Is it likely that a bleach blonde with fake tits who worked for Playboy appeared in a Playboy pictorial? Is it likely that a millionaire reality show contestant would murder his bleach blonde girlfriend and think he was going to get away with it by chopping off all her fingers and pulling out all her teeth but not removing her serial numbered breast implants? Is it likely that, if someone were so horribly cruelly disfigured, either just prior to being murdered or post-mortem to incompetently prevent identification, that TMZ would buy a death photo from someone in the coroner’s office and post it on the internet? Well, the only part of the the Jasmine-Fiore-murder-followed-by-death-photo story being reported which is not true is that the victim posed for Playboy. Full disclosure: Jasmine Fiore may have had a bit part in the horror movie The Abandoned which was an advertiser on this site and others I work on, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t bias me on this. I’m pretty sure I would find this story simultaneously ghoulishly hilarious and horrifically tragic regardless.

One Ryan Alexander Jenkins was indeed thwarted when one Jasmine Fiore was identified by the serial number on her breast implants. Apparently Ryan Alexander Jenkins recently finished taping on VH1’s I Love Money 3. I don’t really know what that show is about and I can’t imagine the prize dollars are anything significant to anyone already a millionaire, but I can’t quite bring myself to look it up either. Gawker’s Jezebel reports that, since Ryan Alexander Jenkins became a person of interest in the murder of Jasmine Fiore, VH1 has pulled all mention of the Megan Wants a Millionaire show he was a finalist on. Jezebel further reports that the murder suspect may have actually won the grand prize on I Love Money 3. Jezebel goes on to commend VH1 for their sensitivity in removing the MWAM content from the VH1 web site (juicy bits helpfully archived by Jezebel.)

I have also never seen Megan Wants a Millionaire, which was apparently canceled fairly early in its run. A while back I covered the Charm School reunion show where Sharon Osbourne and this Megan Hauserman ditzy blonde self-professed gold-digger got into a cat fight, although I admit I’ve never seen Charm School and only watched the cat fight vid on the VH1 web site when it became a hot topic.

At that time, Megan’s claim to fame was that Poison frontman/insecure meanie/embarrassment-to-aging-rockers-everywhere Bret Michaels rejected her on Rock of Love. Is being rejected by a guy who was okay-looking in 1986 really a resume item? Apparently so, as Megan Hauserman was given her own show Megan Wants a Millionaire. The Superficial reports, “You know what the most fucked up part of this story is? There’s a reality show where millionaires compete for the love of a self-proclaimed gold-digger with fake breasts. That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard all day.”

It seems that, immediately after being rejected by Megan Hauserman on camera for VH1 in March, Ryan Alexander Jenkins went to Vegas and married his girlfriend of some time Jasmine Fiore. Wouldn’t you be pissed if your significant other went on television to humiliate themselves pursuing someone who is not you? Certainly would not spell wedding bells to me. According to Jasmine Fiore’s understandably bereaved and distraught mother Lisa Lepore, Jasmine Fiore had the marriage annulled in May, but law enforcement can find no record of this. One Robert Hasman got a series of text messages from his ex-girlfriend Jasmine Fiore over the two days before her death. Then he got just one cryptic message, well after her estimated time of death, which just read “suck it“. In other post-mortem commentary news, What Would Tyler Durden Do reports, “Jasmines roommate says their relationship was “on the rocks”. She also said that Jenkins told her he was “done with the relationship” and that “he couldn’t take it anymore”. This was one day after Jasmine was found in a dumpster . . . She’s not very attractive, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to kill her. Legally, I mean.”

Ryan Alexander Jenkins is Canadian and is believed to have fled to Canada, although his father, a wealthy architect, developed a resort on an island in Honduras and owns at least one plane. The Huffington Post reports that Canada has agreed to extradite Ryan Alexander Jenkins if he is apprehended in Canada because the State of California has promised not to pursue the death penalty in this potentially capital crime.

Judging from video of Ryan Alexander Jenkins singing “I love my wife” to Jasmine Fiore in Vegas which he posted to his MySpace page (and TMZ helpfully archived), Jasmine Fiore was brunette at the time of her death. So bleached blonde and naked for Playboy = false. All the ridiculous stuff (including VH1 choosing not to profit from tragedy) = totally true.

