Don't You Mean Dancing With THE STAR?

So yesterday they announced the "stars" that will be contestants on the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars and truthfully, it looks like every other cast that's come before it. But I might actually watch it this season. Why? Because in addition to the usual lot of a Real Housewife Of Something Or Another, a Disney princess, and several athletes, DWTS also had the genius to cast this man:



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Ke$ha Fellates A Cannoli, "Baby Birds" Customers/Friends, And Scars Everyone For Life

MTV, it's like I don't even know you anymore.

Here's a teaser for Ke$ha's upcoming MTV series, Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life:

Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life
Get More:
Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, Full Episodes

I blame Snooki.

Is American Idol Fake?

Sean Klitzner thinks the judges are merely puppets. Here's his rationale:



What do you think? Is he right? Are they receiving off-screen instructions? Or are they merely bored and glancing off-screen?

[Cue the conspiracy theory music]

Sex House: A Perfect Reality Show Parody

It's been twenty years since the first season of The Real World ("Are you a drug dealer? Why do you have a beeper?”) and pop culture has jumped on the reality show bandwagon and has vowed to never get off until the end of time, it seems. It's surprising that two of the best reality show parodies have only just come about this year. Earlier this year, Ken Marino starred in the Ben Stiller-produced Burning Love, a fantastic and spot-on parody of The Bachelor franchise.



I only recently became aware of the web series, Sex House, produced by The Onion Digital Studios. I know, right? Did you even know that The Onion had a network? Sex House is a mock reality show about people living in a house, and true to The Onion's abilities to produce brilliant satire, are there for simply the role reason to have sex for the camera. After all, once you strip away the pretense of a reason or competition, that's what these trashy shows are for, obviously.

Icon: Our Interview With Flavor Flav

Fact: Public Enemy is the greatest and most important rap group of all time. In a two-year period, they put out not one, but two classic albums in It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back and Fear Of A Black Planet.

These days, more people may know Public Enemy hype man Flavor Flav as a roastee (Comedy Central Roast Of Flavor Flav), published author (Flavor Flav: The Icon The Memoir), and reality TV star (The Surreal Life, Strange Love, Flavor Of Love). This evening, he's opening Flavor Flav's House Of Flavor, a soul food restaurant in Las Vegas. But first, he dropped by and spoke with us about the restaurant, his upcoming reality TV show, his and Public Enemy's legacy, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and his clocks.

How's it going today?
Yo, man! Everything's going great, man. So far, so good. Slow motion's better than no motion, baby.

Tell us about Flavor Flav's House Of Flavor restaurant.
Flavor Flav's House Of Flavor is gonna be a takeout restaurant on Maryland Parkway right here in Las Vegas. Yes, it has my signature and famous fried chicken on the menu and also we've got some good sides: collard greens, macaroni and cheese, rice and gravy, mashed potatoes and gravy. My partner that I teamed up with, his name is Farrah Gray and he's also my book publisher, added a red velvet waffle to the menu. That red velvet waffle, I've been told, is out of sight!

Will the restaurant have any of your memorabilia inside?
It sure will. Right now, we got a bunch of pictures of me hanging up and stuff. Also, we got some video footage of Public Enemy playing inside the restaurant. I'll probably go to my archives and pull out some clocks and probably put some clocks up on the wall, too.

Celebrity Wife Swap: Tell Me If "I Wanna Swap" Kills Your Soul

Celebrity Wife Swap debuted Monday night. Like the name implies, it involves celebrities trading their wives (or husbands). But I don't think you get them all day, if you catch my drift.

Monday night's episode feature Carnie Wilson and Mike Seaver's sis, Tracey Gold. Tuesday night's episode featured Gary Busey and former evangelist Ted Haggard. While I haven't watched the show, I do think I'll be tuning in next week to see Public Enemy's Flavor Flav swap wives with Twisted Sister's Dee Snider. Because that will be some rock 'n' roll magic right there, kids.

That said, a little piece of me died while watching the following promo for the series:

Update #1: The video has been removed from YouTube, ABC, Hulu, Dailymotion, Metacafe -- basically, name the venue, it's gone.

Update #2: It has been removed from every location, save one: ABC has forgotten to remove it from their Facebook page.

So why did ABC pull the plug on the video? Maybe it's the lyrics, which are a shameful parody of Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock:"

Chorus
I wanna swap! (Swap!)
I wanna swap! (Swap!)
I want to swap! (Swap!)
I wanna swap! (Swap!)
I want to swap! (Swap!)

