Thursday, September 25, 2003

Aliza and I have almost finished writing the script for our little wedding comic that we plan on giving away on The Big Day. I am very happy with it, it has an actual story and everything. It's about how we went shopping for our rings and the discussion we had about what to engrave inside of them.

We would have finished it up last night, but the seven-hour premiere of The Bachelor was on, so Aliza's attention was elsewhere. I'm not criticizing too much, because I enjoy a lot of these "reality TV" shows, but I hate The Bachelor. It's just a bunch of messed up women who're willing to degrade themselves just to be on TV and hopefully be the next "Trista and Ryan". This show is more disturbing than entertaining. At least though, in the preview showing all the highlights of the upcoming season, it looks like at least one of these mentally ill women tries to kill herself because The Bachelor isn't going to pick her to be the one to have a much hyped but ultimately failed engagement with him.

"But Mike", you might say if you knew me really well (and I don't think many people outside of Aliza knows this next fact about me), "you love to watch Paradise Hotel, which is the sleaziest of all the sleazy reality TV shows." And to that I would reply, "yes, I do love to watch Paradise Hotel, even though I am mad at the producers for the awful cliff-hanger they gave us on the penultimate episode."

I can't justify it all that well, but I can at least say this: At least on Paradise Hotel they make no pretense that this is anything but some nasty awful people behaving atrociously for our viewing entertainment. And it has been an extremely enjoyable show to watch. There's no discernable rules or rewards in the show, the whole premise is that for some reason all these attractive, yet despicable, people want to stay on this hotel to fight with each other and deal with lots and lots of drama. The best was when they brought back a bunch of the booted cast-members who proceeded to "get up in everyone else's grill" and fight and squabble and generally give me something worth watching on the TV.

But, The Bachelor isn't as good as that. First of all it's bogged down with all sorts of boring rules and rituals that get in the way of everything. Second, it does have a prize, but the prize makes even less sense to anyone than the one on Paradise Hotel, because the prize is to be lucky enough to "get married to this guy who you met as one of 25 desperate and pushy women on a television show". Wheee!

Well, whatever, I know that if I'm watching some junk on TV, I can't act like my junk is better than some other junk. It's all junk. At least I am getting bored of Fear Factor and Making the Band II is over. Maybe I can come up with more productive things to do with my time...