Reality TV ... it's the craze today.  Hiko's not a big fan and is mystified by the obsession people today have with it.  He sees it as the furthest thing from reality ... and contrived, stupid, and extremely uninteresting to boot.  In this week's Moot, Hiko talks about what a reality show that followed his life would be like.  And hits on the Cavs, the Buckeyes winning the NIT, and a strange dream he had last night.

OR 

Reality Bores 

Not such a long time ago, I watched the movie The Truman Show again. 

It is the tale of Truman Burbank, a man who has grown up and spent his entire life in a staged world.  It's the ultimate Reality Show - he has no idea that everyone and everything in his life is fake, a fabricated "reality", staged so as to be constantly filmed and broadcast 24 hours a day as entertainment for the people of the world.  Slowly, he begins to realize that something isn't quite right, and by the end of the film, he escapes his gargantuan studio prison and enters real "reality". 

I hadn't seen the movie since the theaters, which was 1998.  I recall this readily because my friend DJC was backpacking around the world that year, and he had e-mailed me from somewhere like Thailand or Nepal to say that he'd seen it and thought it was great.  So I was curious to see it again. 

The film was directed by Peter Weir, who is quite good, bringing us stuff like Witness and Dead Poet's Society.  The movie itself is pretty solid, an interesting but completely far-fetched portrayal of society's incredibly inexplicable obsession with other people's realities - obviously taking the popularity of the MTV show The Real World and amping it up 7 steps. 

I myself am mystified by this obsession.  Reality TV is the furthest thing from reality, contrived, stupid, and extremely uninteresting to boot.  I've never had a fascination with it, even from the beginning of The Real World fad, which, in my mind, featured a bunch of shallow spastic idiots living together. 

Of course, someone that looked not unlike myself may or may not have later worked on Real World: Miami, where he may or may not have been forced to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that he would not reveal that the inhabitants of the Real World may or may not have been actors and actresses who may or may not have been told prior to each filming how they were going to react to certain situations.  And this incredibly ridiculous circumstance may or may not have forever ended this person's ability to bother with manufactured reality (and those foolish enough to believe it).  

My question for the people of Peter Weir's world which wore Truman t-shirts and displayed Truman posters and watched endless hours of Truman's every day life is:  WHY? 

You'd have to have a damn fascinating life for me to watch more than 10 minutes of it, and Truman certainly did not. 

Would you watch hours and hours of your own life? 

That's the thing - if you were watching actual reality, it would bore the shit out of you.  Yet so-called Reality TV dominates our insipid airwaves. 

Since the world is all so enthralled with other people's realities, I'm now going to create my own show, called Real World: Hiko.  Yep, you get to watch me sleep for 8 hours.  Then you get to watch me get up, get my kids ready, get them out the door, then check my work e-mail, then some websites.  Shortly after that excitement, you get to watch me defecate and then take a shower, the last half hour of which features me sitting in the tub reading until the water gets cold. 

What then?  The possibilities are endless!  Maybe I eat something!  Maybe I get the mail!  Maybe I spend a little quality time with my adult film collection!  How can you look away when there's so much excitement in my life as compared to yours? 

It gets really good when I crack the first beer come evening, because that's when I turn on the TV!  Usually, I check first to see if there's some sporting event on.  If there is, you're in luck, because you will most likely get to see me yell at the TV! 

And, a couple times a week, you get the always spellbinding sexual intercourse (which might be the only part of the show I can understand people watching). 

But that's not all!  Sometimes you'll get unique and spectacular episodes, such as Hiko and Elektra Get Into A Fight, or Hiko's Daughter Gets A Bad Report Card, or Hiko Takes Out The Trash, or Some Dog Takes A Shit In Hiko's Yard And He Chases It Off With A Shovel. 

Maybe, soon, I too shall succumb to the evil addiction of the Reality TV programs, and shall spend hours watching it.  Then you will be spending hours watching my "reality" of me watching someone else's "reality". 

Ooooooo!  How can you look away? 

Or, more succinctly, how can you not? 

***Ohio State finally won one of those championship game thingies, beating UMass 92-85 in the NIT Title game. 

Yep, boys and girls, the Buckeyes are finally off the Title Bout Schneid^TM. 

Who cares if it's the equivalent of winning the losers bracket in your fantasy football league, or perhaps some meaningless college football Viagra Fruit Bowl?  It's still a championship. 

Sort of. 

***I have now sworn off the Cavaliers of Cleveland until the playoffs begin.  They are too frustrating for words, although, if I were to attempt to use words to describe how I feel about the Cavs right now, they'd be words like these:   

Putrid.  Uninspired.  Boring.  Predictable.  Schizophrenic.  Mediocre. Disappointing.  Weak.  Sloppy.  Uninterested.  Uninteresting.  Poopy.  Odoriferous.  Shameful.  Diseased.  Injury-prone.  Off-kilter.  Drunk.  Painful.  And back to Boring again. 

It is a fact that I do not watch basketball until the football season is over.  I just don't have the time or attention span.  But once the football season passes its apex, I turn my lonely eyes to the Cavaliers and the NBA.  It usually takes me about a week to warm back up to the game, but then I'm good to go for the rest of the season, as evidenced by my sense of enthrallment during last year's playoff run. 

But this team has me anything but enthralled.  I haven't even watched a couple of the recent games, including the beat-down in Detroit, or most of the recent Bucks and Bobcats games.  It's gotten to the point where I'm actually more interested in the Indians, and this is coming from someone whose interest level in baseball hovers somewhere around the same plain as golf or field hockey. 

