Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind

As I write this in early 2003 a genre of television programming called 'Reality TV' is all the rage.

I mention this because I suspect at some point in the not-so distant future, when said genre has run its course and the denizens responsible for the nonsense that finds its way onto the coaxial wasteland have moved onto something else to alienate viewers with, someone somewhere will, owing much to garden-variety stupidity, suggest programming that supposedly reflects reality.

And, I hope, they will be beaten to a bloody pulp with the weekly tv guide for their sins.

And, then, when all are recoiling in certain horror at what they have wrought, some dang fool will suggest doing a game show. But not just any game show. This particular game show will showcase the worst of the worst, the dumb of the dumb, and the plain pointless.

But all this won't be the draw. Oh, no. The draw of this particular brilliance (and I use that word as loosely as possible) will, in fact, be the host of this show: A crazy man who is so crazy that when he makes an off-the-cuff remark people will actually take him seriously.

And for a time people will frown after they recover from hearing such remarks and say, slowly, 'Wasn't--didn't there used to be a guy that was just like this guy?'

And someone, who actually pays attention to the chattel, the minute, the hubris that tends to clutter our lives, will nod and say, 'Yeah. What was his name? And wasn't he, like, a double agent or something?'

Of course, given the devolutionary nature of the human state, people will latch onto the latter and begin to actually believe that a game show host was, in fact, a double agent, who killed the bad guys while, in his capacity as host, celebrated the worst humanity had to offer.

And then someone will make a movie about him and the insane cycle that is basically life will start again.

Oh, wait: That already happened: "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind", is what it is called: A movie so pointless, dumb, and idiotic the audience ought to be armed with minature gongs, courtesy of theater management.

"Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind", the movie, is based on the autobiography of Chuck Barris, the one and forever creator of such mindless tripe as "The Dating Game" and "The Gong Show". Barris, not much to look at, owing much to the simple fact he looked he was in constant pain from having a network's censor's foot in his backside, makes the claim that he was an undercover agent for the CIA, and in this role, he killed more than thirty people. Oh, and by the way: He did all this while posing as the host of the aforementioned "The Gong Show".

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