No Time for a Job

A few weeks ago someone asked me how I didn't get bored "doing nothing" all day. While it is true that I am "technically" "unemployed," I actually am busier than ever. In the mornings I have Wife Swap, What Not to Wear and Trading Spouses on my DVR, and my afternoons are jam-packed with Maury Povich paternity tests, Oprah and Dr. Phil. I never even have time to go out at night anymore, because every single night of the week I'm booked solid with The Bachelor, The Biggest Loser, Intervention, Top Chef, The Real Housewives of Orange County, Tool Academy, Rock of Love Bus, Sober House, Confessions of a Teen Idol and Say Yes to the Dress. Add that to keeping on top of Us, In Touch, Star, People, Celebrity Life & Style, Marie Claire, Lucky and Glamour and mentally preparing for Millionaire Matchmaker and I Love Money 2 which is coming up in February, and it's a grueling schedule.

Remembering the plotlines and coming up with fresh insults for everyone on the shows is no easy task, so when people tell me that they're getting killed at work I know EXACTLY how they feel because I have never worked harder in my life than I do now. At any moment I could be quizzed by Megan or Risa via Gchat about Fergie's hideous wedding dress or asked to imitate alcoholic Marie from Intervention ("I wuv you Bora") and I take my job VERY seriously and need to be prepared. A few days ago someone emailed me about Howie Mandel being hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat, and if I hadn't known about it before that person sent me the link it would have been humiliating.

Howie Do It

I can't take it

Some of you may remember during the '80s when Howie Mandel was already a washed-up comic from the '80s. You may remember him from Shelly Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre on Showtime, where in the Princess Who Had Never Laughed, he played a "hilarious" medieval peasant named Weiner Head Waldo with a Jehri curl mullet who loved his pig, sang a song entitled, "A Pig is A Person Like You and Me" and successfully made the princess laugh despite all his jokes being embarrassingly bad. You may also remember him from the early 90's cartoon "Bobby's World," which was certainly a piece of shit.

In any event, when came in vogue a few years ago to start giving 80s and 90s D-list celebrities prime-time game shows (i.e., Bob Saget hosting 1 v. 100, Dennis Miller hosting Amnesia, Jeff Foxworthy hosting Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?) so that America could see for themselves just how desperate these guys had become, Howie Mandel lined up to get his ridiculous game show, Deal or No Deal. Seeking to distance himself from his old "goofy" look, he shaved off his mullet, got an ear piercing and started wearing form fitting clothes. Obviously nobody expected this show to succeed, primarily because it's ridiculous and secondarily because it was hosted by Howie Mandel, so at the time Howie was able to put outrageous clauses in his contract that were tied to the success of the show that Fox Broadcasting only agreed to because Fox obviously thought the show would be canceled after one episode. Unfortunately, one of these clauses stated that if the show was not canceled after two seasons, Howie would have carte blanche to do another comedy show of his choosing and Fox would be powerless to stop him. Well, it appears that that cursed day has arrived, because I just saw a preview for Howie Do It, a version of "Punk'd" where Howie pulls "hilarious" "pranks" on "unsuspecting" "viewers." For instance, in one of the sketches, Howie puts on a bad toupee and pretends to be waiter in a restaurant and hands a customer a glass of water while sticking his finger in the glass. The customer is horrified, but then Howie rips off the toupee which had COMPLETELY disguised him before and immediately recognizes the waiter as HOWIE MANDEL, and starts screaming because he's a huge celebrity and he's pulled a hilarious prank on her. Frankly if Howie Mandel put on a wig and attempted to serve me dirty water I would just ask him why the hell he was wearing that wig and then ask him if he knew where my real waiter went.

My point in explaining all this is that in the future we can avoid shows like Howie Do It if we all band together and stop watching the original bad shows, like Deal or No Deal. That show is objectively terrible, and yet someone somewhere is watching it, which makes the network think that America is craving more Howie Mandel when that's really not the case at all. So what I'm saying is that even if there is absolutely nothing else on except for Deal or No Deal, you need to remember the tragedy of the commons and stop being selfish and turn off the tv and just Gchat for an hour so that we can stop encouraging this crap.