A Reason to Enjoy Mondays

For all things “Bachelor” or “Bachelorette” many people flock to the lengthy posts of Reality Steve. He has been sharing spoilers and detailed recaps of the dating show for the last 19 seasons, which can be translated into EIGHT YEARS! This guy really knows his stuff, thanks to an anonymous source every season, but also because he becomes friends with some of the cast members once the shows are finished filming.
To put it plainly, he is an intelligent and savvy, yet completely disgusting male-blogger personality. I’ve gone through two of his recent posts in particular and seeing as they’re about 8 printed pages long each, I feel confident in saying that I’ve become fairly familiar with the voice he employs to both entertain and inform his readers – plus he has self-titled his blog “my sarcastic, slanted, sophomoric and skewed view on the world of reality television,” which makes it nice and clear right off the bat.

One post consists mainly of his responses to fan emails from the week before, regarding the current season of The Bachelor, where audiences are following Brad Womack. The other post is his regular episode recap, complete with inappropriate and witty commentary. The first element of Steve’s voice is that he is very conversational; he refers directly to the reader – “as I’m sure you’ve all heard by now,” “sorry for the delay, but some good dirt just dropped in my lap, ”consistently throughout his posts. This makes his writing very easy, yet still completely engaging to read and gives the sense that he is talkative, pretty eloquent guy. Steve uses mostly humor to dissect the cast and the events on the show; throughout both posts he uses a recurring joke referring to the fact that at one point Brad had briefly changed his last name to ‘Pickelsimer.’ His variations include, Mr. Pickle, Dicklewimer, Whippleclimber, Picklefarmer, Stickleheimer, and the list continues on and on, but I’m sure you get the idea. The use of the recurring joke made me want to continue on even just to see what new names he came up with later on. He’s hilarious.

His humor also extends beyond the every day name-calling. As I mentioned before, Reality Steve is also disgusting. Not as a person in general (well I probably have no authority in making that statement, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt… for now), but more in an inappropriate-male humor sort of way – two words: penis jokes. Amongst his recap information, he slipped in a few of these gems:

“If he kisses your eye, then you kiss his eye. His one eyed monster… I hope she kissed his yogurt cannon… he had to wait til South Africa for you to orally take the temperature on his meat thermometer.”

Coming from a female reader, which I’m willing to bet are the bulk of his followers, I repeat: disgusting. Steve is unafraid, that much is clear, that element of his character also makes me want to continue reading just to see what he could possibly say next.

While reading Steve’s posts, it feels as though you’re getting a direct line to his brain. As mentioned before, his lack of filter demonstrates this, but he also uses punctuation and grammar that gives a sense that we’re reading his stream of consciousness. His use of short sentences, “He’s a big boy. I’m sure he can handle it. Hilarious… Sorry. But it’s her.” This definitely lets the readers know that what he’s writing is just who he is and that you could quite possible hear the exact same things if you were face-to-face.

All of these characteristics that create Reality Steve’s voice are what, I believe, both attract and repulse readers (who come back to read it anyway because he’s so entertaining and almost ALWAYS right with the predictions – bonus!). His voice works well with the content of his blog because he is absolutely ridiculous and, lets face it, even if you haven’t seen the show I’m sure you can imagine how ridiculous it is for 1 man to meet 30 women and then propose to one of them 6 weeks later after 4-ish (emphasis on the –ish) dates. Like I said: ridiculous.

TV Junkies, Like Me

When searching for a blog on reality television, thousands come up, but when searching for one that actually comments with opinions on the ridiculous content and not the gossip surrounding the show proved to be a large task. The search finally waned when blogger ‘Team Brenda’ came up on Technorati with a rank of 8126 (Auth: 430). The ranking tells nothing of the sharp humor and wealth of knowledge on the reality television topic.

Team Brenda, TB for short, dedicates the entire blog to Brenda Walsh of Beverly Hills, 90210 based on the author’s compassion for Brenda when Dylan picked Kelly. The pseudonym ‘Team Brenda’ is all readers are given regarding personal information about the actual author, which could be working in his or her favor considering how freely his/her opinions are expressed – e.g. on American Idol contestants, renaming them “Tonedeafshire,” or judges, “Paula ‘Walnuts’ Abdul.” In the most recent post, TB labels the newest season of American Idol as “So Far So Good.” The commentary on some of the contestants is blunt, yet witty and the observations of Steve Tyler paint the picture of his inner-hippie. It can all be seen here.