You got a wife you say?
Well all I got to say to you
If you take my wife then I'll take yours
By the way does she do chores?

You wanna swap you say?
Well all I got to say to you
ABC has got the perfect show
So let's go! Go, go, go!

'Cause if you want to pull the spousal switcheroo
There's only one show that can make it come true

Repeat Chorus 1,000,000X

Or maybe it's the video, which is a shameless parody of Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock" video. It even has Mark Metcalf! But Dee didn't show up. Instead, we're stuck with a third-rate Dee Snider impersonator. And a fifth-rate Dee Snider little person impersonator.

Here are some stills in case they yank the video from Facebook:

Roseanne's Nuts

I had heard a few months back that Roseanne Barr had a nut farm in Hawaii. Did I think it was odd? Oh yeah.

Odd enough for a reality TV show?

Definitely.

In a day and age where we're asked to check out the exploits of a group of nobodies from New Jersy, why can't Roseanne have her own show, too?

Roseanne's Nuts debuts on Lifetime on July 13th at 9:00 PM. Here's the trailer:

The Greatest Show On Television Returns Wednesday Night

I can only be talking about one thing:

TV Preview: Heavy

A&E, the network that brought us Intervention and Hoarders, is now doing for the morbidly obese what it's done for addicts and obsessive-compulsives with its new series Heavy.

Those folks have cornered the market on neatly bound, one-hour docudramas, have they not? And Heavy doesn't deviate from the formula. Each episode profiles two people whose health is threatened by their weight -- we're talking people weighing in between 400 and 700 pounds -– and follows them on their journey to transform their overweight Before selves to healthier, thinner After shots.

Is the show a game, like The Biggest Loser? No. A&E doesn't play like that. Does it take psychological illness and turn it into a compulsively watchable sideshow? Thankfully not. Heavy treats its subjects respectfully, like humans, rather than carnival freaks.

The premiere episode follows Tom, 37, who initially weighs in at 638 pounds, and Jodi, 36, whose extreme weight has already resulted in a minor stroke. Photos of a young Tom show he was an active, thin kid. Now, he can't walk five steps without losing his breath. Jodi claims the mantle of Funny Fat Girl by showing the contents of her fridge to the cameras, and calling the supersize jug of Ranch dressing "the fat girl's staple."

A&E continues to do what it does best: turn long, difficult recoveries into dramatic-yet-tidy one-hour bites. Tom and Jodi are working towards a goal: to live longer by shedding pounds. It's hard. They almost give up. They see a therapist or a trainer, and try again. They almost give up again. We're led to wonder: will they lose the weight? Will they gain it back? Will the overwrought music that surges every time someone steps onto a scale just freaking stop, already?

The good news of this premiere episode is that after six months of hardcore therapy and exercise, Tom and Jodi do come out the other side happier, healthier, and yes, somewhat thinner. We get our After shots.

But compressing six months into one hour means there's a lot we don't see, of course. We're told that Jodi has a toxic mother who laughs at her when she attempts to exercise, but we only hear about how Jodi had to kick Mom out of the house during the interview after the fact. We don't see the big fight. At one of Tom's check-ups after initially losing 50 pounds, we learn that he's gained it all back, plus 30 more. But we're not there with him in his house when he backslides and binges on fried food. So a lot of Tom's and Jodi's journey is relayed second-hand. Which makes it less real, and more... compact.

Heavy could be a sobering look at a national epidemic, if it just slowed down. Instead, it's too invested in the quick, one-hour road to a happy ending with a bow on top.

Heavy premieres on A&E tonight, Monday Jan 17th, at 10 PM ET.

Hollywood Is Just Getting Ridiculous 3: The Revenge

It seems the people running Hollywood these days spent a lot of time pumping quarters into arcades in the 80s. On the heels of yesterday's news about a movie based on a certain trackball arcade game in the works, comes today's earth-shattering announcement that the most famous 8-bit icon of the first video game era has a project in development.

Pac-Man is on his way to our TV screens--in a reality show!

The show will follow the yellow, pellet-eating dude and his feminist wife, Mrs. Pac-Man, as they try to rebound their careers in the modern age.

Actually, details of the show are limited, but it seems that Pac-Man: The Series might be some sort of Wipeout-inspired game show. Which still doesn't quite tell us much.

What it does mean is that Hollywood has not yet tapped the mine of our childhood memories for ideas.

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Editor's Note: I think the only way this series has any chance for survival is if SHE is involved. --Chag