After the Cavaliers' most recent loss, an embarrassing home melt-down to the formerly awful Bulls of Chicago, I must come to the realization that I have better things to do with my time than watch this team struggle night-in and night-out against bad teams, and get kicked repeatedly in the eggs on the road against good teams. 

This is a team on a rocket ship to nowhere. 

The trade seems to have not done a damn thing.  They're still middle of the road, just like they were before.   

Certainly one could argue that middle of the road got them to the NBA Finals last year, but that was in the Eastern Conference with a dream scenario.  You get a massively injured plummeting Washington team in the 1^st Round, and you get an aging 6 seed New Jersey team in the 2nd.   

True, the Cavs had to beat the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Championship, and they did so - they came alive at the right time, and LeBron James chose that moment for his coming out party.  But once they got to the Finals, they showed exactly how middle of the road they actually were. 

I don't care who you are, secretly, you came into this season thinking exactly like me:  An unchanged Cleveland Cavaliers had no chance of winning an NBA Championship, and, what with the retooling of the Celtics and the consistency of the Pistons, probably had little chance to even get back to the Finals. 

You were thinking it.  Which means that you too didn't think the Cavs were a "great" team. 

So they made the trade.  I don't have any problem with that.  They had to do it.  They weren't going anywhere with the team they had - they had to roll the dice.  Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that it made them any better at all.  They're just about the same as they were before - middle of the road. 

There's still hope.  This team could still gel and finally get healthy and come on strong once the playoffs begun.  But my optimism on this front has begun to wane.  They have 6 games left, then they're gonna get a 5^th seed who has every reason to believe they can take the Cavs out.  If they manage to make it through the 1^st round, they'll get the Celtics, and if they somehow get past them (duplicating a miracle as large as Harvard winning the Final Four), they get the Pistons again, whom I guarantee would relish said opportunity. 

So the season is headed for the abyss. 

After the pinnacle of last year - it really sucks. 

***I had a dream last night that I will share with you for no particular reason. 

I was on a football practice field.  The Cowboys were scrimmaging each other, and Tony Romo was QB'ing.  I was behind him, as if I were in the Offensive backfield, but no one seemed to see me.  So it only seemed natural that it would be fun to level Romo once he took the snap and dropped back.  He'd never see it coming. 

Once he did snap the ball, he ran to his right.  I couldn't catch him.  The bastard was quick, as if running in fast forward.  He ran the ball right down the field, finally getting tackled just short of the end zone.  Laughing, he took off his helmet and came back to the huddle, where the other Offensive players took off their helmets.  One of them, his Tight End, was a woman. 

Walking closer, I saw that she looked familiar.  It was Geri Halliwell, Ginger Spice of Spice Girls fame, except she had long curly blond hair and spoke with a southern accent.  She turned from the huddle and allowed herself to be interviewed by a camera crew. 

"How do you do it?" they asked her.  "Being a woman in the NFL must be very difficult." 

"Ah used to think it was difficult," she replied in her twang.  "Until the accident." 

Everything behind her face went black. 

"Ya see, ah decided to blow off practice and have a smoke with my husband..." 

There she sat in a parked car on a tree lined street, her husband, a thin man with short dark hair and wire rimmed glasses, sitting beside her in the driver's seat.  They passed a cigarette back and forth and talked silently and laughed. 

Suddenly, a yellow helicopter cut through the nearby tree, crashing on top of the car's hood.  Immediately, an explosion of blood from the heli blew a hole in the car's windshield, pouring onto Geri's lap, drenching her.  Along with the blood torrent came 3 young boys.  As the blood subsided, two of them began to move, coughing and flailing.  The third, whose head lay on Geri's shoulder, did not move, his throat gashed wide and several other cuts on his body. 

Two people, a man and a woman, stepped out of the helicopter, arguing.  "Boys, are you all right?" the woman asked, scowling. 

"We're OK, ma," replied the two that lived. 

"Edward, how about you?" the mother asked. 

Geri looked at the boy's vacant eyes and gaping mouth and, with tears in her eyes, said, "Ah think he's gone..." 

"Oh good job, Harold... they told you at the helicopter place that you shouldn't take the hard one to fly, but you had to go and do it anyway!" 

"It was the wind," explained Harold.  "I didn't think it would blow like that." 

They began to argue, and Geri's husband started the car and peeled out, the three bloody kids still on her lap, Harold and his wife standing in the middle of the road next to a wrecked helicopter, perplexed.  "Hospital!" Geri's husband yelled out as the car left sight. 

From a view as if inside the car, the road flew by.  Geri's voice from the interview came back into audio. 

"Mah husband may look tame, but he can be really aggressive when he wants ta be.  He has a punk band called Irish Jerky.  They had a li'l song that was kind of a hit on the internet..." 

Then I heard the song - a typical yelling punk rock song: 

(Slow)

I was standing in line...

Just biding my time...

And then I saw... 

BEEF JERKY! 

(Fast)

Gotta have me some JERKY!

Stuff makes me so PERKY!

I hand it up to the CLERK-Y!

Bitch ring me up that JERKY!  JER-KY! 

Geri was back in uniform, standing on the field, getting her interview. 

"But we was too late for that poor boy," she sighed.  "And ever since then, whenever ah think ah have it bad, and the other playahs are makin' fun of me and throwin' things at me and showin' me their noodles and tryin' to squeeze mah ass, ah think of that poor boy, and ah don't feel sorry for myself.  And that's how ah go on."