I Coulda Been A Star, Ma!

It’s like watching a train wreck. You just can’t look away, even though you know that what you’re about to lay witness to will more than likely (if there is any shred of humanity left in you, that is) make your stomach turn and yearn for the phone call to Ralph on the big white telephone. Yes, I’m talking about reality TV stars, mainly Dave Hestor and Alex Debogorski from Storage Wars and Ice Road Truckers, respectively (no respect intended, though).

Ralph, the big white telephone

You know that when you hear Dave start with his “yuuup” and “I’m so great, my competitors are all idiots and amateurs” and “everything I touch turns to gold” (actual quotes from the show), you will throw whatever is in your hand at the TV, and worry about replacing it tomorrow. Maybe from a pawnshop. When you hear Alex start with his brain curdling laughs, of which he is always the architect of the joke and the only one laughing, you cringe and wonder why they don’t show more reruns of The Brady Bunch instead. But you keep watching for the little guys. And the cute girls. Hmmm, Lisa in that big truck, so sexy!

Stop! Idiot!

Do the people that watch “Storage Wars” not realize that they are paying preposterous prices for whatever they buy when they shop at Dave Hestor’s pawn shop, second hand store or his new auction house? He says on the show that he’ll  list that $10 side table for $120 at his store, and he’s actually successful? Some people will do anything to get onto TV, which is evident with the number of people who show up at these auctions and never make one single bid. But to buy overpriced merchandise just to get close to one of TVs most obnoxious characters (I just can’t refer to this dork as a star) is about as low as Snooki would go. And, that’s real low.

Yuuup! Kill Me Now!

What’s wrong with people these days?

Nooope!

How does someone like Dave Hestor or Alex Devogorski become a TV star? How do they ever cash a paycheck from the bowels of Hollywood? Paris Hilton I could almost understand; the way I almost understood why Santa Clause could come into our highrise, 22nd floor apartment, or the way I could almost understand people saying that they were abducted by aliens and subjected to anal probes.

What’s with all the anal probe obsessions? Everyone who claims that they were abducted by aliens confesses to being probed anally. And, no, that’s not yearly! Could being “abducted by aliens” be code for “coming out of the closet”? For universal justice, why doesn’t Dave Hestor get abducted by aliens? Or, was he? Or, is he one of the abductors, sent here to annoy us to death so that when they do come to colonize Earth, there will be far fewer people here to fight against.

I tell you, there’s just no justice these days.

The All-American Case of Blind Justice

What’s wrong with people these days?

Am I Bad? A Sadist?

I don’t know about you, but I watch these shows hoping to see Dave take a major loss, like when he thought he had an original Stradivarius violin (it was, but it was a popular student model, worth a couple hundred bucks, a tad shy of the millions he was expecting and salivating about to the cameraman), or to hopefully see someone finally lose their tempers enough to plow him a few (won’t take much more than what he normally spews). I even hope to see Alex be the first driver to, on film, break through the ice and laugh all the way to the bottom of some frigid lake in northern Alaska.

Okay, I know. I’m a romantic.

When Dave dropped that valuable, intricate and ancient Chinese herb box getting out of his truck, telling the cameraman that he was sure it was invaluable, I almost whooped with pleasure!

Where am I going with this?

Funny you should ask. I was starting to winder that myself. I get that they might run a couple of marathon showings of a popular TV show, but showing every single episode, one after the other, 2 or 3 times a week? It’s become the Storage Unit equivalent of Law & Order. And now with Storage Wars Texas and Haulage Wars, Lady Hoggers, Wild Hoggers, Hog Diggitty Doggers, they’re getting out of control. Just like Kate Plus 8, or those horny little Duggars in 19 Kids and Counting, those randy little Little People and the out-of-control Gypsy Wedding shows, you would think that rock bottom had been found within the realm of reality TV…

Think Again

Yes, Virginia, we have no shoes. It seems that pedophilia is in fashion these days on the reality TV circuit. With the barfable (another new word! I’m telling you, I’ll have my own dictionary by 2013!) Toddlers and Tiaras, we see a bunch of out of shape and mostly very homely mothers with their kids, getting the wee ones ready for beauty pageants. From age 7 days to over 20 years, they strut their stuff like they were trying out for a photo shoot in Playboy. These parents torture their kids, turn them into miniature street walkers all in the hopes of winning a trophy, and maybe even a thousand bucks (if they finish first overall, over all age groups).

One night I was watching it with my ex, and there was a 23-year old Texas blonde bombshell registered, along with about 40 girls under 10. She was rather vacant, stupid, creepy. She won. 4-yr. old girls cried. She took home $3,000 and lost about $25,000 worth of dignity (she had just purchased $20,000 worth the previous week). She cried in victory (vacancy?). She even gave a thank you victory speech, telling the oh-so understanding children that they, too, could be a bimbo. If only they tried hard enough.

