My 600 lb. slide

I can't bring myself to write about this video, although I suppose I should, to put it in context. It looks mean, on the surface of it, to post a video of a massively-obese man falling off a golf cart. But this isn't just any man. (In fact, we're still trying to figure out if it's a man at all.) This is Steven Assanti, self-proclaimed superstar of My 600-lb. Life, and the biggest loser as far as compliance with the weight loss program is concerned. The man is a hurricane of dysfunction on every level, and is as crude and obnoxious a human being as I have ever witnessed, on TV or anywhere else. 

I am ashamed to say that I watched this episode AGAIN the other night, knowing exactly how vile Assanti would be. And I waited for the golf cart scene, waited for it because of his Dad's reaction as he stood there watching. He said something like, "He's fine, he does this all the time." And, in fact, he WAS fine, being extremely well-padded. The fall wasn't so much a fall as a well-timed slide. 

This planned accident ploy was a tried-and-true way for him to score narcotics from the hospital, a worse addiction even than food. The sad thing is that ratings go through the roof whenever they show the Assanti episodes (this was a four-part thing!). I know it's a sideshow, and I should be above all that, and only watch National Geographic Channel like my husband, but damn it, this is fine stuff. First-rate entertainment. It makes you feel so much better about your own life.

I have set Steven's famous slide to a musical score which I hope will enhance the experience for you. And made this little animation from screenshots of one of his rants. He is still very much a presence on YouTube, even after having several of his channels (including the infamous FatBoyGetDown) deleted. He now goes by the name of "K Smith".

FatBoyGetDown!

Sister Wives Season Finale: or, how to kill a useless day

Forgive me, please - oh God, forgive me, for I have a nasty filthy habit and I enjoy the hell out of it. I'm powerless over it and it is just such hell, I'm about to join SWA (Sister Wives Anonymous).

I'm powerless over the Fundamentalist Mormon Brown family, who reside not in polygamist-friendly Utah but in Las Vegas. (Long story.) I'm shamefaced over the whole dang crew of them: Merry, Sheri, Dairy and Marvelle-Ann (or something). 

Sister Husband Kody Brown, who has no visible means of support except a fat salary from TLC, is the four-way hub of this mad domestic mess, dashing not from bedroom to bedroom but from house to house - meaning, the four brand-new custom-built homes the Browns purchased in their very own cul-de-sac after running away from Utah for some imaginary crime.

No one has any money in this family, but, sensing the impending meltdown of the entire system, they decide to plan an elaborate Commitment Ceremony (or four-way remarriage bash) costing, probably, at least $10,000.00.

Some 200 people are coming to this affair, if I may use that expression, so the Browns must know an awful lot of other polygs, some obviously from out of state. But this whole Walmart-catered affair, this stacking-green-plastic-chairs-and-rolls-of-white-paper-on-top-of-folding-tables-borrowed-from-the-local-high-school-gym deal, seemed salted with extras, people who would sit there, eat,and look interested while the Browns nervously read out an interminable Mission Statement which ran on much longer than the Ten Commandments. (I mean the movie version.)

But let's back up a little. All we really cared about, after all, was the four wives' dresses. And it's true, I really did have an interest in watching the process of these gowns being individually designed and created for them.

Oops.

For some reason, they picked about the worst person they could find, a young woman freshly graduated from"design school" who had obviously never made a dress in her life. Then they gave her three weeks to design and make four original, formal-quality gowns in three radically different sizes and styles. There were interminable shots of this young woman pinning, and pinning, and pinning the lopsided, saggy, inside-out, fraying, mismatched pieces of fabric on the wives. None of it looked good, and the general atmosphere was one of sweating alarm as the completely-inexperienced designer tugged and swore. Bringing her mother in at the last minute to keep the ship from sinking altogether did not help.

The whole dress story sort of collapsed, and I was actually shocked that it turned out so badly. Two of the four dresses had to be scrapped entirely ("This isn't working. Do you have something in your closet?"). The other two were unfortunate, like bad costumes from a high school musical, but were launched anyway so the enterprise wouldn't be a total flop.

Robyn, the skinniest and most Kody-worthy of the four (see photo above: now why didn't she wear THAT little red number to the ceremony, seeing as how it made Kody's eyes pop out?) picked a nice little funeral dress out of her closet, and Meri, who doesn't have the sense of a goat, went out on a mad spree and found something for $59.00 that LOOKED like it cost $ 59.00, so tight on her that her substantial abdomen and even her belly button pushed through the sheer fabric.

Well, at least the apple green color was good.

