I can’t begin to tell you how easily I can put a face, name, and situation on each one of these. Just today, I came out of a meeting that was a fine example of the first word (below) and when I read it, it was comforting to know that this rings all too true elsewhere in corporate America.

And I admit it, I really did Laugh Out Loud [LOL] when I first read it. Enjoy…

1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.
2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, poops on everything and then leaves.
3. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
4. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
5. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.
6. MOUSE POTATO: The online, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.
7. SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies get into when they have children and on of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
8. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
9. OHNOSECOND: That fraction of a second of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake. – Like after hitting send on an email accidentally addressed to your boss instead of your wife.
10. 404: Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message “404 Not Found,” meaning that the requested site could not be located.

I’m completely and utterly exhausted with reality television. When did we as a society begin to lower our standards to remotely consider this voyeuristic obsession? Wikopedia has an exhaustive listing of over 450 reality shows dating back to the 60’s ranging from historical re-creations, dating, military, law enforcement, lifestyle changes, fantasy fulfillments, to hidden camera, reality game shows, and of course talent shows. What has happened to our society that has spurned such lack of creativity, imagination, and innovation in our entertainment based culture?

Somewhere between the stale, canned laughter of formulaic situation comedies and the mind-numbing, suicidal boredom of home movies lies…..reality shows. At some point towards the end of the twentieth century (do you really remember the late 80’s, early 90’s?), television exploded. Forty some-odd channels on a box evolved to two hundred with an eye-sore satellite dish planted in your backyard . Which in turn gave birth to digital cable, spawning about forty billion stations (with five local affiliates in each county). In the beginning of the twenty-first century, we had more channels than actual viewers. Stations like “The Naval Lint Network,” “Just for Humus Aficionados” and “Turner Colon Exam Still Shots” delivered proof that national programming was in need of a new premise. So a rather contemporary concept was re-conceptualized and then implemented. It was decided by TV execs that a new genre for the lobotomy demographic would do well. And to the surprise of all, Reality TV was, well, a reality.

Although Reality TV has been a guilty pleasure since the advent of broadcast television, there has never been such an vastness of ridiculous programming dedicated to such a genre. The year 2000, the new millennium, was anticipated to bring us convergence of technologies, lifestyles reminiscent of The Jetsons, and healthier/smarter ways to live our lives. In reality the year 2000 brought us Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Survivor. Who could forget Regis Philpin’s Beau Brummel attire and his “Is that your final answer?”. Or what about Richard Hatch’s pixelated genitalia displayed on the beaches of Puala Tiga in the South China Sea? From there a barrage of inane and mind-numbing programming which has assaulted our sensibilities as well as our intelligence.

So I’m watching TV with my wife – okay if you must know it was the news which of course is also Reality TV – and I see a commercial for yet another new Reality TV program called Phenomenon. This is of course the pinnacle of all this nonsense: it is Reality TV for NON-Reality. Uri Geller and Criss Angel host this ” Reality Game Show” to find the “next great mentalist.” This Israeli import has selected 10 mentalists who compete against each other each week by demonstrating “a wide spectrum of mystifying talents” on some suspecting and unsuspecting souls who will experience “spellbinding” illusions, with of course you guessed it, a studio audience.

If any TV execs are reading this I have a few ideas for some new Reality TV programming.

• “Survivor: The Herpes Peninsula”: a group of beautiful people trapped on an island with one hot woman and one hot man who both have genital herpes. The one who can survive 39 days without contracting the virus wins.
• “Big Brother: The Toilet Cam Years”: a camera is hidden on the inside basin of the commodes in the Big Brother house and all the participants are on a regulated diet except for one person. You need to guess which person it is and phone it in. That person has immunity for the next challenge.

