Grant?” asked a confounded Jones. “Seriously! If you old enough to know who Horace Grant is and you ain't made it yet, you never gonna make it.”

Tension escalated to chaos 20 minutes later, when Ballz made his bitch/ho faux pas. Overcome with scorn, Jones confronted Ballz, shouted obscenities in his face, and wrangled him down when he attempted to flee into the lobby of the Red Roof Inn. Her rampage intensified after she thought she heard Ballz call her a “ho” a second time. In reality, witnesses attest that the terrified rapper was merely screaming, “Whoa!”

         

“Maybe I didn't have to snap that antenna off the hood of his cousin's ride and whip him a bunch of times and maybe I did,” Jones said. “We'll see which way Judge Judy rules when the time comes.”

Filming was postponed indefinitely due to the fracas, and in response to the attack, Ballz is debating whether to press charges or take the case to Judge Judy “for exposure.” Before his gurney was lugged into the back of an ambulance, Ballz had this to offer.

“I've always been one to treat bitches and hoes as equals,” Ballz lamented. “But when shit goes down like it did today, I gotta dig deeper for that conviction. To me, it's a real sad day not only for bitches, but for hoes as well.”

As for those aforementioned hoes, while they voiced disapproval, none interceded in the fight. When asked why her sect failed to restrain Jones, a ho who prefers to remain anonymous replied with five simple words.

“'Cause that bitch is crazy.”

(Hoes' woes continued on page B6: “Bankrupt Hostess Spells Doom for Ho-Ho's.”)

Down with Santa

My understanding of Santa Claus radically changed when I was 8. I heard the truth about the fat man in red from my older brothers. They teamed-up to unload the bombshell during one of those dreaded fits of boredom that so often drive older brothers to acts of mean mischief. As the youngest in a family of Catholics, I was, by consequence, the last true believers in Santa Claus. This belief, this jolly yet delusional bubble, was burst by my brothers on a random night, months before Christmas, when I was beckoned from the love-seat to the couch to receive an important message.


“Hey. When we get presents for Christmas, you know how you think they come from Santa Claus?”

I paused and almost quibbled that not all of our presents came courtesy of Santa Claus, that grandma and grandpa and even mom and dad chipped in a little bit, but in the end I simply said, “Yeah.”

“Well, that's nothing but bull-crap! For Christmas, mom and dad are the ones who buy us presents. Then they just scribble 'From Santa' on the tags! It's a trick. A lie! And you fell for it. Santa's not even real.”

My aloof expression drew taut and troubled. This felt cataclysmic.

“No! It can't be true.”

They snickered and goaded me to ask mom if I didn't believe them, and when she somberly confirmed what my brothers had told me, their snickering gave way to howls of celebration. I didn't handle this grave revelation with poise. I wept and whimpered, and that typically has the effect of a Fourth of July fireworks show for older brothers.

My imagination was hit by a terrorist attack. I'd been duped. Taken for a fool. I connected the dots to other figures of dubious existence and in no time flying reindeer, the Tooth Fairy, and Johnny Appleseed fell like dominoes. My faith in God teetered; I put the man upstairs on notice. Adults lost a great deal of credibility the moment I learned the truth about Santa. By sixth grade, with the same grudging, Santa-is-for-suckers mindset of my brothers, I partook in the heckling of the only kid in class who still filled out a wish-list to that phony from the North Pole. I still can't stand Santa. This Christmas I'm sure to groan when I watch a weatherman put the nightly forecast on the back-burner so that he can speculate the whereabouts of a make-believe character.

“You bumbling jerk,” I'm likely to gripe at him. “Santa's fake and you know it.”

Ideas don't get much worse than the Santa-Tracker. On Christmas Eve, the transition from bad news—the downers about bombings in Israel and muggers posing as carolers—to a full-grown weatherman babbling about Santa is always a shaky one. It goes something like this:

“To recap tonight's top story, there were no survivors in the attack as war in the Middle East rages on with no end in sight...” The anchorwoman shuffles papers anxiously. “And now here's meteorologist Kenny Cumberland with an update on how local fog could be a real test for Rudolph's bright red nose. Kenny?”

Kenny forces a smile. “Hey! It's almost eleven and most kids are in bed by now, but I'm here to give you the scoop on Santa, anyway. See this graphic of a man in a sled led by flying deer? That's him, all right—making his way through Winnebago County!”

What ever money was put into Santa-Tracker technology would've been better served to fund anything else. Seriously, financing millions of dollars into wacky things like a Bigfoot Finder or a Loch Ness Monster Caller would still be more practical than the damn Santa-Tracker.

