Guilty Pleasures

Okay, I watch a lot of TV. I was sucked into Rockstar: Supernova this year by my co-worker and I have to say that the quality of contestants that show had last year was top notch. There were 6 really, really good singers on Rockstar: INXS, after the rest went home it was a knock-down, drag-out competition that I loved (Jordan singing "Man Who Sold the World" nearly made me burst out in tears). This year?

This year they scraped the scum off the bottom of the singer barrel and put it on stage. After a few beers I could sing better than all but one of these losers. There's the guy who growls everything, the guy who flops around on stage like a fish, and a girl who manages to hump the mike stand every chance she gets. These people are so bad that I now Tivo the show just so I can fast forward through most of it. Tommy Lee, Jason Newstead, and Gilby Clark are the judges and how they can keep a straight face through most of these performances, well, they all deserve Oscars. All I can think is this show was put together in such a rush the producers took any and all street performers they could find, put them in ridiculous 80's wanna-be punk rock clothing, and pushed them on stage. Awful.

But that ball of refuse is nothing compared to a show I saw last night - The Messengers. It was touted as some eye-opening, heart-wrenching show about people who go out into the world and live another person's life for a day, then come back and change our lives with what they experienced. NOT!

This show is a competition to see who wins a book deal and gets their own show. That is all these people care about, that is all the producers care about, and that is all we as the audience are supposed to care about. Last night they dumped these 10 people onto Skid Row, the largest homeless area in CA, and left them there for 24 hours. The show spent 12 minutes on this section of the show. 12 whole edited minutes.

When one girl was asked why she was there, (let's face it, homeless people do not wear Prada), she said, "Oh, I'm on this show and we have to stay here." The homeless guy chewed her a new asshole and she couldn't figure out why. And this is a person who is supposed to inspire me? What an idiot. The editors managed to catch a few people yelling and screaming and this is how they chose to represent the homeless.

The rest of the show was dedicated to the competition. They went out and found the two gayest, ugliest, most clueless people around and made them judges. Each contestant had 2 minutes to talk about the chosen topic, charity. After their time, these two morons would critique them. "Your voice didn't project enough, you were too quiet." "I liked your style but I didn't understand what you were saying." "I thought you did a great job and look forward to seeing more of you." Um, hello? What happened to the homeless and charity? What happened to "changing our lives?" What is the message here?

Greed, that should have been the topic. Greed, cluelessness, and apathy. The homeless were forgotten the moment the show went back to the nice, clean stage filled with it's upper-class audience. Do you think one homeless person was invited to the show? Did the show give anything to the community of homeless once it dumped their pawns there? No. Homeless, what homeless? I was so disgusted with it that I couldn't even watch the rest of the show. It is a terrible representation of what people will do in order to 1) become TV stars, and 2) get cash and prizes.

I felt sorry that the homeless had to put up with these 10 assholes for 24 hours. Their plight wasn't important. Their situations weren't helped by this show. They were used and discarded like garbage. I was embarrassed to be a TV viewer.

I've decided to make a heap of sandwiches and go out and give them to the homeless here in St. Louis. I don't want a camera crew to follow me around, either. I want to give back because those 12 minutes made me understand just how screwed up and pathetic this country and it's priorities are.