So reality television shows have this creepy format thing where they bring back a season’s cast for a six month reunion. Like being on a reality show was tantamount to going to college or something and the whole class needs to get back together to reminisce and see how everybody turned out.

Admittedly, my family is kinda not into things like reunions or even graduations, so the last graduation I went to was when I finished sixth grade. I somewhat regretted not going to my own college reunion this spring when Barack Obama turned out to be the keynote speaker. So maybe I just don’t get the reunion thing, but I’m still in touch with a lot of people I went to school with. On purpose. Because I like and enjoy them. Because I shared enjoyable and life-forming experiences with them.

College does not seem much like reality TV, but VH1 did recently do a show called Charm School where rock manager extraordinaire and TV personality Sharon Osbourne and seminal nightclub impresario and TV personality Riki Rachtman were the deans. I guess the idea was to teach some manners to chicks who previously tried to date Flavor Flav or Bret Michaels or somebody like them.

One of my most embarrassing Hollywood moments, when I first moved out to Los Angeles, Forrest Black and I went over to visit sexy bassist Megan Maddox, when she was in, I think, Tairrie B’s My Ruin and possibly Taime Downe’s The Newlydeads as well, to shoot her for Tattoo Savage. A couple of other people, who I knew from Los Angeles nights on the town, were also hanging out there, and we all had the misfortune of watching Sheryl Crow do a GNR cover. So we’re all cringing and I tell some anecdote about how Guns n’ Roses changed my life. I cringed a lot more later when I finally put it together that Riki from the club was Riki Rachtman from Headbangers Ball who got the gig via Axl Rose and had a fuck of a lot more claim than yours truly on GNR being life-changing.

To return to reality television programming, still in progress, the second season of the Bret Michaels Rock of Love extravaganza definitely helped turn me off of reality TV. Aside from the way they made it painfully apparent that Bret Michaels is a sucky prize, the dude chose some generic liar chick over beautiful Tattoo Savage covergirl Daisy de La Hoya. Apparently, Bret Michaels just couldn’t get over the fact that Charles Edward from Seraphim Shock is Daisy’s ex and they still spend time together. I’ve shot Charles and he certainly is, circa 2008, a lot hotter than Bret. The Poison frontman apparently felt so threatened by a good-looking gothic guy that the show couldn’t even mention Seraphim Shock. Whatever. Although Daisy seemed to actually have inexplicably warm feelings for Bret, she demonstrably can do better, because she already has.

The reunion show for Rock of Love 2, gamely moderated by Riki Rachtman, was pretty much a horror show. A chick named Heather, who I guess competed on the first Rock of Love and advised on the second one, punched poor Daisy de La Hoya and it was my opinion that VH1, not only allowed it to happen, but was hoping it would. I felt terrible for Daisy, but, in Heather’s defense, Bret Michaels actually let Heather get his name tattooed to her throat in the first season. And then did not pick her. I think it is very bad manners to give someone the go-ahead to get a tattoo of your name if you know you are going to spurn their affections on national television.

So, although I watched none of the seasons of Charm School, I noticed that a number of people have been chortling about how the recent Charm School reunion trumped the Rock of Love reunion for catfight fetish. To make a long story moderately less long, some two-face, mean, drunk, ditzy blonde from one of the VH1 programs, made a crack about another contestant’s child. Sharon Osbourne told her that was not cool. So the drunk ditz, apparently named Megan Hauserman, made some rude cracks about Sharon Osbourne’s family and Ozzy Osbourne in specific. At this point, Sharon Osbourne demonstrated just one of the many many reasons why she is qualified to school these girls. Without a hair out of place, and without appearing to sweat or shake, Sharon Osbourne threw this red drink all over the rude bleach blonde and, although it is hard to make out in the tape above, apparently also pulled out clumps of her hair and scratched her and twisted her arm badly enough that VH1 rushed rude ditzy girl to the hospital. Normally, I disapprove of violence in disagreements, but I do think a lot of people have no sense that some things are sacred. I think that, to someone like this Megan Hauserman, nothing is sacred, so she may truly have no concept that going after someone’s son or husband is crossing a line, put there by civilization, for good reason. Those who choose to be uncivilized in that way to someone as tough and elegant as Sharon Osbourne should consider themselves lucky when they only end up clowned, with ruined hair and makeup, and an arm in a sling.