TB posts almost every single day and at times even with multiple posts a day. TB doesn’t discriminate when it comes to television, s/he watches it all, but there’s a clear focus on the reality shows. Another post relating to the current series of The Bachelor showcases the frank and sassy tone of TB - here.  The closing note of “I don’t know about you, but the only thing worth my time last night was the burnt orange throw spotted in the last ten minutes.  I’m hoping it was cashmere and I’m hoping it’s on sale” is similar to the tone I plan to use in my blog – sarcastic, personable, hilarious, and honest. The tone doesn’t rank highly on an academic or professional scale, but that’s what gives the blog it’s character and what makes me want to continue reading. TB focuses on mostly opinions regarding the content of the shows through a recap of the main events. I plan on putting a slightly more philosophical spin on it in an attempt to get people thinking about the bigger picture that all of these shows may be painting. However, the posts regarding reality television are inspiring as to what I could cover in my blog posts and they give an honest opinion from an honest television fan who is “loving [his/her] life, one episode at a time,” which sounds all too familiar.

For access to all posts and all things Team Brenda: http://goteambrenda.com/

Jerseylicious-DEF

Winter break is a time where midterms, papers and finals all turn into 1) sleeping in and 2) watching endless amounts of television. Well, this is the case when it comes to me and my college student ways. Luckily for me, my grandparents have every channel under the DirecTV sun, with my personal favorite channels being the ones that have routine marathons of entire seasons of their shows so I can catch up all at once (and then wonder where my entire day went). Amongst the plethora of channels and endless selections of shows, I found myself watching what some might call "bad" reality TV shows. As far as I’m concerned reality TV is SO bad... that it’s goooood, kind of like Kraft Mac’n’Cheese – you know it’s just not healthy, but it just feels so right when the cheesy-goodness takes over.

*Disclaimer: I am not a reality television advocate, per se, but it’s definitely one of my favorite past time that allows my brain to turn off - while I’m still awake*

If I could sum up a large chunk of my winter break in one word it would probably be: Jerseylicious. That’s right: 

© The Style Network

Just in case you didn't catch the lyrics of that captivating ditty, let me enlighten you:

 “Big hair, fancy clothes… rock stars in the spotlight. Tell me do you wanna? Can you really take the drama of a jerseylicious girl like me? I am crazylicious. I am superlicious. I’m the jerseylicious girl you need. Tell me can you take it? Do you really wanna make with a jerseylicious girl like me? I’m what you need!” 

Tracy and Olivia

I apologize, I absolutely just wasted 30 seconds of your life subjecting you to the theme song in video form and then another 30 seconds reading the lyrics themselves... Actually – I’m not sorry at all, I’m glad I could set the stage for all of you who’ve never experienced the fake tans, fake nails and parking lot catfights that is Jerseylicious. Basically, the entire show is about the ladies (lady isn’t quite the right word, but for now we’ll go with it) and gentlemen (also questionable) who work at The Gatsby Hair Salon in Green Brook, New Jersey. Basically, main characters are Tracy Dimarco and Olivia Blois Sharpe – they stir up the most drama,  get into the most confrontations and pretty much wear the most ridiculous outfits ever, thus I deem them the honor of being the main Jerseylicious girls. It’s odd to me that they can never shut up about how they’re such enemies, when all of their interests are EXACTLY the same. They’re both hair extension wearing, accessorizing obsessed, fake-nails-that-reach-to-New-York-wearing Oompa Loompas and all they can “tualk” about is how “Jersey” they are (be visualizing finger quotes right about now). Oh - and they continually date each others' ex-boyfriends... creepy, right?

SERIOUSLY?! Are all girls from New Jersey honestly this animal print infatuated and hairspray insane? I’ve never been to The Garden State myself, nor have I even encountered anyone from there (that even remotely resembles these two), so I can honestly say my only impressions of that state can be attributed to my Jerseylicious marathon watching -- and Jersey Shore, but my feelings about that show are for another time -- on the Style Network. The fact that the show is on the "STYLE" network also baffles me. With a name like that, shouldn’t the channel be emphasizing what TO wear and not what to avoid with a 39 1/2 ft pole? Which then begs the question, could people watching this show possibly be inspired to look or act that way because it’s on TV? I feel like for some people, who watch this show for hours on end, that it could actually start to infiltrate their subconscious and have them waking up one morning being orange, only every wearing a smoky eye, and claiming that everything is sprinkled with “glam fairy dust.”

I may sound hypocritical, since I took part in the marathon viewing of the show, but  I'm not afraid to admit my flaws. All I can do now is hope that I don’t look in the mirror one day to find myself applying FAR too much bronzer and with my hair looking like a family of mice camped out for the night. I know that people no longer believe in the hypodermic needle effect and all that jazz, but since anyone can get a TV show these days, who’s to say people aren’t going to watch these shows and then attempt to be more to be “realistic” and chase their own 15 minutes?

Over the course of this blog, I hope to explore the effects that reality TV may have on ACTUAL reality, what I believe it reflects about our society and our interests, and I hope to entertain you all in the process.

Enjoy.