WMC 2006
Who’s all going? 
Archive for February, 2006
Oh no!
I had a dentist’s appointment this morning…turns out I had 2 cavities. One was fixed and the other will be taken care of Wednesday. Anyway half my mouth is still numb and I feel like Mumbles from Dick Tracy…or like Two-Face…or like that chick that plays Lois Lane on Smallville talking out of the corner of her mouth like a 20s gangster. “Now look here scheeee!!!” I’m kind of irritable right now cause I’m really really hungry and didn’t have breakfast. I want a Nacho Bell Grande bad. Unfortunately my filling is still soft. 
So I went grocery shopping after my dental appointment to pick some stuff up and have the food taunt me. Out of nowhere some dude in an aisle shouts to me, “Way to go Apollo!” The second I hear that a flood of memories come to me taking me back to 2002 when I first had to put up with this shit. “Oh no….(no pun) the Olympics are back, right…” I thought. Minutes later the checkout lady’s like “Ohno! Ohno!” while pumping her fist in the air. I retreated in shame and held my bag with the Tostitos closer to my heart.
Listen up bitches…it wasn’t funny four years ago and it’s not now. Cease and desist or I shall have to resort to dishing out some pain with my arsenal of rubberbands-to-knees. Oh you don’t want this!
Wowowee
Shit this is a long one guys, sorry.
If you’re unfamiliar with the show…it’s a game show airing in the Philippines that follows a similar format as Deal or No Deal on NBC. There are similar shows in over 50 countries, I understand. I remember almost a year ago when I first noticed this piece of shit show as it airs over the Filipino channel that my mom watches all the time. I’ve never seen the NBC version so I have no idea really how the two differ, really…in fact I still haven’t figured out how this effing game works. What I can tell you for sure is this show elicits WTF moments constantly.
There’s lots of camera swinging movements, epiplepsy-inducing flashing lights, innumerable omnidirectional mics, every color of the spectrum assaulting your eyes, like twenty pretty much nekkid go-go dancers (for no discernible real reason), 4 co-hosts who talk all at once, 1 douchebag cruel cruel cruel mofo of a host, and for the most part a poverty-stricken audience. It’s like a quiz show with the easiest fucking questions ever (like “What color is my poop?” kind of questions). Aside from the show being a visual assault of Japanese-influenced television programming styles (picture DDR in Tokyo while Happy Hardcore is blasting from the speakers all the time) and everything chaotic you could possibly imagine if the Joker was given control of a TV studio, you can’t help but see past that silliness and instead notice the socio-economical tragic state of the participants/viewers that the production fuels their high ratings with.
For us something familiar would be shows like American Idol or WWE wrestling. But these shows are waaaay less destructive to the human race’s well-being. Let’s face it, there’s enough Americans that have and continue to pick up the slack that these useless ppl leave. Not the same kind of ppl, but the closest similar type of programming I can think of to illustrate with…similar in that these shows prey upon that primal watching disasters with fascination, envy and desire mentality. Wowowee airs live around noon time 6 days out of the week and potentially rewards 1 to 2 million pesos (Filipino pesos…not sure what that converts to in $). The participants consist mostly of the most impoverished citizens around Manila, the capital of the country. They line up hours or even days before each broadcast…not to get in…just for the CHANCE to get in. There’s never a guarantee you’ll get in to participate or be part of the audience. When you line up then some dudes come out and ‘randomly’ pick people inline…either that or everyone gets some random ticket stub number and random numbers are drawn. Now when I say impoverished people I mean 3rd world impoverished…not welfare impoverished not even homeless bums on sidewalk impoverished. We’re talking ppl who may or may not have access to some sort of running water system in a metropolitan surrounding area…yeah, like the first fifty or so years of the Roman Empire. Anyways, these ppl are promised the opportunity to win a ton of loot QUICKLY on a game show.