And the weiner is...

Dreams Can Come True!

You just have to be in the right place at the right time for your dream of being on TV to come true. Or, you could fill your house with garbage, bugs and buried, dead cats and be on Hoarders. Or, you could be extremely frugal, and if you are able to use coupons to buy $1500 worth of groceries and pay only $23 total, they will make a 1/2 hour show all about you on your coupon-fantastic shopping trip (much like a Captain Fantastic acid trip). In Canada, that $1500 shopping trip would, by the way, garner $225 in sales taxes, turning their $23 total into a $248 total – that’s why you’ll never see an Extreme Coupon Canada show.

But, if you live in the right city, have some time to spare and can hang out at storage unit auctions long enough, you too could be on TV! And if you do, I’ll pay you to kneecap Dave Hestor! I’ll double your money if you take out his vocal cords. Hey, you could even be a superhero, a congressional medal of honor winner for doing so – you would be saving your country!

Yes, America! Dreams still do come true. Just not mine about Dave catching a ride with Alex, and dropping down into the middle of Great Slave Lake (the biggest and deepest fresh water lake in North America that’s not part of the Great Lakes).

What’s wrong with people these days?

What’s wrong with me these days?

Too much wrong with society these days!

The Draft is Broken

In professional sports, the top draft pick is chosen by the last-place team from the previous season, as they are in the NFL (national football league). Now, think about how this is justice for the player who  gets picked first overall. They are chosen as the best of that year’s crop of eligible players to enter the league and save a team from mediocrity. They are heaped with multimillion dollar contracts that are front-end heavy, meaning that the kid gets a lot of money for simply signing on the dotted line, and then they’ll worry about playing the game later. The money’s great, but the player is usually relegated to a bottom-feeding team, one that possibly went winless the previous season, and could very well be a non-playoff team for the first 5 years of that player’s career.

Makes more than your average company does.

When the lowest ranked team gets the first pick in the incoming player draft, the 2nd worst team gets the 2nd best player and so on, there is something wrong. Teams should be awarded for finishing the year at the top, aside from home-field advantage in the playoffs. And, more importantly, the players being drafted should be awarded for having such stellar college seasons. They should get, at a minimum, the 2nd overall pick in the draft. In my scenario, the last placed team would pick 1st, the 1st placed team would pick 2nd, the 2nd last team 3rd, the 2nd place team 4th and so on. Alternate with the lower ranked teams and the higher ranked teams, and the teams that make the draft picks and, most importantly, the draft picks themselves have a chance at something special.

This is a lottery draft in the sense that the player taken first overall is guaranteed to be a multimillionaire within a few weeks of pulling his new team’s jersey over his head on draft day. The chance of that player then hoisting the Super Bowl trophy the next year is slim to none, and that should be changed. Or, even better yet, the top-5 players in the draft could be declared free agents, able to sign with the highest bidder. That would guarantee huge contracts for these young kids who could then just play around, have fun and collect their 50 to 75 Million bucks (yes, that’s in good old Yankee greenbacks!), invest some and retire at the ripe old age of 21. A 25% surcharge would be added to the contract signed, and that money given to the charity of the year. Or, me.

Breaking the bank to buy a player who hasn't yet played.

In the business world, being drafted first overall would be like hiring Stephen King while he was in high school to a lifetime contract as your ghost writer for your horror genre writing career. Or, you could end up with Ryan Leaf, a young quarterback who was stellar in college ball and was picked second overall in 1998 by the San Diego Chargers. After heaping millions and millions of dollars up his wazoo, Ryan played in 21 games over 3 seasons for the Chargers, where he threw 14 touchdowns and 36 interceptions (for those unsure, these are very, very bad numbers). He can now be seen plying the waters in some tropical paradise whining that he’s down to his last 10 million; “Thanks, San Diego, and a special shout-out to my college coach and the players there who made me look oh so very much better than I ever was.”

But the way it is now, it’s a lot more like the best team being stuck with Paris Hilton for a multimillion dollar game of Jeopardy! and the worst team getting Stephen Hawking. However, the teams are taking chances on the health of the players staying the same or improving, and them not being killed or maimed before they can take to the field for their first NFL game.

It’s a lottery draft. The lottery is fixed and needs breaking. The way it is now, the teams that are out of the playoffs can play the rest of the season safely, limiting injuries and just having fun, hoping for that first overall draft pick. Drafted players should be limited to $1 million per year for the first 2 seasons, and then be able to break the owner’s safe.