We learn about the nature of Santa (and the bogus doodads that track him) in a variety of ways. My sister, for instance, found out by means of a Family Feud home game. The category was “Fictional Characters.” The third-most popular answer was “Santa Claus.” The board-game was supposed to be safe for ages 5 and up. Shame on you, Parker Brothers.

A more common debunking of Santa occurs when kids walk in on their unsuspecting parents spreading presents around the tree. This can be a painful memory, and it becomes a doomsday scenario when they're also role-playing as horny Mr. Claus and drunk Mrs. Claus.

How ever you discovered Santa was a fraud, the basic origin of the mythology is the same: Kids believe in Santa because adults conjured up a story about him. And since that story pretty much ruined my outlook on life, I'd like to suggest three ways he can be phased out.

1.Parents who dig sci-fi movies are advised to offer their kids a blue or a red Flinstone vitamin. Tell them that the blue pill, unlike the Santa-colored one, will allow them to see life and reality as it really is. If they choose the blue pill, go Morpheus on them and reveal the truth about the Santa Matrix. If they choose the red pill, consider disowning them.

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Pitches for Reality Shows

With the exception of the choicest episodes of Cops, I'm not a fan of reality TV. I see enough melodramatic sideshows while I'm away from my living room.


Reality show domination hurts the chances of a writer finding a substantial audience, too. Writers get to be as obsolete as rotary phone fixers when most Americans prefer watching the unscripted sloth of Honey Boo-Boo's mom and the spontaneous sleaze of Snookie to a half-hour's worth of reading. No one is required to write the mind-numbing words that come out of Honey Mom's mouth before she sneezes twice and forgets her train of thought. No one has to construct a scene in which Snookie squats on a fire-hydrant. Snookie knows damn well when to do that, without help from a snobby writer, thank you very much.

The number of people whose existences are being recorded and broadcasted is swelling. Storage Wars, Breaking Amish, Duck Dynasty, Doomsday Preppers, Small Town Security, South Beach Tow, Buying Alaska, and four-dozen shows about pawn shops have proved there is no premise too obscure and no freak too clueless to be exploited by reality TV producers.

Since I have no clue how these quirky commoners get discovered, I decided to create my own characters and premises. If imagination is going to lead to bankruptcy, hell, maybe I should at least prove I've got a keen eye for this new breed of talent—those who somehow entertain without any of the skills of a traditional entertainer.


Here are three pitches for reality shows.


1.) C.C.'s Sea World

From: C.C. Crandle

Dear National Geographic Channel,

My dolphin-smitten wife, diabetic lesbian daughter, and I run a cotton candy stand at Sea World. As you might have guessed, I'm a sexist Vietnam vet who also plays flute in a Jethro Tull cover band.

The women in my life are infuriating. First off, since dolphins are so common at Sea World, the animal trainers are becoming suspicious of my wife Hattie's ogling of the dolphins and obscene remarks about their blow-holes. They suspect the old-ball-and-chain is sure to mount a dolphin (or possibly several) any day now. To see my high school sweetheart mutate into a ticking time-bomb of dolphin lust is right up there with the biggest letdowns in my life.

I've got other letdowns, though. Take my daughter Debbie. (I used to add “please” to that request, but it only made people laugh, and when I insisted that I was being serious, they still turned me down...so I gave up on the “Take my daughter Debbie please” line.) Debbie can't keep her damn sweet teeth out of our cotton candy supply! But when I banish her from the stand for awhile 'cause she's costing us too much cash, she goes off and spends hundreds of dollars on sugary snacks with that damn credit card her mom gave her. Debbie is seriously hooked on the white zing. In addition to Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows, the s'mores she cooks on the grill outside of our trailer include ingredients like Gummy Worms, Pez, Starbursts, Honey Buns, Ho-Hos, and additional marshmallows. She chugs glasses of maple syrup on special occasions. For God's sake...on her driver's license photo, she's biting the head off a chocolate bunny. I tell ya, she's more diabetic than dame!

Plus, she's dating an older woman built like a manatee who, as luck would have it, gets paid to feed manatees. You can't make this crap up, National Geographic.

As for me, maybe I'm not perfect. Sometimes I catch hell for refusing to serve cotton candy to Asians, whether Vietnamese or otherwise, but my argument is that their slanty eyes still give me the willies. The higher-ups have also warned me to stop startling everyone I see sitting on a park bench by screaming at them, “Sitting on a park bench!” But my downfalls are nothing compared to those of the poison-ladies I'm doomed to live with.

While I'm imprisoned in this concrete wasteland, all I'm asking for is the attention of your fine network to document my woes, as a cautionary tale of how not to live (with the exception of the Jethro Tull skull tattoo, which more people really should embrace).

Unhappily yours while sitting on a park bench at Sea World,

C.C. Crandle

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Waiting out the Permafrost

Here's a poem from years ago. Be serious!