Christine, sometimes known as The One I Like, showed up in a sort of burnt-orange medieval maternity bathrobe, with huge pleated billows of fabric blowing back behind her. The tacky gold ribbons here and there did not contribute to the look. My only question is: where do you buy orange crimplene nowadays? Must be vintage, from Craigslist or some-such. Janelle, who currently seems to have the most fans on the show (it varies from season to season, if not week to week) would have looked nice if the amateur seamstress had  known how to sew. There were four or five bustlines at the front of this thing, meandering switchbacks of poorly-sewn, puckered seams that finally bunched up somewhere above her bust, making her look older and actually disguising her recent, impressive weight loss.

(l. to r.: Christine's unfortunate burnt-orange Camelot castoff; Meri's one-size-doesn't-fit-all, sale-rack special; Janelle's almost-but-not-quite royal blue dress, complete with three breasts and innumerable puckered seams;  Robyn's little black Mormon interment ceremony number. Perhaps because they see their husband only once every four nights, these gals know how to make do.)

The Browns really try - they try and try - but they just never get it right. I don't know what it is. Idiocy? Or is it the pressure of living in a fishbowl, of having cameras zoom in on life's every little crisis? No one even thinks of this. To most people, "having my own reality TV show" is the pinnacle of success and happiness. Everything will be wonderful from now on.

But we are beginning to see what happens when the seeds of narcissism, which I believe are present in every one of us, are watered weekly by reality TV's relentless drool. Les Fleurs de Mal begin to sprout, and eventually they take over.

But soft! What's this I see on the horizon? For reasons that no one is willing to explain, TLC is launchng an ALL NEW polygamy show called My Five Wives, trumping Kody's harem by a whole wife.

There have been whispers on Sister Wives lately about Kody "branching out", something he naturally feels entitled to, with or without his wives' approval. The rumor was seeded and watered when a "fortune teller" came on the show (like a Fundamendalist Mormon would go for that!) and predicted Kody would take a new wife, while everyone acted stunned. Now we see why. The pressure is on: competitive wife-collecting! We can't have FIVE wives on one show, and only FOUR wives on the other, can we? 

(These gals are so committed that they actually rehearse between events: note that one of them is away, presumably getting it on with Kody "Big Polyg" Brown.)

Is TLC phasing out the Browns at last? Am I right in suspecting this new show will be edgier and sexier, with younger, svelter wives and a husband who is not a complete boob?

More will be revealed.

Kody practices his second-favorite sport.

Dear sir or madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

The Sister Wives exodus: a very costly publicity stunt

An obsession's an obsession, am I right? Remember the Dead Munchkin Hypothesis that lasted, I think, five posts? I promise this one won't run as long (though it keeps coming back for more).


I stumbled upon an article that opened my eyes, wide, about the reality show Sister Wives: you know, the one I keep blathering on about. Their much-publicized flight from Utah to avoid criminal prosecution for their "lifestyle" turns out to be more hype than reality.

I don't know what came first: their exodus from Eden to the Promised Land, or this report which claims they were never really under threat of prosecution in the first place.


"In new legal papers in their court case, the Browns are requesting that the law they’re being prosecuted under be dismissed. That probably won’t happen, but they probably won’t get prosecuted at all either. The prosecutors have mentioned that they are trying to get the case dismissed, since all of the wives have entered into it by their own free will and there isn’t any incest, underage marriage or tax or welfare fraud. So Kody uprooted everyone, took his kids out of their school, giving them three days notice (and telling them not to tell their friends goodbye), and hightailed it to Vegas, all based on his own paranoia. He could have just stayed put and ridden it out. At least he created a great new plot line for his reality show, right?"

I couldn't have said it better myself. But is Kody Brown man enough to admit he made a huge, damaging mistake? What would happen if the family decided to return to  their megahouse in Utah? Nothing, probably, by the looks of it. But pride has a way of keeping people nailed in place.

At this point, it looks like nobody's happy with the move. The teenagers are so bitter and angry that I wonder if one of them isn't going to just plain bolt. You can't casually uproot a kid from this kind of exotic background: he won't find new friends readily, if at all. If the stigma of polygamy doesn't get him, the stigma of having a jackass father who flaunts his screwups on national TV will.

Like some bizarre latter-day (!) Brigham Young trailing a host of obedient wives and children, Kody has made all the decisions here, though as usual the wives pretend to be independent agents. The family seems to be on the verge of cracking apart. Polygamy for the most part must happen under glass: it's a bizarre way of life that makes most people profoundly uneasy. Outside the protective bubble, the spotlight can be pretty glaring.

Divorce won't happen, marital breakdown won't happen, but mental health breakdown is already taking place, and will only escalate. For all his patriarchal posturing, Kody Brown is about fifteen years old emotionally. He acts impulsively, not thinking how his dashing off to "my Plymouth Rock" (his grotesque name for Las Vegas) will affect the large circle of women and children whose security depends on him. Narcissism has a steep cost: but never to the narcissist, who inevitably hands off the damage to the vulnerable souls in his orbit.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Peanut Butter Fritos: the Sister Wives Diet

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

1	cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
1	cup white sugar
1	cup peanut butter
1	large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides are up.
2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.
3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get too hard when it cools.
4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan. Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle over the top.

