HOW unlucky -- or inept -- does a burglar have to be to break into a house with more video cameras running per square inch than Fort Knox? Being real in
an unreal worldThat's apparently what happened this week when a hapless criminal broke into the so-called MTV house on Diamond Head. The "MTV house" is where MTV is filming the latest episodes of "Real World," a show that causes reviewers fits.
The show has been universally beaten, basted, belittled and battered by critics. Why? Simply because it takes a bunch of young, usually spoiled people who would never even talk to each other under normal circumstances and throws them together for four months in some plush pad they could never afford under normal circumstances and films the inevitable conflicts that would never arise under normal circumstances. This is like criticizing an elementary school production of Les Miserables. Only the most brain-dead, hopelessly pathetic couch potatoes on the planet would waste their time watching such a contrived and phony mess like "Real World."
Which explains why I am such a "Real World" aficionado. I loved Puck, the scab-picking lout from one of the original episodes. I loved seeing that insufferably smug English jerk in the London episodes get his tongue bit off by a punk rocker. I loved watching the psycho girl in Miami flash her upper body assets on camera and then threaten to sue the guy who filmed it. I loved watching that strange kinky-haired girl in Seattle have a nervous breakdown right before our eyes. I loved the way her housemate threw her stuffed animal in the harbor and then smacked her after she called him a homosexual. I love watching these idiots make complete fools of themselves on camera, taking themselves soooooo seriously while completely unaware that there is absolutely no socially-redeeming point to the entire exercise. The "Real World" exists simply to exploit the worst voyeuristic, pitiful and loathsome impulses in all of us. Voyeuristic, pitiful and loathsome, but often a lot of fun.
Which brings us back to the unluckiest burglar in the world, the poor sap who, out of all the houses on Diamond Head, breaks into one staffed to the gills with cameras, ready to record his entire ill-conceived enterprise. Breaking into the "Real World" house is almost as dumb as having sex in the men's room of a major hotel. I can't wait to see it!
I mean, other than taking a few of the "Real World" housemates hostage, it doesn't get any more real than to have someone break into your house. It's just too bad that Puck wasn't there to greet the burglar and invite him out to the pool for a beer.
Members of the local media have been alternately trying to finagle an appearance on the show or sabotage the production by identifying the house and invading the surf shop where the housemates "work." News weanies feel it is their right to pry into other people's lives and, by the way, how dare MTV think it can shoot a show in Hawaii and not genuflect to the hip local nightlife writers and TV news talking heads?
The idea that "Real World" could come into a small place like Honolulu and NOT be smoked out by prying news jerks and the occasional burglar is, well, unreal.
I just hope there's a Puck or tongueless Englishman on the cast. There's nothing worse than eavesdropping on boring people.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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