I No Longer Want My MTV

An example of the MTV all-star programming in the 1980's.

Before I launch into another stupid, cliché-ridden article, let me get this out of the way: I'm not hip. I have never been hip and I will never be hip. Back in high school when all the "cool" kids were out drinking or partying or doing the javelin toss or whatever cool people did then, I sat around at home and drew comics about a man with a microwave for a stomach and a person who was half spatula. However, I ultimately got the last laugh; now they're all fat alcoholic losers with no job or future... I'm a fat nonalcoholic loser with no job or future! In your face, Rockhurst High School football stars who all went to state college and majored in "getting kicked out of state college for never doing anything ever." This is like the ending of "Revenge of the Nerds" where the nerds get the girl and win that big contest and one of them goes to star in "ER," while the jocks receive a harsh lecture from the dean and contract a horrible case of syphilis from their initiation ritual involving sex with Ted McGinley's batting helmet. I write this because I feel a close, intimate bond with the character of "Booger."

My critical lack of hipness throughout my life caused me to miss out on such popular fads as snorting up during the "cocaine" phase in the 1980's, wearing plaid shirts in the "Grunge" period through the 1990's, and the "embracing Linux like a grungy cocaine junky and talking about it nonstop to all your disinterested friends" trend which we're currently crotch-deep in. In addition to these soul-crushing failures, I never watched MTV, even back when they used to feature musicians singing songs. All the cool kids used to watch MTV so they could see the newest Cutting Crew and Haircut 100 videos, marveling at the advanced video technology that featured such futuristic concepts as "robot drummer wearing a bowtie" and "big, pink, pixelated neon blob that vaguely moves around to the rhythm." Then, one fateful day in the early 1990's, a fresh-faced rookie out of Clown College barged into the MTV CEO's office with a crisp stack of papers detailing the "new and improved" ideas for this cutting edge network. This proposal was over 390 pages long, yet only one of these pages contained actual text; the rest were simply crude drawings of a mermaid having sex with Popeye. That one page altered the course of MTV for years to come, and contained the following memo:

PROPOSAL FOR MTV (MUSIC TELEVISION) NEW PROGRAMMING LINEUP:

1) NEVER SHOW ANY MUSIC VIDEOS EVER
2) give me a raise

For some inexplicable reason, the CEO acted upon this plan and immediately began canceling slots for music videos so he could free them for the hip new MTV lineup. Concerts were replaced with "The Sullen, Angsty Drama Show" and "The Magical Mystery Adventure of the Sarcastic Teenager." After a couple years, people began to grow weary of these exciting shows which featured "real life" people in "soap opera" situations that were "stupid as fuck." The network saw viewers taper off and decided to take their programming to the next logical step: "real life" people in "real life" situations. With this new theme in place, MTV began spawning hit shows such as "Let's Watch These Eight People Argue" and "Let's Watch These Nine People Argue." Once again this fad seemed to be short-lived, and MTV was forced to scramble for different, original programming. They noticed how their audience connected with characters who were average slobs just like them, but couldn't figure out why the theme of "it's like watching yourself on camera for ungodly amounts of time" wasn't panning out. After taking a poll, executives soon learned what America truly wanted: people just like them, in situations just like theirs, making COMPLETE ASSHOLES OF THEMSELVES.

An example of the MTV all-star programming in the 1990's.

Tom Green, a Canadian who is talented in the fact that he lacks both talent and any positive abilities whatsoever, stepped up to the plate and let MTV pay him a lot of money to frequently fall down in public and get cancer. Audiences loved Green's charm and wit, neither of which he ever displayed during his run on "The Tom Green Show." However, the curse of growing viewer apathy made MTV realize that Green's hilarious comic antics of screaming at people and eating mud weren't gathering enough media attention anymore; once again, the viewing public was developing an apathy for shock television which wasn't shocking enough. The ante was upped and MTV scrambled to find the only remaining human being on the face of the Earth who had less self-esteem than Tom Green. Executives soon discovered all people matching that criteria had committed suicide long ago, except one shining beacon of hope: Johnny Knoxville, a man who was born with a highly unsuccessful artificial brain substitute developed by the world's most untalented escaped Nazi scientists. These were the same Nazi scientists who tried to help Hitler build a legion of robot zombies, but instead caused the lab to blow up and cause everybody within a 50-mile radius to become sterile.

Johnny Knoxville brought the joy and love of the show "Jackass" to MTV, a wonderful piece of television history that celebrated marvelous, stupendous feats of the human race like getting kicked in the testicles and falling off even taller things than Tom Green previously fell off. The world soon fell in love with Jackass, or at least the portion of the world which has contracted a brain disease from performing oral intercourse with a rusty metal statue of Jesus Christ. Knoxville entertained millions of people with his hilarious antics of diving into human feces and using gravity to lower himself from a point higher above the ground to a point located at ground level which contained human feces. Experts in the genre of comedy, such as Dr. Baron von Kommisar, claimed that nothing could topple the hilarious mound of feces that was the "Jackass" show. Unfortunately, the entire human race was stunned and shocked at the cancellation of "Jackass," simply for the shallow reason that nobody watched it. Now, to add injury to injury, MTV is suffering once again from the wacky antics of Johnny Knoxville.