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

INGREDIENTS

saltine crackers
1	cup butter
1	cup sugar
1	package chocolate chips
1	cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.
2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Meri's Caramel Corn

Meri's Caramel Corn

INGREDIENTS

1	cube butter
1	pound brown sugar (2 3/8 cup)
1	cup white corn syrup INGREDIENT NOTE"
1	Eagle® brand condensed milk
1	teaspoon vanilla
3	gallons popped corn

PREPARATION:

1. Cook butter, brown sugar and white corn syrup in a double boiler. Test periodically by dropping a small amount of batter into cold water. If batter can be formed into a firm ball in the cold water, it is finished cooking.
2. Add condensed milk and vanilla. Boil and pour over popped corn.

Ohhhhhh. . . kay. We might just be on to something here, the secret key as to why the four wives (oh, three: one of them is pregnant and usually thin anyway) have been having a teensy bit of trouble losing weight on Sister Wives.

Don't tell me I'm obsessed with Sister Wives, because I already know. I watch them as you'd watch a train wreck staged for public amusement. Most of you will know that this is a "reality" show which follows the adventures and peccadilloes of a fundamentalist Mormon family in a "plural" (polygamous) marriage. They have about a zillion kids and lots of money from unknown sources, which is why they could afford a massive house in Utah before the proverbial shit hit the fan.


The patriarch, a sort of middle-aged Beach Boy named Kody, is the only rooster in a henhouse initially made up of three wives: but soft! Do I see a fourth wife on the horizon, a much younger, much thinner wife, a rather submissive wife who cries at the drop of a hat?


A soon-to-be-pregnant wife?


Hurricane Robyn was nothing to what happened next. In one of many "duh" moments, the family was astounded to learn that authorities were doing an "investigation" of the family on the grounds that they were breaking the law. Then, oh boy, it was getting-out-of-Dodge time.

Though it seems to me highly unlikely that Kody would have been thrown in jail for something that is widely practiced in Utah (he was more likely being punished and held up for ridicule for appearing on television), he dragged his family out of their relative security and stability all the way to Las Vegas, which seems like the worst possible choice for so-called devout Mormons who won't even let their daughters wear tank tops to school.


The big thing now - there's always a big thing - is that the clan needs a source of income to pay for all the furniture-buying jags they're going on. On one episode they said they were going into real estate, but that rather vague plan seems to have been dropped in favour of something way more hip: opening their own gym.

The gals have been making an attempt to lose weight and get in shape. Though the cameras played this down at first, it's obvious all of them except Robyn are seriously obese, well over 200 pounds.
Janelle easily qualifies as morbidly obese.


It's funny to watch them working out with a hunky male trainer for two months, then getting on the scale and being puzzled to see that they've only lost 2 or 3 pounds. When I looked up the Sister Wives recipe book, the mystery was revealed. Though the examples posted here are, I guess, meant for 20 people, a pound of sugar in a single recipe seems extreme. Even main dishes are heavily based on refined carbohydrates, with not much mention of fruits or vegetables. I didn't have space enough for the Mock Tapioca (and surely tapioca itself is "mock" enough), made mostly of Cream of Wheat. I've always thought of that as a post-op food, sort of like the lime jello they give you the day after surgery.

It amazes me that five adults responsible for a huge gaggle of kids can be so irresonsible as to think they can support themselves with this kind of venture. It just doesn't make sense. All the wives seem stressed, with Christine, the supposedly level-headed one, "confessing" that she had been on antidepressants, hastily adding that she was "half off them", to be warmly applauded by Janelle (and do not get me started on "friends" encouraging you to go off your medication! Only your doctor knows for sure.)


Meri is cracking up, obviously, and headed for something pretty dire. Janelle hides behind obesity and blandness, her eyes disturbingly blank. Robyn, well. . .Robyn has already had her baby in "real time", little Solomon Brown (a worse name even than Truely, the name of that bald-headed baby who still looks like a space alien after 18 months).

The more the Meri-er, I suppose, until the money runs out.  But with TLC footing the bill, maybe that won't happen. So Solomon may have a little brother or sister by-and-by, springing from Kody's hyperactive Latter-Day loins.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Sister Wives: THE MUSICAL!

While you're waiting for the full ramifications of an all-singing, all-dancing LDS musical in pastel polyester and cowboy hats, let me fill you in on a little bit of background.

