Talking Heads

And no, not the old David Byrne group, who had some pretty serious output.

And for that matter, not even those bloated-ego political talking heads, though they certainly have their own circle of Hell waiting for them as well.

No, this is about these assholes who go on tv and anywhere else they can get our stupid fucking populace to listen to them and make a living talking about pop culture. Truly, is there a more useless variety of media worm crawling among us?

I'm not new to hating this kind of drivel, because any time I'm dumb enough to pass by VH1 of E! or Bravo or any of these cultural cannibals of television stations I'm immediately battered with a volley of these sub-Z list celebrities spewing up warmed-over garbage about who fucked Lauren on The Hills or what color the guy from Twilight's shit was Tuesday.

But what really set me off more recently was when I was paging through a copy of the Philly Metro paper and they had half a page (in what is only like a 20 page paper, mind you) devoted to an interview with some schmuck named - no, scratch that - who calls himself Chuck Nice. Apparently Mr. Nice will be one of a variety of these useless assholes who will be appearing on a new VH1 opus called, originally enough, "The Great Debate."

This show, Metro informs me, will feature "favorite talking heads" discussing the big questions - "Who is more bootylicious, J.Lo or Beyonce?", "Bigger pop star mess: Amy Winehouse on crack or Britney Spears on psychotropic drugs?", "Most annoying male romantic comedy staple: Matthew McConaughey or Ryan Reynolds?", and so forth.

This is fucking newsworthy? A supposedly legitimate media outlet like the Metro really felt the need to devote time - let alone an interview - to this shit? It wasn't newsworthy the first time an otherwise idea-less tv station rolled it out to fill space years ago, and it certainly isn't in 2009.

Granted, me saying all of this nonsense is nonsense hardly seems newsworthy to me either, but America watches this shit by the droves, so it must be fresh to someone. Either that or the American populace just hates itself more than I thought and watches in spite of fully realizing all of this.

But it doesn't end there. That's just my impetus. That's the flint.

I'm not gonna go on about every failed comedian, never-was, and washed up jerkoff talking at me about dumb shit like they're some kind of hilariously insightful cultural authority. I'm not gonna go back and try to trace things back to when it started or got prevalent (maybe around the time some twisted exec decided that Flavor Flav had entertainment potential doing something other then backing up Chuck D?) either.

I am, however, gonna scratch a particular itch I've had for some time in this particular field. And that is that smarmy asshole on E!'s The Soup. I don't think I know his name off-hand, and I like it that way. No matter, you know who I mean.

He and his show play to the crowd that likes to think it's smarter than the average simpleton because they're aware of how shitty all this reality tv, talking head commentary nonsense is. "Oh, well he's not that bad, Karl. That show's pretty funny, because it's making fun of all that stuff you're making fun of! Don't you see?"

Fuck you.

Devoting an entire awful show to replaying clips from other awful shows and then adding your own annoying commentary does not make you any better then said other awful shows. They're not legitimate on their own and neither are you. And while I may have crapped out when I got to higher level maths, I most certainly know that two zeros added together still just make zero. This guy has a job because of those shows, and he doesn't dislike them any more than the people who watch his show. Hell, those people are the same ones who watch the shows being mocked in the first place more often than not, so they're watching half this stuff twice. Real rebel intellectuals, that bunch.

And where does that leave The Soup 's twit host? Probably the ultimate of all the goons I'm talking about here, because this cheeseball actually has a stable job on his own show. He and the other lesser jackasses who populate Best Week Ever, I Love the 90s, and all those other wastes of broadcast space are scavengers too pathetic to scavenge anything other than hot rotting shit. They are the dung beetles of televised entertainment, but without the ecological necessity. And I would rather deep-fry my left pinky in duck fat and eat it while still attached than ever contribute ratings to those vapid turd jugglers.