I walked by the Rock of Love 3 bus on Hollywood Boulevard this Saturday night, walking home from Pinkberry. Living in Los Angeles is surreal.

I watched the Rock Docs: NWA: The World’s Most Dangerous Group documentary about NWA last night. Surprisingly, it made me think and actually somewhat changed my view on some things, most notably Ice Cube. I know, if something on VH1 made me think, apparently intentionally, then WTF is up with the universe?

I loathed Ice Cube the first time I heard his solo music. I first heard it at a time when the hip hop industry was working overtime at making it acceptable for white people to buy rap albums. Longtime Blue Blood readers may recall an article I wrote for the print magazine about my love of Ice T, which I called “I Shot the Sheriff and the Deputy”. (I’m a witty girl.) But the first stuff I heard by Ice Cube was not about the things I could relate to in an Ice T record. If there was anything about rage, disenfranchisement, and reaching for power on there, it was most definitely not for me. Ice Cube went on and on and on about how much white people overall suck and Asian people are this and Jewish people are this and white women are all ugly and blah blah blah. Apart from the deliberately alienating lyrics, this was also a time when rappers didn’t really tend to be that good-looking. Music television was around and MTV was instrumental in popularizing NWA, but let’s just say Ice Cube didn’t really have the good looks of LL Cool J, Nelly, or 50 Cent. Ice Cube looked like the pissed off guy who, if you had a party at your house, would get drunk and start breaking stuff as soon as his friends started having fun or getting laid. Like he should talk about what anybody else looks like. Hmph.

Then, at some point, Ice Cube appeared to have had politician-level quantities of Botox injected into his head and he started appearing in family-friendly comedies. I thought that maybe the deities of irony think that’s funny. But Ice Cube was appearing in exactly the kind of movies which are offensively wholesome. I’m not opposed to wholesome, but I am opposed to the kind of wholesome which makes you believe someone is just hiding most of who they really are. I am opposed to the kind of wholesome which is intended to make regular people feel terrible about themselves. And I thought Ice Cube was, by now, not only a racist misogynist, but a sell-out racist misogynist tool of the overculture.

Watching this VH1 special made me rethink my opinion that NWA was really just an example of Dr. Dre being great and taking a few guys from his neighborhood with him, folks who were just in the right place at the right time with the right friend. Taking nothing away from Dr. Dre’s brilliance, NWA may have been able to be what it was for more of a group synergy than I would previously have credited. Notably, Ice Cube actually wrote a number of raps, but I’ve never seen press coverage of the group talk about that before.

I can see why Ice Cube might have furrowed his brow like that, if he wrote some of NWA’s angriest words and then he saw Eazy-E being all about grabbing all the dough and having sex with as many groupies as possible. And he saw his bandmates settling into making something he saw as important and political into a business. As the seed money for the band and the studio they recorded in came from Eazy-E and much of the band’s street cred came from Eazy-E, he probably deserved a bigger slice of the money pie and, if he was more of a hit with the ladies than the others, maybe he was just plain sexier. He was certainly hotter than Ice Cube. And Eazy-E did die of AIDS from having so much random unprotected sex, so not that there wasn’t, ya know, a downside to being attractive that way.

Knowing that Dr. Dre went on to tap talents including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and 50 Cent, I just kinda thought he was the brains of the operation. I’m not sure what MC Ren went on to, besides a few solo efforts, at least one of which did very well. DJ Yella went on to direct for mainstream adult video companies. I obviously believe that porn can be political, but calling a gonzo porn series DJ Yella’s Str8 Outta Compton really seems to show a certain willingness to overlook the importance, strength, and pride of NWA’s Straight Outta Compton record.

I feel a certain sympathy and understanding for Ice Cube now, that I did not before. If those words were his and he truly believed in what NWA had to say and changing the world and it was not about the money or the groupies, then it must have been gut-wrenching for him when those around him started talking like it was just business. I don’t know what year he legally changed his name to be Ice Cube, but it seems like he really wanted to be that guy, not just play a character to sell stuff.