I don't know much about Mormonism except that it's based on the visions and writings of Brigham Young, the ultimate religious patriarch who advocated that love should be "multiplied, not divided". (Oops, that was someone else.) Quite a few years ago now, my husband and I went to Utah to see Bryce Canyon and other heartstoppingly beautiful natural phenomena. While in Salt Lake City, we decided to take in the sights.

It was interesting. When we visited the Great Salt Lake, it was almost like looking at a sheet of silver, inert and devoid of all life. But wait! What were those million-legged little things squirming around in the water? There seemed to be thousands of them.

A local happened to be passing by. "What?" he answered in the jovial manner of most of the Utah-ians we met. "Them's sea monkeys."

Our next little frisson of pleasure came when we took a guided bus tour of the city. It wasn't so much the sights as the narration, which was both informed and hilarious. There were two guides: the driver, who'd been doing this for a lot of years, and a young Mormon student doing part of the required missionary work to become a, well, you know, a real Mormon-Morman-type guy.

The driver asked about our hotel room. "Oh, it's great," we said. "How about the beds?" "The. . . beds?" Then we remembered that our room had not one, but two king-sized beds in it. "This is an LDS secret, but those are for the extra wives," he said.

That was nothing compared to what the student said. We drove along a massively wide street, supposedly built to accommodate throngs of wagons as they steamed along their way to the Promised Land.

"See, there's where Brigham Young used to go for a walk with all his wives," he said.

Badda-boom! Holy roller, it was (unexpectedly) funny!

The surprises never ended. We went to the Mormon Museum, an interesting place that was a rich slice of Utah history. That is. . . until I noticed something.

There was no mention at all of a certain practice, now banned to be sure, but so much a part of Mormon history that leaving it out would be like the history of Canada without maple syrup (or coureurs de bois, or Charlie Farquharson).

There was no mention at all of polygamy.

Really. I turned the place upside down and inside out. It just wasn't there. Not even one of those creep-out photos of a patriarch with dozens of wives and children posed like a school photo ("short people in front, please"). Nada.

Fast-forward to the age of "reality" (read: "unreality") TV, a time when polygamy is not only practiced but shoved in our faces. I have unfortunately become hooked on the misadventures of the Brown family (Kody, Brody, Dody, The One I Like, and You-know-that-fat-one). 

Something funny happened here: for whatever reason, probably financial, they decided to make their private lives public in a megahouse in Utah. Even the bedroom door was open, though they always seemed to feature a wife (interchangeable) dressed in flannel pajamas and a thick bathrobe giving her husband a palsy-walsy, sexless hug.

This show is so weird! The family seemed astonished when the shit hit the fan after (or probably long before) the show premiered. They kept talking about how important it was to "come out" and show the public how they lived, in order to promote, I guess, religious tolerance or something. The deeply-entrenched patriarchal values system that kept the wives nailed in place while claiming independence was presented with a slick veneer of modernity and even hipness. Hey, folks, we're just like everybody else, except that the Daddy boffs a whole lot of Mommies!

So the Utah police, or authorities, or whoever, got on the case and began to persecute them, which was a ratings grab for sure, so they had to "flee" (claiming to be "run out of Dodge" by Kody the faux-cowboy) to the Promised Land: Las Vegas.

Yeah, THAT Las Vegas.

I kept saying, "noooooooooooooooooooooo" as they crammed things haphazardly into their truck, which kept breaking down. Don't do this to the family! Why not stay and face the music? You can flee and claim persecution and try to get public sympathy, or you can stay and take responsibility, in full realization that the reality-viewing public would NEVER allow the law to "split up the family" and make Kody go to jail for his sexual peccadillos (which is, by the way, a sort of Mormon armadillo).

But they ran, and now everything's in a mess. "Split up the family"? Instead of one massive house (with Robyn on the side, her separate kennel a few doors down: I guess Kody needed an airing every four nights), they have FOUR big houses, two with swimming pools, and no discernible source of income. Except maybe reality TV.

I think it's Janelle who had to give up her career doing "???" and has groused about it non-stop ever since, saying she's "used to being busy" and now doesn't know who she is. For some reason she has never done anything in the areas of child care or cooking or household chores. She's just sitting there. She could be peeling potatoes, but no. She "can't find work", and her identity is shattered. But think of the massive amount of work required every day to keep everyone clean, clothed and fed. Why doesn't she just pick one of the four houses at random and roll up her sleeves? But for some reason she's in a sort of special position, maybe because she just doesn't like to clean toilets. This I will never understand. Or is she, after all, Kody's favorite? Did we all think it was Robyn with her flat stomach and hormones and tears? Pshaw. Maybe Kody likes to jump up and down on Janelle's. . . bed.

