reality TV Archives - David Mark Brown

Duck Dynasty: Rednecks Done Right

November 12, 2012 by David Mark Brown

For the last several months my mother has been trying to get me to check out the A&E series Duck Dynasty (now in its second season). Unlike most rednecks, I don’t have cable, dish and Direct TV spliced from a neighbor and/or duct taped to the roof of my trailer.

Last winter I did a Google search for it and barely found any results. I couldn’t find it on Hulu or Amazon or any other such service, and Google seemed to think I had lost my search mojo. So I let it go until I spotted it on Hulu the other day in a banner ad (oh how the redneck has risen).

Having only viewed the two free episodes provided via Hulu, I’m certainly no Dynasty guru. Those two episodes did convert me to a fan. While Good Morning West Monroe didn’t seem to pop or drip with redneck witticisms quite as much as Spring Pong Cleaning, I enjoyed both episodes. (My favorite moment in Pong Cleaning went something like, “Everyone loves violence. So we wondered, how can we make ping pong more violent. Pink-belly rules.”)

Next American President: Reality TV Democracy

April 26, 2012April 30, 2012 by David Mark Brown

Enterprise Bridge This is what it has come to. It’s the only way to involve Americans in a truly democratic election for the next president of the United States. And it’s so simple Simon Cowell would puke.

The process starts off with a regional (maybe state by state) essay contest. Names are kept off of the essays so they are judged by merit/content only by a bunch of snot-nosed interns headed up by the Lieutenant Governor. The top 100 essays move on to the next level.

At the second level of competition our national judges come into play (hand-selected by George W., Bill Clinton and TV execs). Let’s say the panel ends up looking something like Karl Rove, Bill Maher, Donald Trump and Rahm Emanuel. This is also where television coverage kicks in.

Occupy This! Wall Street & Reality TV

October 20, 2011 by David Mark Brown

Tis the season for occupation. And why not? I’m occupying my chair as I type. From Wall Street to Walmart, I say it’s time for hardworking and hard-complaining American citizens to get to occupying.

The only problem I keep running into is that I don’t know how to occupy an ideal or a concept. I’d love to occupy greed or corruption in order to break it’s will, bust it down to mere covetousness, slap it around a little and toss it to the curb. But it’s not exactly like occupying a Honey Bucket. There’s no latch on the door that switches from ‘vacant’ to ‘occupied’ (as far as I can tell).

But then again, it’s not like Wall Street or corporate greed or whatever entity we’re invading was actually vacant to begin with. So I guess what we’re talking about here is a relocation program of some sort–removing half of the venture capitalists and day traders to replace them with what? Dissidents? Hippies? That hardly seems any better. We can’t have the trading floor resounding with “Sell! Sell! Kill! Kill! while the rest of the group gets the munchies, now can we?