My Eyes!! My Eyes!!!
In the last 7 minutes I have seen the three most horrible things I will likely ever witness in my entire life.

I have not had much time for TV lately, but in the 15 minutes that I have been home tonight, changed clothes, made my dinner cereal, and made it to the couch to flip on the TV for a few minutes, I have seen such horrible things as I will try to describe here.

My co-workers and I were just today lamenting that there is no good TV on in the summer. We have nothing to watch. Tonight proves that point ridiculously well.

I happened to catch 19 seconds of Will Smith rapping at the NBA finals game. His hat was on sideways. Didn't that stop being cool... um, before people wore it as something that might be cool? Dude, you are no longer the Fresh Prince. Granted, some people I know can't get enough of you. And you are cool. But not when hopping around a stage with your hat on crooked. Straighten it out, for the love.

But alas, this does not even begin the horrible-ness my eyes were yet to witness.

My TV then made it's way to the most horrible thing I have ever been forced to watch. It is a new show called Hit Me Baby One More Time, on NBC. I had never seen or heard of it before. As if the name of the show isn't bad enough (why must we keep encouraging Britney? If we ignore her, maybe she will go away), I had a hard time deciding if this show was for real, or if everyone on it realizes that the entire world will see this as a huge joke.

As I watched a few minutes of a has-been band (The Knack) perform in front of a live audience that song that is everywhere by The Jetts, and as I tried to figure out the point of this show, this is what came out of my mouth (thinking aloud):

"Hmmm. What is this? Lame old bands that have disappeared cover songs of new bands hoping we will like them better now? Is this really what I'm seeing? This idea has actually made it on TV?"

And what I then read on the NBC website was this: "a one-hour competition program featuring veteran music hit-makers who will each perform their greatest hit -- as well as cover a popular contemporary song -- with the favorite to be determined by audience voting"

Oh. My. Goodness.

I was right (I'm getting way too good at quickly recognizing and analyzing bad TV). And it was awful. I was soooooooooooooooo embarrassed for everyone on the show, including the audience. Yes, there was an audience. And yes, they were singing along and cheering, just like this was a good concert with a good band.

After The Knack finally had the decency to get off the stage, some old dude slithered around the floor singing Toxic ala Britney (seriously, people! Together we can make her go away if we stop propagating her music!)

But the best (and by that I mean the worst) one was Vanilla Ice covering Survivor by Destiny's Child.



He rapped the whole thing. It was genius. The bio piece before his song let us know that Vanilla appears to live in Dallas now. We can all be glad to have him so close. Especially because.... he was tonight's winner!! I'm so glad he's back.

I have to wonder if the current bands belonging to the songs that are being covered by the has-been bands are feeling good about these has-beens butchering their songs on national TV. I mean, really. It's like karaoke for people who used to sing for a living, but don't anymore because they were bad at it. We don't pay them to sing anymore for a reason, people.

Apparently I missed the first week of the show. Oh yes, it's a weekly show. Not just a one time special event. But I might have paid money to see last week's performance of Tiffany covering Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway.



Priceless.

Ok, back to tonight.

After they made this show finally stop playing on my TV, they showed a promo for the next worst reality show ever, I Want to be a Hilton. Yes, as in Paris.

Seriously? This is a show?

And then I saw a commercial for ER.... the video game. Yes. A video game representation of the TV show ER.

Um.... what? Is this like an electronic version of Operation, except you get to be Dr. Carter or Dr. Kovac, or Abby, or one-armed Dr. Romano? So lame.

Folks, all of this horror took place within about 20 minutes. I can hardly believe my eyes.

Where has all the good TV gone?!? Why must we be tortured with such crap during the summer? Most of us don't get vacations that last for months, like actors who only work 6 months out of the year. Just because they are off for the summer doesn't mean we have to suffer. The common people need good TV to survive.

Speaking of Mrs. Britney, do you know what I accidentally saw 2 minutes of Monday night? Her terrible reality show on UPN. I thought I was fairly familiar with white trash before. But after spending two minutes with her and her hubby, she has introduced me to entirely new depths of white trash-ism. It's amazing, really.

Their poor child on the way. It's doomed.

I'm going to wash my eyeballs now. This will certainly teach me to not stay home on a Thursday night. Or a Monday night.

C.T.