(Note in the photo below, how Janelle, far left, is almost completely hidden. Fat is stigmatized; polygamy isn't? As a matter of fact, even her head looks smaller than the rest: I think her entire body has been shrunk down, then relegated to the corner.)

Robyn, well. . . most of the ink spilled lately has been about Robyn, Kody's demure new wife, she who cries at the drop of a hat, has a cuter and slimmer figure than any of them, and is now (surprise!) pregnant. The blown fuse of the other three's expired fertility seemed to give Kody license to look for a fourth table leg so he could continue to dine on a richly-varied sexual diet.

This show is so weird about sex. Though in a way, the show is about sex, or at least patriarchal sexual arrangements that most people would find distasteful, everyone kind of pretends it isn't happening. Kody admonishes the fifteen or so teenagers in the family that they can't be "sexual" until they graduate from high school, or turn thirty, whichever comes first. Telling a teenager not to be "sexual" is like telling them not to blink their eyes. It's practically a recipe for shame as they try to cope (alone) with bodies that don't always co-operate. This is not to mention yet another of the dozens of contradictions in the household: they can't be "sexual", when Kody can roll around with four different chicks, of his own choosing of course, and get them pregnant into the bargain.

This past episode featured the Brown family, now trying to maintain four large houses in Las Vegas on no income, going on a furniture-buying binge. For a fundamentalist family who supposedly lives for their faith, this clan is awfully materialistic (and hardly ever mentions God or prayer or anything spiritual, except for having their kids join a Presbyterian youth group "as a social outlet").

TV has become something of a freak show, with two-foot-tall doctors delivering babies not much bigger than they are, people cramming their houses up to the ceiling with foul garbage, and (even) so-called mediums with grating voices telling gullible clients, "Oh yes, I see him standing right there in front of you!" while their eyes brim over with gratitude and hopeless hope.

Network TV isn't much better, with shows like Pan Am and The Playboy Club trying unsuccessfully to coat-tail on Mad Men's phenomenally original influence. (And by the way, why in HELL'S name do we have to wait until February to see Season 5 of Mad Men? Whose brilliantly shitty idea was that? Don't they realize how much momentum they will lose by then? The show is committing suicide, but only because its creator Matthew Weiner is having a prima donna hissy-fit over commercial time.)

So. . . the one truly watchable show is being withheld, with perhaps fatal results. I will admit that my habit of watching Hoarders and Sister Wives and junk like that is about as healthy and justifiable as eating massive amounts of movie popcorn saturated with salt and "golden topping".

But when SW runs out of steam, which it might when the last wife finally passes through menopause and the seventh house explodes, there's always Sister Wives: The Musical!, featuring those merry wives of Kody doing high-kicks and pole-dancing in a joyous celebration of how love should be "multiplied, not divided".

Until the law arrives, and subtracts them all.

Ted Haggard, the latest Swaggart

Since it's Sunday, I think it's time for a little confession.

I watched that goldern show about Ted Haggard. That TLC show. Which means it's likely the debut of a new reality series (and surely we need another one of those!)

He's the guy, remember, the pastor of about a million churches nationwide, that uncomfortably weaselly-looking sanctimonious guy who. . . well, he used to denounce gay sex, and drugs along with it. But like Jimmy Swaggart before him, he was soon on his knees (oops, wrong expression) in repentence. Nevertheless, his church threw him out with a resounding thud.


What I have trouble with, and what a lot of people are having trouble with still, is how he now denounces the gay sex he had with a male "escort" who threw in a little crystal meth to sweeten the deal. He insists, stridently, over and over again, that in spite of having sex with a man, he's "not gay". (Also says he didn't use the meth, either. Hmm, let's have a look at his teeth.)

My husband's not gay either. So is he ready to call up a male hooker any time soon? How many hetero married evangelical pastors call up drug-addicted male hookers for a date anyway?

(Hey, an infamous quote suddenly comes to mind, one that made it into Bartlett's Quotations: "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.")

This Haggard guy has bafflegabbed his way through a very rocky recovery. Then he got an idea (an awful idea, some would say. . . a wonderful, awful idea) to start his own church. In a barn.

All that's missing is Mickey Rooney saying to Judy Garland, "Hey, let's put on a show!"

His barn church will be "open to all, even those who have committed the darkest sins". Apparently it will stress "acceptance". Even of the darkest sins.

Hmmm. I have a little trouble with this. It will "accept" the most awful, evil, slimy people who ever crawled the earth, those scum-bags who can't get into a "real" church to save their lives. But why does he welcome all these worthless people? Because then Pastor Ted will fit right in. Compared to all this pond scum, he'll come up pretty righteous.

I have to admit, however, that as I watched this thing unfold (with Part I written all over it: the TLC execs no doubt had their finger on the pulse of the ratings), it seemed to me as if something sincere was trying to come through.

