Go Away Already
I sat here one recent night watching “Celebrity Fit Club” on television, while chewing on a huge ass piece of pizza. The so-called fat celebrity participants walked out one at a time, and I realized that the fat balding blond guy is none other than Jani Lane, singer of the eighties hair band Warrant.
He was looking quite a bit like BeetleJuice on a bad day. The other sub-celebrities trying to lose weight were:
* Gary Busey, an ex drummer/guitarist for Willie Nelson turned actor, turned crazy as fuck wash up. Nothing he speaks about can be understood without translation by an alien.
* Wendy the Snapple Lady, who is sporting a mustache and looking like a cross-eyed version of Rikki Lake.
* Jackee from the old sitcom 227.
* Victoria Jackson from Saturday Night Live, all bug eyed, like a frog getting ready to be gigged .
* A few other random celebrities who are fat and unrecognizable.
Next up, we have an out-take of Willie Aames, of ”Eight is Enough” fame, almost as bloated and unrecognizable as Jani Lane, getting ambushed by tough guy ex-drill sergeant-turned fitness trainer Harvey Walden, at his home.
Willie becomes hostile and punches his door, telling Walden he is "very pissed off!". He has his shirt off, and his man boobs jiggle around. He is wrapped in nothing but a towel, his deflated pride and fat ass.
Back to the studio for the weigh-in, and we have Jani on the scale, looking like someone just whooped-up on him with a dull chain saw. He looks sheepishly at the judges and then down at the scale on which he is perched.
Jani looks nervous and mumbles something about why he didn't lose much weight since the last weigh-in. He has admitted to past and recent problems with addictions and personal problems, and everyone is giving him encouragement, as if he is about to kill himself.
He rips off a large chain necklace from around his neck as if it may help him weigh less or look better. He has actually lost seven pounds that week, and looks like a man whose piss-test is clean at the probation office.
You can see the relief in his face and something else. Something pathetic, even. Insecurity and a look that says he needs to be accepted by his group of fellow fatties. It is like an AA meeting and it is his turn to admit his demons.
I want to look away from the TV, but somehow I can't.
Now the other token fat celebrities get on the scale. Everyone has lost weight except for Willie Aames, who makes a lame excuse about how Harvey disrespected him by showing up at his house early in the morning without a call. No one, he means NO ONE, is going to disrespect him and make him exercise!
He then jumps from the scale and stalks out in anger.
I think that Harvey, at this point, calls him a lazy fat-ass, and tells him to come back in for a final weigh-in.
Members from each group get on either side of a balancing scale, and the team that lost the most weight wins for the week. Surprisingly, the group with Jani Lane in it weighs less.
This is all a sad example of what television has resorted to. Reality reeks, and we can't get enough of it. We can watch people’s real lives unfold before our eyes, whether we like it or not. We can watch Vince Neil get a makeover, and still not see results. We can watch Anna Nicole Smith stuff pickles and bon-bons in her mouth faster than her brain moves, or Britney Spears’ amateurish video of herself and her husband in the butt-sniffing stage of their marriage (before she got fat and he got 'stuck'.)
You name it, and anything can happen in TV Land.
But why won't they go away?
Because we continue watching it. Like a twisted, mangled train wreck, we watch it. Still, who wants to admit that they got a kick out of seeing Tommy Lee trying to go to college in his forties, or watching Bobby Brown admit that he took a dump in the middle of a table in a hotel room, or that Jessica Simpson farts stink?
Not me.
by
Captain Howdy