On one level, I’m pleased that the internet facilitated the financial viability of my previously costly art project for my scene and community. Money can facilitate freedom and I like freedom. But money can be a really polluting influence as well, one which really brings out the wolves. I know I find it gut-wrenching when I hear “just business” from my peers and compatriots, some of whom are (or at least were) people I deeply believed in. There are people, I would have considered members of my tribe, who help a data mining corporation like Experian simultaneously strip mine our culture and destroy any remaining privacy or control over our lives we might have. There are people, I would have considered members of my tribe, who help a mainstream adult video corporation like Vivid recruit others I would have considered members of my tribe, while paying them far less than they would ever offer someone they considered a full-fledged member of society. There are people, I would have considered members of my tribe, who help a mainstream porn site like SuicideGirls turn once vital sexual and feminist activism into bickering competitions which would be unseemly even in junior high school girls. There are people, I would have considered members of my tribe, who help a mainstream clothing corporation like Hot Topic cheapen our style and make it something for children.

Maybe they have given up on true empowerment and feel like playing the clown is the only option left for them. If they can no longer recall what was supposed to be empowering about what they chose to do, then, in my opinion, they need to check themselves.

I’m not interested in being the court jester with the funny-colored hair in a disrespectful ruler’s kingdom. I’m thoroughly capable of putting on an Izod and having a nice salon do something more natural. I was bad at golf the last time I played at my grandparents country club, before being banned for punk rock behavior. But I could learn. And I love to eat, so I am ahead of the curve in knowing which fork to use.

If I decide to switch things up, it will not be to play the Pied Piper in leading people to work for Experian for free (while giving away their personal data) or Vivid for less than standard wages. I absolutely reject the notion that I should accept second class citizen status because of how I like to have sex or my gender or what I like to wear or what I like to listen to or having an artistic temperament. There is no obvious word for the kind of disenfranchised I am. But I won’t accept working for a corporate master on lesser terms because of it, any more than Ice Cube would for the color of his skin or where he is from.

All I’m saying is that Ice Cube made a reported thirteen million dollars last year and I no longer begrudge him it.

Has anyone besides me noticed that too many episodes of The Simpsons lately have the same theme: Marge is hot for some guy other than Homer but somehow ends up back with him.

One of the things which I felt always made The Simpsons really work was that Marge and Homer had a good relationship. Lots of sitcoms have had similar themes and jokes, but they were mean-spirited and short-lived. The Simpsons boasts more than 400 episodes, so they had to have something right to start off. The animated family at Evergreen Terrace was perhaps a bit of a menace to the neighborhood, but they loved each other. Marge kept Homer grounded and Homer gave Marge excitement. Homer might mess up extravagantly from time to time, but he’s still a good provider. How many men, in 2008, can support a stay-at-home wife and three kids and own their home and two cars?

Lately, Marge seems to be finding Homer more and more of an oaf. Tonight’s episode, rewrote the history of the Simpsons family in order to mock Kurt Cobain’s legacy. As part of the stupidity, Marge miraculously gets a retroactive college degree and a radically different set of values. And a crush on her womanizing womynist professor. She does this while Homer is working at his father’s Laser Tag establishment (which we’ve never heard of before) in order to pay for her college. For the moment I will leave aside the part where FOX’s send-up of the 90’s makes the VH1 I-Love-the series look positively academic in its depth and accuracy.

Just now, let’s look at how much Marge has stopped appreciating Homer over the last few years. In January, she had an affair while Homer paid for her personal enrichment. In November, she tortured Homer for not knowing her eye color, when her eyes are freaking hazel. In November, Homer and Marge also go the Mr. and Mrs. Smith route of being contract killers on opposing sides. In September, Homer becomes a celebrity and Marge begrudges him his success. Back in March, Homer showed a documentarian that his life had meaning because of what a wonderful family he has. Last January, Marge was thinking she might be happier with another man, so Homer revitalizes an entire beach town to make her happy. Last November, Homer briefly became an ice cream man and Marge begrudged him that and decided to make popsicle stick sculptures and was sure the entire time that Homer was deliberately sabotaging her budding art career. Last September, Marge decided she wanted to be a carpenter and she had Homer act as a front for her and then got furious at him for getting credit for things she told him to take credit for. A prior carpentry-themed episode featured Marge abusing Homer for not fixing the roof and being sweet on Ray the roof guy. In January of 2005, Marge flirts with having an affair with Moe. In April of 2004, Marge checked out Krabapple and Skinner’s impending nuptials and decided she was trapped in a passionless marriage. In January of 2004, Marge wrote a book where the villain is obviously a thinly-disguised Homer and the lust object is (ew) Ned Flanders.