Even as he enabled the voracious needs of a slurring addict who'd lost everything and arranged for her to stay at a fellow parishioner's home (!!!!!), there was a sense that he was trying. Trying for something.

The trouble is, he's an Elmer Gantry and doesn't even know it. Does he think he's gay? If he did, he'd probably kill himself. Or his wife would kill him.

So he has jumped back into the closet, but hey, since he was branded such a sinner, that allows him to counsel and pray and dither over REAL sinners who maybe are gay.

His sons look exactly like him, which is creepy. His wife is a total codependent with no personality of her own, the "good wife" of TV repute. Evangelists invented the concept of "stand by your man", after all.

If this series flies, and maybe it won't because Part I was pretty limp and uninspiring and public opinion of Haggard still so negative, they're going to have to punch it up a little. That "barn" looks like a storage shed gone to seed, with plywood walls and old chairs dredged up from an episode of Hoarders. If they were going for Abe Lincoln log-cabin rustic sincerity, they missed by a mile. If this is the only facility they can afford, they better pack it in, or else rent a hall somewhere.

But still. It could get interesting to see Haggard get involved in "counseling" people who are way out of his depth. They might really be gay and he might have to tell them to give it up! (Like he did. Ooops, no! Because he's not really gay.)

There are already churches kind of like this that claim to truly welcome the sinner, but I have problems resolving their ultra-conservative and fiercely judgmental theology with that open, inclusive, come-unto-me philosophy. Also, the folks that will be attracted to Haggard's makeshift storage-room church won't have any political clout, or any money either.

So, the question comes up once again. Do people get paid to do reality TV?

Well, do they?

They get their rehab paid for in sunny resorts with horse ranches, personal trainers, crystalline beaches and a masseuse. Makes ME want to turn alcoholic for a while.

They get their hoard-crammed, miserable, urine-soaked, vermin-crawling, stinking holes of houses bulldozed for free, along with concerned counselling by that crinkle-browed therapist who always asks them, "Is this bringing anything up for you?" (While the rest of us just bring up.)

It's all part of the ingrained theory (see another Ted by the name of Williams) that anyone can be redeemed if you throw enough money at them. Everyone's potentially employable and emotionally balanced. They just have to get that awful childhood trauma out of the way.

What bizarre myths we promote! If Haggard really does attract the kind of people he says he wants, they will be manipulative, lying crack whores and felons and pimps. But at the same time, they will be blisteringly honest, attacking any weakness they can find in their fearless leader.

If this succeeds, watch out, Ted. They will destroy you unless you truly confess what you did, and who you are.

Polygluts: or, More, More Mormons!

OK, then. You gotta ask yourself, when watching this is about as appealing as eating 19 pounds of Kraft Dinner with no ketchup, why it is that I keep going back to TLC's latest domestic sideshow, Sister Wives.

I guess I just have a mind for the appalling.

Please don't stare (because it's oh, so very intimate), but this guy Kody Brown the groovy long-haired polygamist crawls from bedroom to bedroom every night, or at least gets to choose whom he "cohabits" with, while the other wives lie there tatting or something.

Not content with his three starter wives (named Wynkin, Blynkinn and Nodde), he's decided to mix it up a little and do an add-on: someone a little younger, a little thinner, and certainly more fertile.

In other words, he wants more more more of those Mormons! Can't get enough of them. Though they look like ordinary women in most ways, his original wives must have extraordinary tolerance (or just be really stupid) to live this way year after year, their horde of interchangeable/interrelated savages (I mean, kids) running all over the place like kissing cousins from the backwoods of Appallachia.

I know a little bit about Mormonism. A little bit. I apologize to any real Mormons out there, because I'm drawing upon experiences from a holiday ten years ago. We went to Utah to see Bryce Canyon and other breath-arresting, God-drenched natural sights of Brigham Young country, and for the most part we had a great time.

We actually tasted the waters of the Great Salt Lake - mighty salty, hmmmmm! - and realized that those horrible little wigglies in the water, the only things that could live in anything that densely saline, were sea monkeys. Good thing my order never arrived back in 1962.

We went on a bus tour of Salt Lake City with two jolly Mormon tour guides, one of them serving his missionary time to fulfill the requirements of his faith. But these two guys weren't stuffy at all. They joshed about Brigham Young and polygamy, and claimed that the extremely wide streets of the city were built to accomodate Brigham when he went for a walk with all his wives.

When we visited the Mormon Museum, however, it was a completely different story. As complete as it was in tracing the history of a people and a faith, there was not one mention of polygamy anywhere. God knows I tried to find it, but it wasn't there. So, officially, that must mean that it never happened.

