WHILE YOU WERE VOTING

Last week’s election was the culmination of a long slog through all the political rhetoric (read bullshit) and the arguments back and forth amongst friends of the opposite political persuasions…though there was no persuading the fools who disagreed with you to change your minds.

But so much attention was being paid to the debates and the talking heads and tracking the vote count itself that many of us probably fell behind in keeping up with an even more important pursuit…watching TV reality shows.

Rest assured my eight DVR’s were put to good use and since about 11:15 p.m. EST last Tuesday I have spent 24 or more hours each day catching up. I was able to do this since some shows are set in New York and others are strewn across the time zone landscape, so there are more than 24 hours available for viewing. Trust me. I read a chapter in a physics textbook in 1963.

So here is a summary of the developments in some of your favorite programs you may have missed.

The Kardashians  They pop up in a variety of incarnations but the entire focus in this period was on their boobs and asses. And that is just the sister’s husbands and boyfriends.

Jersey Shore     Due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy the title has been changed to Monongahela Riverbank.

Hardcore Pawn   Les Gold’s idiot son and daughter finally exasperated him enough that when a customer came in with an antique guillotine to sell, Les had it demonstrated by chopping off the heads of both Seth and Ashley.

American Restoration   It is a Wednesday program so last week’s episode the day after the election had Karl Rove driving into the shop asking to have his reputation for winning campaigns restored. It was the first project Rick Dale had ever turned down as being impossible.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta   One of the women was dismissed from the series when it was discovered she had never undergone plastic surgery, her hair was all her own AND the original color, and she was observed NOT talking about the other wives behind their backs.

Till Debt Us Do Part   The featured couple was fired after it was learned that they were neither married to each other nor personally deeply in debt. Rather they were two Congressional aides trying to accumulate information on how to balance a budget to use in the upcoming fiscal cliff negotiations.

Investigation Discovery’s Sins and Secrets  That real crime anthology series presented a taped interrorgation of Mitt Romney in which he confessed that his whole campaign was based on lies.

Pawn Stars   Chumlee secretly partnered with Bain Capital for a hostile takeover of Gold and Silver Pawn and fired The Old Man, Rick, and Big Hoss.

Tosh.0   An audience member turned out to have been the pained victim shown in one of the program’s videos and he jumped onstage and viciously swung a baseball bat right into Daniel Tosh’s crotch while yelling, “Now laugh at that, asshole.”

Animal Cops   A Persian cat suspected of being a serial killer is finally captured and is charged with and put on trial for the sadistic murders of eight mice, two rabbits and a canary.

Long Island Medium   Theresa, the featured psychic, revealed she had been on a diet/workout regimen that led the show to be retitled Long Island Petite.

Dancing With The Stars   After a survey revealed that absolutely no one had heard of any of the contestants and therefore they could not possible be stars, the competition was cancelled.

Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives  While eating the triple decker bacon and peanut butter cheeseburger at Earl’s Greasy Spoon in Shippensburg, Pa. host Guy Fieri dropped dead from a massive heart attack.

Repo Games   One of the behemoth repo men repoed a Mini Cooper by driving away in it but had to call upon EMT’s with the jaws of life to remove him back at the garage.

American Pickers   Mike and Frank are on a freestyle pick near Provo, Utah when the woman who had told them she had many oil cans and Amoco signs locked them in her barn and chained them up to make sex slaves out of them. Her name was Bertha Butt, one of the Butt sisters.

Pimp My Ride    A street hooker brings in her Chevy van for the full treatment including the installation of a “sex room” in the rear where she can, as she put it, “Ride My Pimp”.

This should bring you up to date.

No need to thank me.

REPUBLICIOUS—THE HIT REALITY SHOW

I’ve been describing the ongoing debates for the Republican candidates for President as a touring clown car, dispensing its passengers in towns big and small to stage yet another comic exhibition for the local townsfolk that also reaches a TV audience.

But perhaps my assessment of the style of entertainment these politicians offer as a circus act is wrong. One could just as easily view it as the latest reality show. Instead of being produced by MTV or Bravo,  various entities have had this responsibility and several networks/cable channels have aired the debates.

Dick Polman in an op-ed piece in the Post-Gazette urges that they continue.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11329/1192095-109-0.stm

…the GOP is staging one of the great reality shows, with a rollicking cast of colorful characters who keep getting voted off the island but keep coming back for more.

There’s a cliff-hanger every week.

Will Rick Perry master the English sentence and reclaim his cognitive memory?

Will Michele Bachmann utter another whopper that is light-years from factual reality?

Will Newt Gingrich double-down on his claim that Freddie Mac paid him big bucks for his advice “as a historian”?

Will Herman Cain demonstrate that he knows the difference between Afghanistan and what he has called “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”?

Will Rick Santorum volunteer to personally lead the first bombing raid on Iran?

Will Jon Huntsman stop reminding viewers that he looks like Ricky Ricardo on “I Love Lucy”?

And then there’s Mitt Romney, still the likely 2012 nominee, who stares at his hapless rivals with a look best described as polite patrician bemusement, as if to say: “Keep talking, inferiors. The deeper you dig your holes, the easier it will be for me to bury you with my money.”

Despite the comparison to Survivor none of the particpants has yet appeared nude. Aspects of The Real Life are also present but none of the debaters has stumbled in drunk……well Perry has sounded that way a couple of times……nor has there been a scratching, hair-pulling cat fight between Bachmann and Santorum.

The only thing they have in common with Pawn Stars is that their economic policies will probably lead to more Americans needing pawn shop services.

They could easily be on Over Your Head, the HGTV show where folks trying expensive renovations on their own find they are incompetent and seek expert assistance.

All of them have already appeared on Top Shot but were the first ones eliminated, being unable to aim at the correct target.

The behavior of several of them emulates that of the to-be married stars of Bridezillas, insisting their campaign is all about “me, me, me”

The perfect show for them might be American Pickers. In that series Mike and Frank travel the country searching for hidden treasures in old barns, storage sheds and even underground tunnels. Often they turn up objects they buy for a relative pittance and manage to sell at a decent profit.

The problem is their GOP counterparts, especially Romney, would buy an entire stash for pennies on the dollar, fire the people they bought it from, spin off the merchandise to a shell company secretly controlled by them, collect fees for their “services” to each party involved, sell the merchandise at a profit of which they take the largest cut, and put the shell company into bankruptcy but only after receiving a guaranteed golden parachute.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, my original assesment of the GOP field as a clown act was right. Not to worry. Just as musician Tommy Lee had his Tommy Lee Goes to College reality series, we can follow these birds as they progress through professional training at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College in Sarasota, Florida.