Looking at the most recent episodes, maybe Marge just has a 12 month itch she longs to scratch at the start of every year. Hmm, January 2000, Marge is all hot and bothered over a prison inmate with painting talent. In all fairness, in January of 2001, Homer got drunk and married a floozy in Vegas.

I know they are cartoon characters. But I used to really love the show. If Homer is really wrong for Marge, I want her to grow a spine, and do what she needs to do, in order to live the life she requires. It makes me crazy when real people keep complaining about the same problem, without taking steps to fix it. But I don’t think Homer is wrong for Marge. I think some upper level writer at FOX is having personal problems and should keep them out of The Simpsons. I feel the Marge of the first decade of the show was not all hot to have an affair with every single male character.

If the kids don’t age, then I don’t think Homer and Marge’s relationship should sour.

The incredibly mild fame conferred by being on a reality show opens a person up for so much unpleasantness and, as near as I can ascertain, being on the show itself is a bummer. I know I used to be pretty responsive when television shows wanted to cover Blue Blood. I turned down Jenny Jones and all the talk show scum who asked me to tell everyone I was, like, totally a vampire and gawth is like, oh my goth, my life. But, even when I didn’t have cable or a TV with reception, Forrest Black and I both appeared on MTV, HBO, and FOX multiple times. I don’t know if it helps sales, but, as a journalist myself, I am reluctant to refuse someone access. At least I used to be. Now I regularly turn down television show producers who tell me how much they want to give Blue Blood exposure or how they plan to present a “positive spin” on my community. I used to believe some of the promises television people made, especially when I wrote them into our appearance contracts. I used to feel like being asked to appear on a show as an expert was a compliment. In a time when people have fleeting brushes with fame for defecating on Flavor Flav’s floor . . . well, who wants to be famous?

In my article Flavor Flav Has Hot Tub Love on VH1 but Ladies Best Be Nice Girls (who like threesomes) last year, I covered Flava Flav’s apparently hypocritical casting aside of Toastee, one of his supposed suitor chicks. For those just tuning in now, another supposed contestant on the show ratted Toastee out for appearing in Barely Legal and on “VHS”. At the time, my thought was that no one needed to worry about accidentally running across VHS video these days. Also probably no prob if the naughty pictures are engraved on the walls of a cave.

Apparently, some of y’all on the interwebs still watch movies on VHS because people kept finding my article on Toastee and her rumored VHS exploits. Either that or you were just optimistically figuring that this wonderful internet invention would provide the necessary conduit to seeing Toastee naked somehow. Now there have been a few artsy bloggers posting Halloween pictures of Toastee and the like, since the show. But leave it to the mainstream video tycoons at Vivid to put out a celeb sex tape released on both DVD and a web site.

The Vivid press release, among other things, stated the following:

The 23-year-old “Toastee” was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia and was a psychology major at Northeastern University. She appeared on the VH1 show “Charm School,” vying for the affections of rap artist Flavor Flav. She was bounced from the program after it was discovered that she had done nude modeling and appeared in a porn movie under the stage name “Natalia the Scissor Vixen” known for clamping men’s heads between her thighs. She has also been a guest on The Tyra Banks Show. “Toastee Exposed” was obtained from celebrity image broker David Hans Schmitt, who says “she may not have made the grade on VH1s ‘Charm School,’ but she gets straight as on this tape.”

