In The Know: Are Reality Shows Setting Unrealistic Standards For Skanks?

I don’t have cable and stopped watching network television when the barrage of idiotic “reality” shows started cropping up to placate an obese nation in their lust for self-hatred. Anyway, forgive me if I haven’t heard of “Cheaters” a show with the premise in which some greasy, fuck-stick host takes suspicious wives and husbands, with a camera crew, of course, to confront their cheating spouse.

My faith in humanity was hanging by a tether as it was, but I am now fully convinced that we have raced irrevocably past the “Decline of Western Civilization” and entered hell a few turnpikes back. This mound of feces, attempting to pass itself off as entertainment, saddens my already heavy heart.

WARNING:  Obscenity, foul language and complete stupidity.

I am going to cancel my cable. What you see above is an unaltered photo from the god-awful Z-Grade film “Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain“, starring Richard Grieco and a series of porn starlets including Jenna Jameson, Chasey Lain, Ginger Lynn Allen and Taylor Hayes. I’m not here to discuss the merits of this film. I’m here to have my final word on my cable provider Rogers here in Canada and why I am tired of paying this company over 120 dollars a month for “superior picture and sound” digital cable. The fact that I’ve swallowed this bullshit for years now just makes my head want to explode.

The image above takes place at the beginning of the film in the woods. It’s night. The photo is of Chasey Lain (although you’d never know it) from the inside of a tent after hearing a noise outside. Granted, the opening scene to this film is extremely dark (see image below) but this is not the way the film should look, nor is this an isolated incident. There have been many times I’ve paid five to seven dollars to see the same kind of shit happen to the video on demand films (case in point, the new Harry Potter film was so fucking dark I gave up and shut it off).

I’ve checked all the settings on my Sony Trinitron, so it has nothing to do with the monitor.

If this is the kind of quality that Rogers expects me to take after shilling out crazed amounts of money for their service, then harassing me over my answering machine daily when I’m a week late with the payment, they’ve got another thing coming. As soon as I pay this month’s bill, I’m sticking to DVD from now on.

Years ago, back in high school, a good friend of mine and I would have nothing to do on a Saturday night, given that we’d wasted all our money on drugs and drink the night before. He’d ask me over and we’d just hang out in his parent’s basement when they were out of town, smoking dope, goofing off and blasting Pink Floyd on his brother’s stereo – which we were expressly forbidden to use (but it was such a great system, we couldn’t resist).

As the night wore thin, we’d turn on the television around one o’clock on Saturday and watch “The All Night Show“. The All Night Show was a great Canadian classic right up there with “Hilarious House of Frightenstein”. The premise was that a security guard and cameraman would take over the CFMT studios after everyone else went home and show a pot pourri of old television shows, perform inane skits and chroma-key lips over celebrity photographs. According to the IMDB, they invented this ubiquitous talk show gag. Chas Lawther played Chuck the Security Guard and his trusty co-hort Ryerson Dupon (a disembodied voice – we never saw him), the cameraman, was played by Errol Bruce (He also directed the show). At that time, before the cancer of “reality” television and Lawther’s unknown status, we couldn’t tell if it was a real security guard or not. (Okay, we were young and impressionable.) Jim Carrey apparently even did “other voices” for the show when he wasn’t super famous…

Regardless, it was one of the coolest shows we discovered back then, my first exposure to “Outer Limits” and an all around wild idea to us at the time. Staying up late for it was a bit of a trial, but it was usually worth it. Anyway, I found this wacky advertisment from the inside back cover of a Sears catalogue.

I think Jane Meikle is tops. She’s the nerdy niece of Elvira with multiple personality disorder. Since “Scream Channel”:http://www.screamtelevision.ca is one of my favorites, I do enjoy Jane’s opening monologues to introduce the films. The feel of these bits are a little Hilarious House of Frightenstein, a little late-night horror host.

My favorite character is her little British brat, “Nancy”. Her demented glee once annoyed me, but now it’s like sitting down with an old pal to watch some crazy horror flicks. I don’t know how long she’ll stay on as Scream’s hostess, as they now have some other chick hosting intermittently.

For now, we can enjoy her myriad of wacky characters.

From Scream: Jane holds a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies and English literature from McGill University in Montreal. She currently produces and directs her own short film projects, and is pursuing her acting career in Toronto.

Well, here’s an article in a local free paper that looks like the weekly world news and yet, has content in it that smacks of truth. This concerns past blog entries regarding “Billy Van and the Hilarious House of Frightenstein”:http://www.paranoidcomix.com/joeblog/index.php?s=frightenstein&submit=GO …

• “article link”:http://www.freewriters.ca/thespecial/special_billy_van.htm

Ok, apparently these boneheads don’t archive anything properly.
The import of the article concerned the outrage that Billy Van still hasn’t got a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame.

Well, he finally “did”:http://www.cbc.ca/arts/walkoffame/billyvan.html. (Although the Canadian Walk of Fame website has refused to update to reflect this…)