Calif. woman sues over 'Jackass' stunt - In the suit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Wendy Linden of Riverside, California alleges she suffered spine and knee injuries after cast member David England ran across a stage and "using his body as a missile" crashed into a lectern near Linden. The suit also alleges cast members, including star Johnny Knoxville, were given alcohol by the producers, which led to a "hostile, volatile and out-of-control" environment.

Now while this whole "Magic Missile Jackass" thing is certainly not shocking in any fashion, the following excerpt from the article is somehow even less shocking:

The show aired a disclaimer warning people not to try the daredevil tricks on their own. "Jackass" has sparked similar shows like MTV's "Dude, This Sucks," which was sued last year by two 14-year-old girls who claimed they were sprayed with human excrement during a taping of the program. MTV later apologized to the girls. In April, a Washington D.C. couple, James and Laurie Ann Ryan, sued MTV after they were surprised on their vacation by a blood-soaked, fake corpse hidden inside their Las Vegas hotel room. It was part of a hidden-camera prank for a TV show called "Harassment" that was then in development.

An example of the MTV all-star programming in the 2000's.

Did you catch that, folks? "Dude, This Sucks" and "Harassment," the comedy successors to comedy feces king Johnny Knox and comedy cancerballs Tom Green, are experiencing legal problems of their own! How on Earth is MTV supposed to push the envelope of televised hilarity if assholes across the nation threaten to sue them when they are injured, sprayed with shit, or mentally traumatized by zany antics? What is wrong with the American public? More importantly, what is wrong with MTV? As I've clearly illustrated in this article, their network is known for cutting edge comedy and wacky piles of flying shit (both feces and Johnny Knoxville), but these intellectual shows "Dude, This Sucks" and "Harassment" hardly seem like the next wave in the evolution of hilarity. As a result, I have come up with a few great new ideas for MTV shows which I hope they adopt as soon as possible and give me all the money. I feel these shows are the true "next generation" and can only spell out financial success for MTV's quality network.

SHOW #1: "Let's Give Brian AIDS" (Mondays at 9:30 PM) - Each episode features a crew of wacky pranksters equipped with AIDS-infested needles, searching through malls and homes for people named Brian so they can force them down upon the ground and inject the deadly (and hilarious!) tainted needle into their veins. These zany guys will stop at nothing to give Brians across the globe AIDS in the most humorous and clever ways possible, ranging from "breaking and entering" to "assault with a deadly weapon," both of which have proved to be popular in such shows as "COPS" and "COPS in New York."

SHOW #2: "Frankenstein the Rape Monster" (Wednesdays at 7:00 PM) - Award-winning comedian Frankie Henderson (he won an award for perfect attendance in fifth grade) dons a hilarious Frankenstein monster outfit and begins raping men, women, and children at gunpoint. During each rape he makes clever jokes such as "feel that dick up your ass?" and "I have my dick up your ass" which thrill and delight live audiences, most of whom are criminals.

SHOW #3: "Woah, I'm a Hostage, Dude!" (Fridays at 8:00 PM) - Popular music artists such as that one band that made that one song for Dance Dance Revolution about dancing kidnap teenagers from the mall and drive them to an undisclosed location. Using an untraceable cellular phone, the kidnapper phones the parents and leads them on a wild goose chase to find their captive child who is having human shit thrown on them the entire time. At the end of each episode, the parent is given the address of the warehouse where their child is being held, and has ten minutes to get there before the kid is shot in the face with an assault rifle. However, the jokes on them; their kid has been dead since the first phone call! The look on the parent's face is then recorded, printed out, and sent along with their home address to the jail cells of sex offenders throughout America.

I sincerely hope MTV is reading this, as I feel that my unique brand of comedy entertainment, which I call comentertainmedy, is the next plateau of humor. You may have dropped the ball with such shows as "Dude, Here Comes Feces" or whatever it was named, but my ideas can only succeed. This is because if they don't succeed, I will film myself raping and killing you and then start up my own television network which, somehow, shows the same amount of music videos as MTV. Does this make me hip yet?

Goldmine Tomorrow: SmartDriver Today!

As Emily is still trapped in Wasteland, Wisconsin, the Tuesday Goldmine will once again take place on, well, Wednesday. Yes, it'll be the Wednesday Tuesday Goldmine! But fear not, fearful readers, as we've got an equally excellent review of a quality game entitled "SmartDriver."

It’s bad, folks. Bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. For one thing, I understand having a regular PC car racing game being controlled by the keyboard, but I don’t get how BrainTrain thought this game would be a good training device for drivers when all they have to do is sit there and occasionally tap one of the arrow keys. You get one penalty point every time you go above the speed limit, and one damage point every time your car runs into something, and you fail the test if you get too many of either. But it takes fewer penalty points than damage points to fail you, meaning you get penalized more for a half-second of speeding than you do for plowing into a boulder. I think they could be trying to tell future drivers something along the lines of “Don’t inconvenience the police by speeding, it’s better for you to just slam your car into an immovable object because that way instead of inconveniencing someone else you’ll die and quite frankly you deserve it”, but maybe I’m reading too much into that.

Wow! Sounds good! I mean bad. Check out the review and figure this one out for yourself!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)