TV Execs took a wrecking ball to the famed fourth wall and what we, the viewers are left with is a fetish for the extraordinarily ordinary. Ordinary is no longer something to be ashamed of. Ordinary has come out of the closet prancing around in a purple tutu trumpeting showtunes in the broad light of day. A, B, and Z level celebrities have found a loop hole to their fifteen minutes of fame by stretching it out with hours and hours of embarrassing, candid, behind-the-scenes looks into the kaleidoscopic splendor of their fame, their downfalls and, yes Sparky, their private moments. This type of genre has filled programming gaps with cosmetic banality. We’re all guilty of at very least tuning in to these types of shows like slowing down on the road to see some horrific and mortifying car wreck with multiple dismemberments and fatalities.

The basic problem with Reality TV is that most of it is not based in reality. The majority of the “celebrities” that appear on these shows are so far removed from your average working class or middle class viewer that what they do is boring. Show these people getting stuck in a traffic jam, while driving a Toyota Camry, and then getting chewed out by their boss for being late. That’s reality. Reality TV is everything but real and nothing real about it.

A true mockumentary in every respect, Christopher Guest’s 1996 Waiting for Guffman was a brutally hilarious look at the sweat, blood and tears of community theater. Writer/director/actor Corky St. Claire [Guest] moved to a small town in middle America (Missouri?) town of Blaine to get away from all the rejection he received on Broadway. As luck would have it Corky finds a second career running Blaine Community Players performing such greats as “Backdraft: The Musical!” Well, as more luck would have it, Corky is commissioned by the town council to write a musical based on the town’s 150-year history to celebrate its sesquicentennial [sic] anniversary. Corky casts local community talent such as the local dentist [Eugene Levy], a husband and wife travel agent [Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara] and a part-time Dairy Queen worker [Parker Posey], (you guessed it!) in “Red, White and Blaine.” When Corky receives notice that the great Mort Guffman, a NY theatrical agent who will be attending this show, Corky and the cast actually think that they have a shot at a Broadway run. What ensues is nothing short of the horrid, but hysterical, rehearsal and hell-week process leading up to a no-show by Mr. Guffman.

If there was ever an institution worthy of such a parody, it’s community theater. Having been in community theater for over 25 years, I can tell you first hand, that there is so much of this movie that is unfortunately, very real similar. I have worked with bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wannabe amateur actors who were often distracted by their “day jobs” dentists, policemen, computer programmers, pharmacists, starry-eyed college/high school students, school teachers, lawyers, rabbis, business people and retirees from all walks of life. Most of the time the plays were not classics nor cutting edge, but Broadway standbys that included comedies, zany farces, dramas, musicals, musicals, musicals, … did I mention musicals? Occasionally a [community] theater would actually do something edgy, current or challenging. And when that happened look out! It would be a sight to behold watching the ensuing event when the crème de la crème audition for a few select parts that were sometimes to the shock and awe of the unsuspecting innocent, pre-cast. [Shame, shame, shame!]

Community theater is not for the weak of heart. It’s for the eternal optimist who doesn’t believe in dead-ends. It’s for the tolerant, cheerful, the brave and the gratuitously creative. It’s a life unto itself for someone with little to no home/social/family life who doesn’t have a lot to do on weekends and evenings. And what I find interesting is that most of the actors people in community theater are birds of a feather that flock together: they are close friends, relatives, and family members. In full disclosure, I need to admit that I met my own wife doing community theater.

The zany antics of Waiting for Guffman and the realities of community theater are not completely unrelated. For the most part, productions are not cast well. That is not through any complete fault of one director, producer or theater, but is the reality of the lack of available passable good talent. Oftentimes, the actor can sing the role but is not the right type, or they look the role but can’t act. What is a director to do but follow his instincts and hope for the best. And often the best is a memorable experience that can no longer wait for Mr. Guffman.

Whether it be that singsongy [sic] voice bad actors use, the facial mugging, the shuffling of feet, the wooden hand gestures, or the mouthing of of the other person’s dialogue, community theater performances will always involve detached from reality dedicated, hard-working, individuals, who whether or not admit it would love to have Mr. Guffman seated in their audience.