Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up

In an earlier writing, back when I used to force feed writings to my reader rather than rely on the scarcity that is a hit on this website, I touched briefly on the curious creature that is the Repeat Reality Show "Star". I put the word 'star' in quotes for good reason, for in my mind one does not become a star (i.e. glamorous celebrity) by virtue of having appeared on television. When I was a freshman in high school, some freak in my class gained notoriety by stabbing a couple of burn outs who were mercilessly picking on him. Did the burn out friends of those burn outs become stars because they appeared on ABC 7's 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 newscasts? I think not!

Now granted, at this point in time (1989) there was no reality television as we know it today - the closest thing we had was watching the wacky Balki Bartokomous and his crazy cousin Larry get in all kinds of madcap situations on ABC's Perfect Strangers and realizing that we could relate to this as reality, given that all of us at one point or another had missed a double date with our sexy neighbors because we and our cousin had somehow gotten rolled up inside of a carpet and therefore couldn't use the phone. But again, I digress. I touched on a few of the repeat offenders in the previously mentioned earlier writing, which of course included Man-Woman-Beast Toni from Fox's equally appalling Paradise Hotel and Love Cruise: The Maiden Voyage. But two (or three, depending on your view) of the more recent offenders are the Rob/Amber two headed monster (or 'Monstah' if you are speaking with Rob's annoying Boston speech impediment) (Survivor, Amazing Race, Utterly Tasteless TV Wedding) and Trista Rehn-Sutter and her Man-Goblin Ryan (Bachelor, Bachelorette, Utterly Tasteless TV Wedding).

Why, oh why, do some people appear on reality TV only to quietly (and appropriately) disappear, while others cling to their vague concepts of "fame" and "stardom" like they are clinging to precious life itself? And why should we as the general public really give a shit what these people are up to long after their appeal has worn off? I guess I will never understand it - being a "star" doesn't seem like it's all it's cracked up to be, but there's Rob and Amber whoring their marriage vows for further cash and exposure. And here comes Trista again, appearing on ABC's Dancing with the Stars, a show that ABC.com describes as "a totally unique and original series that pairs a celebrity with a professional dance partner as they train and then compete in front of a studio audience in a televised dance competition."

My God, what studio exec is going to lose his job over this one? Does anyone really care to see whether Evander "The Real Deal" Holyfield can learn to dance better than John "J. Pederman" O'Hurley? Apparently so, because the show made it to air. Now, thankfully I have not watched a minute of this show, but since I do tune into some of ABC's finer programming (i.e. Lost), I did happen to catch the spots for this train wreck and spotted....Trista! Apparently she has designs on sucking every last ounce of celebrity from the veins of fledgling public interest until it dies a painful and horrible death. In her bio on the show's website, Trista's profession is listed as "Reality Star", which nowadays has all the luster of "Kiddie Rapist" if you ask me (and most people do, of course).

I am really at a loss here as to why Trista can't leave the spotlight. We've seen her in two installments of the Bachelor series, one pretentious TV wedding, and several gratuitous "look at me, please GOD look at me" photo spreads in the pages of the nation's tabloids. Is she still around because people are interested in her? Or are people interested in her because she's still around? Chicken or egg?

Whatever the case is, I pray to God, Yaweh, Allah, Buddah, L. Ron Hubbard, and anyone else that this be her Swan Song. Given the fact that she was probably one of the least likeable people on the original Bachelor, there seems to be no conceivable reason why she should still be hanging around. So I implore you to turn off your TVs when you see her, to not purchase any magazine whose pages she graces, to write your congressman and ask him or her to have a 40-foot high wall built around her house in Vail so that she may never escape. Let us rid ourselves of this repeat reality scourge once and for all. After that, we can take care of Rob and Amber. Thank you.

Follow up note: I received some feedback on Vol. 1 of Tales from the Lost Semester - I think people got the wrong impression of just how much work I put into that paper. When I say I edited the paper, I meant that I took the rough outline and loose draft and actually made it into a paper - it was hard work, trust me, especially for someone whose brain was not firing on all cylinders (sorry, CS, but you know it to be true!)

Until next time...