The sharp thwack of a cupboard door,
like a meat cleaver striking a cutting board.

Crystal-specked hamburger meat
waiting out the permafrost.

The creak of a medicine cabinet and
rattling pills pulled through a quick slit of light.

Elliott Smith breathing from the stereo
recycling the dazzling doldrums.

See the millions of pixels on TV
smeared like neon on wet concrete.

Like a lit cigarette, my last pencil
shrinks all the way down to the nub.

Bad Zombies vs. Worse Zombies

I rose from the recliner in my friends' living room and said goodnight. Before I left, Cal handed me a copy of Return of the Living Dead. For a beat I studied the back of the DVD. Zombies devouring teenagers seemed likely. “Resurrection Cemetery” struck me as a conspicuous name for a burial site. I faked a frown and pointed to a tiny graphic at the bottom corner of the case.

“I don't know if I should watch this one. It's rated-R.”

“Hell, it should be NC-17,” Cal chuckled.

Somehow, his wife and couch-partner Ophelia managed to nod in agreement and shake her head ruefully in the same gesture.

“We watched it with our daughter. I had to cover her eyes for roughly a third of the movie.”

Feeling satisfied, I nodded and brought the case to my forehead and flicked it to mime a salute.

“Still glad I've never reproduced,” I said. “Bye.”

###

Released in 1984, it's a wonder Return of the Living Dead dodged that NC-17 rating. In addition to so much gory brain-eating (for the Returned zombies gorge not human flesh, instead they hunger only for the pink goo inside our skulls), a redheaded vixen strips bare at Resurrection Cemetery, gyrates and poses atop a concrete crypt, and remains nude throughout most of her remaining scenes—most notably after she returns as a zombie hellbent on destroying a cart-toting hobo. Her name is Trash. Her boyfriend's name is Suicide.

Here's the deal with Trash: she's trashy (except when terrified and/or getting killed). The deal with Suicide is that he's suicidal (and he's a whiny jerk about it).

Other mayhem worth relaying includes a bevy of cops getting tricked, ambushed, and decimated. Later, when it becomes clear that he is doomed, a man tearfully musters the will to crawl into a cremation-oven before he can turn into an undead psychopath.

Along with the twisted appeal (assuming you care to behold such atrocities in a movie), Return adds a vexing wrinkle to the zombie formula popularized in 1968's Night of the Living Dead: the zombies of the Reagan-age are almost indestructible. They are impervious to pickaxe impalings of the brain. They rage undauntedly after their heads have been sawed from their bodies. Their dismembered and diced body parts can somehow still gyrate with bad intentions. The only way to destroy the '80s zombies is to burn and incinerate them, to reduce them to ash that can no longer put up a fight.

Upon watching the scene in which gruesome things are done to the head of a zombie by two terrified workers at an army surplus store (one that, yes, handles skeletons,the occasional corpse, and dog specimens that have been split in half), I was nonplussed by the monster's perseverance. In fact, for a while I felt dismayed. Betrayed. I truly thought I understood zombies—which is a strange conviction to have about a ghoul that doesn't exist—and I was loath to see the laws of zombie-hood so utterly defied.

I had grown accustomed to watching the undead get re-killed when their noggins get skewered. At the age of 29, I was startled to learn that, unlike the zombies featured in everything from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead to Resident Evil (which surprisingly doesn't include “Dead” in its title), someone had conceived a different brand of zombies: one that could kill you after you had just blown its head off.

In an hour and a half of Return, a single zombie is destroyed by the survivors. The humans don't stand a chance in the battle of Louisville. All they can do is board windows and doors shut to keep the relentless monsters at bay. Their attacks, whether with sledgehammers or guns, only serve to knock zombies down or make them reel backward temporarily. When they flail and hack with lead pipes at arms groping through windows, it's in vain.

A second mockery of the rules of zombiehood gives the damn Reagan-zombies another advantage: These monsters are smart and articulate. Freshly undead cops and paramedics manage to respond to calls on CB radios to order backup (which is later ambushed and eaten). The top half of a cadaverous old woman delivers a poignant speech to explain why her lot craves for brains. Zombiehood in Return of the Living Dead does not entail the dumb yet determined zombies featured in everything from Dawn of the Dead to The Walking Dead to Zombieland. If anything, Returning as a zombie can do wonders for one's IQ, as is the case with Freddy, a rare punk/jock hybrid whose life and tender disposition fade to black in the arms of his high school sweetheart. When Freddy returns and attacks her inside the mortician's chapel, rampaging like a linebacker at a Black Flag show, he speaks with the psychological malice of Hannibal Lector.

The name of that eBook? Why, it's More Stories, and Additional Stories.