Although I watched Flavor of Love up until Flav kicked Toastee off, I’ve never seen Charm School. VH1 describes the show saying:

Ever wonder what became of the girls that were so nasty, vicious and rough-around-the-edges that even Flavor Flav didn’t want them? What are those girls going to do? Where are those girls going to go? Luckily for them, VH1 had just the place to send them, a little place called – CHARM SCHOOL. Thirteen of your favorite breakout stars from “Flavor of Love” seasons one and two are back for some heated competition. Living as a group, learning as a group and out for themselves, these former Flavorettes will be rigorously trained in proper etiquette and manners before competing in challenges to determine their poise and grace under pressure.

So, uhm, it was FOL2, and not Charm School, that Toastee vied for Flav’s attention on, but I guess Vivid doesn’t have to watch reality television to have good distro for a celeb sex tape. After the Toastee debacle on FOL2, I did a little internet sleuthing and it seemed to me that the mistreated contestant was probably mostly a lesbian. Her MySpace lists her orientation as bi. I didn’t mention it because I felt like whether or not Toastee set off my gaydar was not relevant. I forgot that we are living in the age of paparazzi intrusion at most levels of life. My bad. Whatever the reason for her lack of interest, Toastee aka Jennifer Toof told Ronaldo Horacio Mexico at Hip Hop site SOHH that she wanted to meet Flav and wanted to be on television but had no actual romantic interest in the rapper. Furthermore, she didn’t think anyone else on the show, except possibly New York, had a lick of real attraction to Flav as their motivation for being there.

On her MySpace blog, after being on Charm School, Toof/Toastee posted:

Well, as you guys will find out in tonight’s episode, some people are so fake, and extremely selfish. VH1 tries to create drama between people, and it’s disgusting. Why do you think I didn’t say anything about fol2? Because I have a contract, I`m not allowed to say anything. This show is just some bullshit, and when you’re in a situation thats serious, you should never trust anybody.

Now, ignoring the part where calling the show bullshit and saying VH1 instigates the drama is probably already a violation of her contract, why would she agree to be on Charm School after being booted from FOL2? She might have been contractually obligated to do so. But the more important question is perhaps, why would an attractive (and flexible!) college graduate, with a medical school acceptance letter in her pocket, put herself through all this? Twice?

If the idea is that reality show participants are supposed to be presenting something vaguely real, only they are all just tormented souls who believe they don’t exist unless they are on the small screen, how real is that? More importantly, how real is anyone’s fifteen minutes then? Am I not noticing some goal these people have? What is the point of appearing on a supposedly real show where you, not only aren’t supposed to promote your projects, but are not supposed to be yourself? At least Charm School gives the winner $50,000, instead of a shot at a mean boyfriend like FOL. I used to fantasize about crossing through my TV screen into a fabulous music video. When the TV screen has a bunch of women feigning interest in some lame hypocrite womanizer, my real life is a lot more like a cool music video these days than anything presented in broadcast media.

I used to believe that fame was something which glittered alluringly like fairy dust and not something I’d need to wipe off my shoe.

I used to watch music videos and just feel the mood they were trying to evoke. I’d believe that the peformers really were that cool. It was all so sexy and exciting. I just wanted to pass through that TV screen into a cooler and more passionate world.

Given that I kind of did manage to live my life so that I got to pass through the screen to the other side, I actually only got cable television because I was offered a really good deal on getting it with a cable modem. Time Warner Cable recently bought out Comcast, who I think bought out RoadRunner, and maybe AT&T was in there somewhere. I didn’t totally follow all the transfers and my cable bills literally did not have a return address on the envelope for a while because the changeovers were so hasty.

The upshot of all of this is that I recently had a channel line-up re-shuffle and it is easier for me to TiVo lots of music video shows, fast forward through stuff I don’t like, and still get to enjoy lots of videos I do like and might not have come across otherwise. Music videos used to be one of my favorite forms of entertainment and one of the only types of television I would watch. My college had a room in the student center with a gigantic projection TV and a friend of mine (who had a first and last name which were surreally both slang for penis – he was even more surreally named after his father) and I used to sit there and watch MTV on it, missing stuff we were supposed to do because we were just going to stay until the good video came on. When I finally had access to a television with cable and a closed door, I wasted no time finding which shows had the highest preponderance of rock videos I found worthy of self-pleasure.