Fast-forward about ten years, and here we are in polyglut land, everything on display except the sex act (and maybe that will be next. How much of the upcoming wedding night will they show, I wonder?). This program is completely bizarre in that nothing anybody says ever matches their facial expression. "Oh, the more the merrier (marry-her?)," Blinkie says at one point, her face a study in repressed grief.

Robyn, the skinny, new, young wife-to-be (who's closer in age to the eldest daughters than the other three wives: ewwwwwwwww!), is the greatest actress of them all. She's. . . so. . . sorry. . . for. . . hurting. . . anyone, but. . . (but that doesn't stop her from yanking their husband away from them by the short hairs).

Closeups show her hand repeatedly shooting up to cover her mouth, her eyes squinching up, the other wives pasting on a look of concern. But there are no tears. Never any tears.

Why? Because Robyn isn't crying. She isn't crying because she doesn't give a shit about them. Not only has she landed a quarter-share in Kody the shaggy-haired reality star and his sexual equipment: she's getting her own house!

Yes. The other three have self-contained apartments within the massive family mansion (which must be paid for by some kind of ill-gotten gains, crackmongering or Ponzi schemes or something). But there's just no room left for Robyn anywhere, dad-burn it, so she has to live down the street. Down the street in a house. Down the street in a brand new house.

Her house.

I won't ask whose name the mortgage is in (or did they pay for it in unmarked bills?).
This new arrangement, even creepier than the former one, means that Kody will soon be strolling down the avenue, maybe with one of his 17 dogs, to pay her a conjugal visit every - what'll it be, fourth night? How will he - you know - "keep it up", do you think? (Blue pills, anyone?)

A bigger problem is how he will he manage the smoldering rage of the "Keep Sweet Three" and the fake histrionics of Robyn the dry crier. In the painful group discussions which abound in this show, Kody sits there scowling, his arm draped around his current favorite, listening to the suppressed anguish he has created with his own selfish, depraved choices, acting for all the world as if he has nothing to do with it, or at least has no power to stop it.

The truth is, he just has no desire to stop it. He does this because he can. He freely admits he's wounding his ever-faithful polygals, but in his typical heartless sociopathic manner he just keeps on smilin' and gosh-darn-in' and walking around like the swaggering prick he is, oozing entitlement and toxic power.

It gets even more offensive, if that's possible. He's going to marry a DIVORCED woman, for God's sake! Since when does a fundamentalist Mormon woman have the right to do that? One can only imagine the furious secret discussions, the hissings and wads of kleenex that have transpired from this particular choice. Nobody has dared to drag the nasty fact out into the light (yet), but it points up the staggering inequity in this unholy alliance. For those first three, divorce has never been an option: there is no way out of this marriage except death. After all, you can't divorce someone you aren't married to.

For all his modern-day-sensitive-guy posturing, Kody Brown is a self-centred, arrogant, narcissistic little creep who claims to have "fallen in love three times" (no, four: he left out himself). In truth, he's a master manipulator, not to mention a petty criminal, a bigamist who simply doesn't care what his wives are going through so long as he gets his "needs" met (and no doubt each wife has a specialty that she must call up whenever he wants it).

"Kody is my soul-mate," Robyn giggles while getting herself prettied up for another session of "courtship" with a thrice-married man (with Kody once more moaning about how hard it is to remember how to do this). The fact that he kisses her when he proposes provokes disbelief among the other three: you're not supposed to kiss 'til you get married! But after that, apparently, anything goes.

For him, that is. So long as he still has the strength left to walk down the street.

Buried, but not quite alive

I don't know why this is, but I've always been attracted to extremes.

I get my fill of it these days, with all these so-called reality shows (all carefully stage-managed by the producers, who don't even bother to stay out of the frame any more), in which a family is torn apart by some sort of unspeakable problem (heroin addiction, crippling compulsions, etc., etc.). Surely the most bizarre of all these human sideshows is the hoarding phenomenon.

I must have really been deluded or something, but I thought hoarding just meant you were a little bit greedy. People hoarded food during World War II, didn't they, and who could blame them? The tins were all neatly stacked in the basement, or somewhere else out of sight. It wasn't nice, you weren't supposed to do it, but there was nothing too horrific about it.

Or some old lady might like to collect Hummel figurines and got carried away, so that there's not much space for her to sit down any more. That's hoarding. Isn't it?

Hamsters are called hoarders, because they like to shove copious quantities of sunflower seeds in their cheeks. Sunflower seeds seem harmless to me.

Little did I know that the hoarding of reality TV means living in what amounts to a waist-deep landfill. Pizza boxes, food wrappers, empty jars and beer cans and anything else no longer wanted is just tossed on the floor. The smell is appalling, and mice and bugs abound. It is as if these people have just given up on themselves, and on life.

