"Jesus Christ, Bear! There's an Applebee's across the street!"I have learned a lot from watching television for the past 25 years. In fact, most of what I know was taught to me by channels like TLC, History and Discovery. TLC has taught me that there are way too many midgets, fat asses and cake enthusiasts in this world. The History Channel taught me that Nazis were enthusiastic monster hunters that wrote books about alien encounters. And the Discovery Channel taught me how to survive in the wilderness, which is to say, the Discovery Channel has taught me jack shit. There is really only one survival show on television, that being the controversial Man vs. Wild, hosted by professional survivalist and amateur limey douche, Bear Grylls, real name Edward Michael Grylls. It recently came out that most of Man vs. Wild is shot on a studio lot in Burbank, so really the show shouldn't even be called a survival show. But as far as I am concerned one survival show is one too many, because it really doesn't teach you anything. Neither did the short-lived Survivorman, starring Canadian blues sensation Les Stroud. Or the most absurd survival show yet, the Mad Max-inspired Apocalypse Man, which pitted ex-Marine Rudy Reyes against a fabricated post-apocalyptic environment in which the toxic air made it impossible to keep one's shirt on. The reason that I loathe survival shows is because they are just not practical. If I wanted to watch someone eat that much rancid meat I'd watch The Bachelor. The fact is that if a person's plane crashes in the jungles of South America, he or she is not going to remember which plants are safe to eat and which ones you shouldn't wipe your ass with. The Average Joe isn't going to know how to purify water, rig a makeshift compass, build a raft, or construct proper sleeping quarters. Although, I did see our man Bear give himself a homemade enema. That's something I can get behind (pun intended). But I digress. There are so many different landscapes and weather patterns on this earth that it would be impossible for anyone but an expert to memorize proper survival techniques for each one. I understand that these shows are meant to educate and entertain the viewer, but in all honesty, I know for a fact that I will never be lost in the Amazon or struggling to work my way across the Gobi Desert (that's the second Gobi Desert reference on this blog). Never say never, Eric. Fuck you, buddy. I will never get lost in the wilderness. I know that. I mean, I came close when my old Mercury Grand Marquis broke down on some nameless highway in western Nebraska. But to survive out there I just had to know how to talk Big12 football and make vague references to a vast "negro conspiracy." Finding myself trudging through an arctic tundra is just not in the cards for me. But for the sake of argument, let's say that I decide to hop on a plane and fly to some random village in Chile, and on the way there my plane crashes and I am stranded in the jungle. I am pretty confident that I would die within the first two hours. I quit the Boy Scouts because I couldn't start a fire or catch a fish to save my life (plus I didn't want to help old ladies cross the street, because fuck them that's why). When I was little, I would play tag until I was actually tagged, then it became, "This game is gay. No, I'm done playing. Because it's stupid. You guys always come after me because I'm the slowest. Yes, you do! And I can never get you because you're faster than me. No, I said! I'm going inside. This game is for retards." I watched an episode of I Shouldn't Be Alive about a man who crashed his plane into a volcano. This dude survives a plane crash only to realize the one place he was able to miraculously land was inside a motherfucking volcano. At that point I think God is trying to tell you something. I can picture Him up in Heaven saying to himself, "I made this asshole crash his plane, then dropped him in an active volcano, and the dumb sonuvabitch still doesn't take the hint. THE WORLD IS DONE WITH YOU JERK OFF!" Well, I believe that when it's your time to go, it's your time to go. If my plane crashed into an active volcano I would probably say my prayers, squeeze the bewbs of an unfortunate female passenger, make a Mordor reference, then jump the fuck into the lava. If TV was serious about educating their viewers then they would have a show called Man vs. PMSing Girlfriend. The rugged Australian host would hunker down in an apartment bathroom, sifting through the waste basket and say, "Uh oh, mate. Looking at these tampon wrappers it appears that it's Julie's time of the month. If I ever want to make it out of here alive I better make sure there is plenty of ice cream in the freezer, Midol in the medicine cabinet, and under no circumstances should I make any comparisons between Julie and her mother." Or put a show on the Discovery Channel called Rent Dodging, which teaches you how to effectively avoid your landlord while still being able to stave off eviction. I'm going to develop a show called The Perfect Alibi, which will center on educating men on how to accurately and confidently convince their wives and girlfriends that they were at the library and definitely not at a strip club. Next season the History Channel should air Cleavage Sniper, a show about a dude who teaches you how to secretly stare at women's bewbs without them noticing. That is the kind of television that really educates people. When a man needs to survive using only his wits and whatever he has in his pockets, MacGyver has, and always will, be good enough for me.
The Moore You Know: I think the product that really got the shaft is Kool-Aid. The drink used to be a refreshing summertime beverage, but now it has become synonymous with conformity and mass suicide thanks to the Jonestown Massacre. And what sucks even more is the fact that Kool-Aid wasn't even used as a means of commiting suicide. Jim Jones just used a generic fruit drink mstakenly called Kool-Aid on the news. When was the last time you saw a commercial with a bunch of kids sitting around drinking Kool-Aid? You never see that shit anymore, because the first thing you would think of would be, "Those kids are trying to kill themselves."
© Eric Moore - 2010
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