My new Time Warner Cable line-up includes a couple of MTVs and VH1s and CMTs, and the delightful relative newcomer FUSE. I should be in heaven, but I have trouble stopping the negative ideation those video channels evoke in me today. The problem is that I have too much of a sense of how the sausage is made and I’m discomfitted by a lot of their cooking methods. I see a video with some teenage boy singing about how wrong it is to beat your girlfriend and the song is catchy enough and the boy is okay-looking and has a nice enough voice which works for the material. But I can’t stand the pretense that some teenager wrote the song.

Cablevision Systems Corporation, the corporate parent of FUSE, has sports holdings which account for nearly 20% of their revenues. I wish music understood teamwork like the world of sports does. Sports fans know and understand that, while some people are really standout stars, there are a number of positions which need to be played and the coaches get airtime too. If someone gets too flamboyant in drawing attention to themselves, they can get penalized for showboating. In the world of music, there is this desperation to pretend that the lead singer just came up with everything. Unfortunately, the product is so manufactured that a lead singer who really can come up with his or her own songs, style, and message is likely to be buried and ripped-off and asked to change, but never played by the music video stations. A headstrong artist is a pain in the ass and nowhere near as desirable as a compliant and good-looking youth who can sing and dance and sign contracts which offer a low percentage.

And I can’t stop myself from thinking about how the singer doesn’t understand the words he is singing. I can’t stop myself from thinking about contract law. I can’t stop thinking about how roughly seven companies own most media in America. I can’t stop thinking about how the music industry’s response to YouTube was not to offer kids in Peoria the video-directing opportunity of a lifetime, but to offer those talented kids in the boonies the opportunity to line the industry’s pockets for nothing. I can’t stop myself from thinking about how many talented musicians I know, who will never get a real chance, precisely because they are the whole package, in an industry which has come to prefer people who can fit snugly into small roles.

And then I find myself wondering about a band like Evanescence. The band has sold more than fourteen million albums worldwide and they tend to be marketed somewhat as a Gothic band. I’ve had some interaction or other with someone from most bands which are marketed as Gothic or industrial or deathrock or anything along those lines. If I haven’t, then someone I know has. Either I or someone I know will have interviewed someone from the band, partied with someone from the band, had sex with someone from the band, or at least shown up at a nightclub and had a conversation in line for the bathroom with someone from the band. But nobody I know has ever mentioned having anything to do with anyone in Evanescence.

Dictionary.com defines the band’s name as “to dissipate or disappear like vapor” and the Gurl.com top interview in a Google search for amy+lee+evanescence+interview explains the band’s name as “The word Evanescence means to dissipate like vapor, it puts an image in your head of like a ghost/specter that isn’t really there.” The Gurl.com interview has no interviewer credit. So I watch videos late at night and I finally start wondering if Evanescence really exists in any man-in-the-street sense of what a band is or if some enterprising producer for the surreally-named Wind Up Records just made up the whole thing to, you know, wind up the public. And sell fourteen million records. Which is a lot.

The question is, if Amy Lee and Terry Balsamo don’t really write Evanescence songs, don’t pick out their own clothes, don’t have the personal lives claimed for them, or maybe don’t even speak English, does that make their performances less enjoyable for their audience? If it does reduce the pleasure, does that mean it is good and reasonable to hide the origins of the music and the performers? Is it okay to lie, if it makes listeners happier? Is it still okay to lie, if it makes listeners happier, but the lies mean a genuine struggling band, who tells the truth, can not compete?

Someone, please tell me you have met Amy Lee from Evanescence and she speaks English like a goth girl from Arkansas. Someone, please tell me how to block the part of my brain which wonders if Evanescence is a hoax, when all I really want to do is watch some cool videos.

Okay, Flavor Flav is officially off my TiVo queue. For those of you who haven’t been following his post-hip-hop reality television career, here is a quick recap. Flav appeared on the TV show The Surreal Life. I’ve never seen it, but apparently they picked oddball assortments of celebs such as Vince Neil and Gary Coleman and the not-dead dude from Milli Vanilli and did stuff like send them shopping at my local grocery store. Leggy blonde bombshell Brigitte Nielsen appeared on the show the same season as Flav and they had a relationship, at least while the cameras were on, and this spawned a spin-off show called Strange Love, which I’ve only seen clips of on Flav’s newest venture Flavor of Love.