As I become steadily more addicted to this awful stuff, I am beginning to notice certain themes cropping up again and again:

The family telling the psychologist/organizer that their "collecting" (not hoarding) is their own business, and not hurting them or anyone else.

Inappropriate affect: constantly smirking, chuckling or joking about the disaster while the rest of the family quietly weeps; lashing out in astonishing, malignant hate and rage at the most well-meaning attempts to help.

No functioning bathroom. No explanation given as to how these people bathe or go to the bathroom (if indeed they do).

No functioning kitchen.

A dead refrigerator full of rotting food.

No useable beds. (One particularly pathetic man huddled on the floor against a wall.)

Almost no place to sit down, and certainly no place to sit together. One partner sits on a box to eat dinner, while the other sits on the only exposed portion of the bed.

"Meals" defrosted in the microwave. Many of these people are very obese, so a lot of furtive overeating must go on behind the scenes.

No place to wash clothes. No place to store clothes, except heaped on the floor.

Okay, so among the problems these families insist they don't have are: disturbed family relations; alienation; a seemingly deliberate, literal pushing apart of loved ones by the sheer bulk of all the crap. Normal bathroom functions, normal hygiene, normal eating and sleeping, all are eroded away to nothing. The outside world is effectively shut out, and the inhabitants are shut in. They have deliberately sealed themselves inside a stinking tomb, and when approached to tidy it up a little, they say they are too overwhelmed to do it and begin to sob about their disturbed childhood.

Yes, I have no doubt that these people had enormously disturbed childhoods, but what about their disturbed adulthoods? Isn't there something they can do about this? For (as they say in recovery circles), if nothing changes, nothing changes.

A few of these profoundly disabled souls seem to have a limited life on the outside. One woman spent three hours doing her hair every morning. (It looked like one of Lady Bird Johnson's more alarming wigs.) The surface of normalcy is eggshell. Once cracked by the intrusion of "help", all sorts of twisted dysfunction bursts through.

Last night was a doozie. There are usually two stories. Though they lived in an urban setting, the first family seemed like something out of the primitive backwoods, isolated in the extreme. The father was a nasty, belligerant old man who insisted nothing was wrong and that the family had a right to live the way they wanted. The mother, her weight in excess of 300 pounds, refused to let go of even a single item, no matter how mildewed, dirty and useless. And the children! One can hardly call them children: they were 38 and 39 years old, and had never left home. The girl, for that's what she was mentally, refused to surrender a rotting old teddy bear because her Daddy had given it to her 30 years ago.

Then there was the other story, about a bizarre child-man who had concocted a story (which everyone believed without question) that he had been knighted by Prince Charles. He claimed to be an orphan from Ireland who had "come over with Father Flanagan" (! Is he trapped in an old Pat O'Brien movie, or what?) This man really was a collector of sorts, but his place was jammed with stuff so weird it looked like the inside of a schizophrenic's mind. There was no room left for anyone to live.

One can guess what really happened. His family probably couldn't cope with the stress of a toddler living in a man's body. He seemed to have the emotional equipment of a three-year-old, dressing up in costumes, playing pretend, and skipping around in his own little universe of kitsch. He had convinced himself all this stuff was worth a fortune (God knows what he had paid for it at all those garage sales!), and was only selling it off because he was dead broke.

(That's another theme. Where do these people get their money? How do they support themselves? Many of them, especially the women, are constantly buying things, like the same top in seven different colors, all left in the bags with the tags on. Or even more useless tacky items, adding to the chaos and collecting thick webs of dust that drape in the corners like macabre Halloween decorations.)

Anyway, this Sir Patrick guy was one of a kind. His Irish accent, not much better than a Lucky Charms commercial, came and went. If this was mental illness, it seemed to fit no known category.

The lowest point for me was when he found an old doll and began to cry. The therapist asked in her usual gooey compassionate way, "Does this bring something up for you?" "Me neighbor's little girl. She doyed. Ah, I loved her so." It was a new low in creepiness: maybe just as well for the little girl. (But for some reason, I was convinced that most of what he said was bullshit.)

Strange people like this used to be institutionalized, or at least hidden upstairs and forgotten. Now they are being flushed out (pardon the expression), and, to some extent, used for sensationalist entertainment. In some cases, they do seem to want help, but it seems to me they are usually being coerced, either by the family or the law. All of these places are extreme fire hazards, and many aren't even intact. If you only have half a roof on your house, sooner or later the whole place is going to cave in.

But it's not enough to need help: you have to want it, and that pathetically backward family ended up being forcibly evicted when their falling-down house was finally condemned. The last shot showed them sitting in a row staring into the camera like something out of Deliverance, with the final caption telling us they were living in an apartment with four of their seven cats and planning on repairing the house and moving back in.