Real Life Edited For My Viewing Pleasure

I have a secret. Sshhhh. I really want to share it with all of you, my dear blog readers (o.k., my sister, my husband and a couple of my coolest friends). What is it, you ask? Well, I have a secret obsession. I have a bit of a bad, reality t.v. addiction. Yes. It is true. In fact one of my favorite shows is Intervention on A&E and I might just be in need of my own intervention to stop my reality t.v. watching madness. I can't really explain what it is about these shows that makes me tune in. Sometimes the hook is a topic that I just really dig. Like Top Chef which is this season long cooking competition filled with gourmet dishes and celebrity chef judges and lots of high spirited high jinks. There are always cats on there that you love to hate. Like Steven Aspirino from Season 1 and then this wolverine looking dude named Marcel from Season 2. Who was it last year . . . . I forget. Oh, but this year it was this grimmaced faced chic named Lisa. Too bad she had to go and ruin the Lisa name for the rest of us. Hiss.

Oh and I must admit that I do have a the teeniest crush on head judge, chef Tom Collichio. Grrrrr. The dude has hot baldness going on and it is working for him. Now that is yummy. But I digress.

Well, my two latest forays into the debauched underbelly of reality entertainment are very difficult for me to admit. One, well, is understandably a draw due to the crass and vicious humor. I am speaking, of course, of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List. People, this show is hilarious. Kathy is mean and nasty. She rips on everyone but reserves her harshest and most biting snarkiness for her A-List star counterparts. I stinkin love it, every deliciously venomous barb. Am I an evil person? Do I like to partake in the suffering of others? Well, maybe just a little. I can't help it. It is like someone bakes a warm and gooey chocolate cake and then leaves it out on the counter. You see it there and it is incredibly tempting. You just want to grab a hunk and gobble it up. This is how reality tv is to me. Like cake for the famished. Like water for the thirsty.

The second show that I am ashamed to admit watching is the zany episodic adventures of Denise Richards. I know. I know. This is the same Denise Richards who went through a scandalous divorce from bad boy Charlie Sheen and then supposedly broke up the marriage of Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora. I say supposedly because this is all tabloid hearsay and rumor. There is no proof as Denise will attest to on her show. She is misunderstood. As the show will reveal, Denise is just a sweet, single mom who only cares about her family and spending time with her gazillion pet animals on her ranch house. OK, maybe this too is a bunch of crap, but after watching five back-to-back episodes recorded by my TIVO yesterday, I have to say that I was rooting for her by show three.

Again, I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to watch these shows. I guess there is something intriguing by sneaking a peek into the lives of others -- others who may have more problems than I do, more fame and fortune and more mystery and complications. With the explosion of user-generated content, the You Tube and the blogosphere, it is only a matter of time before we all have our own reality shows. Would you watch me typing on my Mac and eating crackers? What about watching me do the laundry? Fun stuff. When we all get to the point where we record ourselves and upload it online for everyone to watch, what will they call it? Oh yeah, wait. I guess that is called LIFE. Life on display. No thanks. I'll keep my stuff to myself and just watch all the angst and self-loathing on my t.v. like the rest of the world. I like my feelings of unworthiness and shame to remain bottled up inside thankyouverymuch.