Full Disclosure here: I usually limit my reality show viewing habits to The Apprentice, but I watched the entire first season of Flavor of Love (and the first couple of America’s Next Top Model so long as I’m letting it all hang out.) The basic conceit in that eighteen or twenty chicks go to a house where Flav supposedly lives alone and lonely but for his extremely competent butler and maybe whoever drives the stretch limo SUV. They compete for his love because all he wants is to really connect with someone real. The episode where Nielsen visits shows how ludicrously more chemistry he has with her than any of the contestants. At the end of the first season, he chose the game-playing girl he supposedly hadn’t banged yet, but who had given him some non-penetrative threesome shower action. Apparently he then banged her, didn’t hit it off with her, and they parted ways, except for a contractually obligated and tepid season reunion.

The first season of the Flavor Flav-produced Flavor of Love show, I was kinda buying the story that he was looking for love in a singularly modern and peculiar way, but doing it genuinely. This season, it comes across way more like he is just a typical womanizer in love with being in love but no way willing to be with one woman in a real give and take relationship, no matter how many times he proclaims his love and deep emotional connection.

But tonight took the fucking cake. (Actually, I think the show first ran a couple days ago, but VH1 was coming through sort of static-riddled, so my TiVo only just picked it up again.) This season, Flav supposedly chose the girls himself and he has some kinda fucked up but interesting and egalitarian taste in women. So I expected to be even more entertained. Now Flav likes slutty women and clearly prefers girls who are down for getting busy with him and one or more other girls at the same time.

So he gets this one girl nicknamed Toastee and this other one nicknamed Nibblz (because they have to blur out her nipples in most shots) to curl up and spend the night with him. Toastee says she doesn’t like to share, but mentions casually to some other girls later that she got the impression Nibblz gave Flavor Flav some manual satisfaction. Now, if you took a general sampling of the female population, a decent number of them would give a member of a seminal group like Public Enemy a hand job without a lot of provocation. Narrow that sampling down to a chick competing to be his girlfriend or wife on a reality show and I kind of think less of any of them who wouldn’t take the opportunity.

So, because this is reality TV and has to have conflict above and beyond even interweb drama, Nibblz swears to the other girls that she didn’t jack Flav off and blows a total gasket and goes and tells Flav . . . wait for it . . . not that Toastee is spreading lies about their sexual canoodling . . . nope, (probably because Toastee knows a jerk-off when she hears one) instead, Nibblz tells Flav that Toastee is a pornstar and can be seen naked online on Barely Legal and on “VHS”. Who the fuck makes movies for VHS any more anyway? I mean, I have a player, but I don’t even know if it works at this point. Mind you, Nibblz has already told Flav that she has modeled nude and has a stripper pole in her living room and the implication is that her day job is dancing.

So Flav goes and asks Toastee if she specifically has done “boy/girl porn” and she says she has modeled and modeled nude, but, no way, no how has she ever done anything she would consider “boy/girl porn”. So, to cut a story longer than I intended a bit shorter, Toastee says she wants to quit the show and Flav tells her that she should stay, so long as she is telling the truth. Flavor Flav finds a solo nude shot of Toastee, tries to humiliate her by holding it up in front of all the contestants, and refuses to let her speak before leaving. He might not have personally liked that specific image. They blurred it out, so I don’t know. But he totally lied to that Toastee girl. He told her unequivocally that he would keep her on for at least another episode so long as she was telling the truth and it turned out she was telling the truth and he still booted her. If he doesn’t like wild girls who like to get naked, he needed to choose a whole different line-up of women to compete.

So, in conclusion, I generally applaud anyone with a strong and unabashed personal style. When my homeboy Lange and I met Flavor Flav in Vegas, he was gracious and pleasant. I know that a lot of what happens on reality shows is more scripted than real. But, as Flav gets top producer credit, real or scripted, I hold him responsible for presenting himself as a double standard-having, sexist liar. And, because I thought he was cool, I’m disappointed. Flavor Flav’s got problems of his own. And he needs to fix himself before he is ready for a real relationship with an honest and real, threesome-loving, fast food-eating, non-materialistic, and non-jealous woman.