Civilisation And Justice.

I was starting to think that my shower creativity had dried up, that by putting "Frogs" up on here I had killed the magic. Oh no. Last night I came up with a new idea for a reality tv show that I think could revolutionise our lives forever.

Earlier that night I had been on the loo reading my "Screen Burn" book by Charlie Brooker. It's a fantastic and hilarious collection of "Screen Burn" critical columns that he's written for the Guardian Guide. Anyway, I was trying to put off the inevitable pain of having to wipe my arse for the 4th time that day, (my IBS has been back with a vengeance this last week and a lot of time has been spent on the toilet with my guts making louder and more obnoxious noises than a room full of Jade Goody's listening to the Westlife back catalogue) when I read a piece about reality tv shows had maybe gotten a bit much and gone a bit too far into the ridiculous. This was written 6 or 7 years ago.
I started thinking about how much worse it is now than it was then with the original Pop Idol format now being used to choose who fronts a broadway show, and the rise of programmes with former minor celebrities desperately trying to claw back some inch of fame by appearing on things like "I Used To Be Famous Once, Where's My Dignity Gone?!?!" reducing themselves to eating a Gorrila's testicle just so they can be on television and be noticed.
The challenges on "I'm A Celebrity..." remind me of that segment on "The Word" where someone from a group of people would be picked out to do something revolting just so they could be on tele. They even said "I'll do anything to be on television", just before having to eat an eyeball, lick a fat man's sweaty armpit, eat their own pubes on a cracker, or get off with an old granny. It's funny how techniques and segments that were slammed for being puerile and exploitative at the time are now, years on, being used to make family entertainment.
Buy I digress. My idea doesn't involve celebrities, although actually thinking about it now, maybe it should.

As we pretty much know, only dullards and total idiots audition for reality tv shows these days. The time of there being any sort of valid "Social Experiment" argument is pretty much dead in the water now. For the last few years reality tv shows have pretty much just been a chance to laugh at just how far the dregs of society will go to have a chance of being on tele and have some sort of fame.
Then I started thinking about how virtually any tv show with a reality element gets snapped up by tv stations and forced into our faces as relentlessly as possible and it won't be long before we have a show involving a 24/7 view of prison life (they could literally call it "The Prison" and get someone "hard-hitting" like Nicky Campbell to present it), or a council agrees to have their entire city put on national tv all the time every day.
Then, when I had been through the torture of yet another sandpaper-on-the-anus session, and then broke my girlfriends goldfish bowl (don't worry folks, Lolita is safe and well!), I had a shower, and while I was in the shower it came to me.

CIVILISATION

What would happen is a whole city or area of the country would be cordoned off, Truman Show style. The population of the area would be relocated, leaving it empty. Then hold auditions for an "Exciting new reality tv show project", run trailers on ITV for weeks or months beforehand to get everyone excited about it so that by the time it comes to auditioning for it, every Tom, Dick & Harry with an IQ of below 70 will be literally begging to be part of it. Then hold an audition process, but accept everyone who auditions and relocate them to the new cordoned off area. Everyone would now be in "Civilisation", a population on television. Like "The Truman Show", they would have to stay in this self sufficient bubble town. Hidden cameras everywhere, everything being filmed all of the time. The ultimate reality tv show. Reality itself.

Except, and here's the twist, NONE OF IT'S ACTUALLY BEING FILMED!! They just think it is! They will happily live in this bubble, believing themselves to be famous, while not actaully inflicting their fame on any of us! It's the perfect solution! We can be rid of this breed of talentless no-hopers once and for all and start again, rescuing television from the "Heat" magazine it has become and get some proper programmes on again! Wouldn't that be brilliant?!



P.S. I went to see Justice play at the Zodiac (I still can't bring myself to call it the Carli.... the Car...... Car..... Ca... no I just can't do it) on Friday and they were pretty amazing. This is how all live dance music should be. Two slightly seedy looking men, one with a 70's moustache & beard combo, one totally ignoring the smoking ban (Anarchy! Fuck Yeah!!), standing proudly behind their podium of electronics with their logo as a big light on front of i, creating dirty synth sounds and beats that just don't quit. How anyone in the room could resist attempting to thrash their own limbs off their body in a total dance fever is beyond me. A triumphant gig, I could have happily had twice as much, even if it just meant them doing the same thing over again.
Only 2 gripes. 1) Is it really necessary to use twat loads of strobe lighting? Seriously now, what is the point? I'm not epileptic myself, but I know there are epileptics who enjoy dance music. Why make it as difficult as possible for them to be able to enjoy the live experience? Strobe lighting is just annoying anyway. Can we please just stop with it now? 2) Some dick nicked my MP3 player. I had left my coat on the floor by the wall so I didn't have to queue for about half an hour to put it in the cloakroom (you'ld have thought that by now SOMEONE would've realised that people waiting for ages to leave or pick up coats and bags is a bad thing and come up with a system to make it quicker, even if that system was say, more people working in the cloakrooms before and after bands/events. Is it really THAT difficult?!), and some fool went in my pockets and nicked it, quite amusingly not realising that the MP3 player is a cheap piece of shit and the coat is worth more than 6 times what that cost. Well, whoever it is has got some good music, and it reaffirms my belief that there is no point whatsoever in having a big old flashy MP3 player/Ipod that holds and costs shitloads.

Bye for now.