The show’s producers purport themselves to be philanthropists and giving to their fellow man…helping him/her out of a state of poverty. Those fuckers. Yeah, deluding uneducated and impoverished brothers and sisters into making a quick buck is definitely the answer to the country’s poverty problems. Similar pisses me off with contestants on reality shows…I’m less critical of the production and more critical of the contestants here…the contestants here HAVE had the opportunities and educations to not have to consider the ‘quick-buck’ methodology. In the Philippines or any other economically-similar country I can’t blame the people…only the TV studio execs and producers.
I haven’t yet mentioned how the host and production treat the people inside the studio. Some of the show is a quiz show type…and the host or cohosts sometimes pit MINORS against adults…yeah that’s fucking fair. But it’s not the normal answer a question right, get money…Instead it’s the contestant (say it’s a kid) immediately has like 50,000 pesos or something. Now that kid has to protect that money by answering questions correctly and first before a line of people made up of the remaining audience members. One by one those audience members go up against the contestant. If they answer first and correctly, they take away money from the contestant and get to pocket it. I’ve seen children, invalids, you name it get money taken away by unapologetic audience members. Oh yeah! And they talk smack!!! To a freakin 8 year old!!! Lots of the show is hearing each contestant and some audience members’ life stories. They’re all sob/sad stories whether true or embellished…in any case I’ve noticed the hosts and ESPECIALLY the main host likes to stir shit with them. I remember one episode had a bunch of orphans as contestants…around ages 5-10. One orphan made it pretty far in the game and the entire time this little girl kept crying and was a nervous wreck. She couldn’t be more ethan 9. That round I mentioned with audience members taking money away…yup…they totally pwned her. This girl keeps covering her face and crying the entire time, doesn’t answer almost everything, she’s scared of all the attention, the crowd, the flashing lights, and the douchebag host who’s screaming in her face “What’s wrong with you! Are you okay?!” Meanwhile there’s this nun who I guess is who takes care of her and mentions the girl’s parentage and it’s one of those dead parents, whore mom, abandoning aunts/uncles, child abuse, anti-social with the other children, doesn’t really talk (like that niece of Michael Myers in Halloween 4 who went mute…but without the psychotic murder-by-scissors streak). WTF is wrong with production or the hosts to allow this clearly traumatized by the cameras girl to participate? No one ever tries to stop it or console her, cept for her caretaking nun…but even with her you can tell she’s inner-monologue-ing: “Dammit girl! do you know how much loot you can get the orphanage! Fucking say something! I promise you don’t have to go to mass tomorrow if you’ll just do this!”
This show is nuts.
It preys upon the unsuspecting masses, reinforcing greed, laziness, ignorant bliss. It’s Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, just like reality tv and the media and the gladiator battles and The Matrix yadda yadda, but holy shit this at a much more massive and destructive scale than the phenomenon of being able to sell out stadiums for Jay-Z, Pat Robertson or some other crappy person…they’ve got this sort of scam…no not scam…it’s a crime against society. As a country, America can afford to have massloads of idiots roaming the streets doing whatever it is they please without really fucking up anything further than their own lives. That isn’t the case at all over there. If about 80 of the country is poor, then that’s gotta be how much of the country is influenced by this bullshit. I’ve felt pretty angry and disturbed about this show for awhile, and I could never quite pin-point why I felt that there was “just this something about this show” that signaled some sort of doom…
And then:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/04/stampede.sat.ap/index.html
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=65166
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/topofthehour.aspx?StoryId=29136
“Good Lesson”?!!!! That bitch actually called this a good lesson! OMG. Nothing makes me more depressed, angry and saddened than shit like this. Natural disasters don’t have this effect on me as much. Nature’s uncontrollable, but man-made tragedies…there’s no excuse or acceptable rationale.
I found this blog by some person as a reaction to all this and she echoes how I feel about this show and this tragedy. I’m gonna paste it cause she’s way more eloquent and poignant than I could hope to be (even though ‘idiotarian’ is not a word). Rizalist (from http://www.pcij.org/blog/) posts:
Something that riled me was the reported desire of Willie Revillame to go on with the show. Normally this would be considered a virtue in an entertainer in cases where the lights have gone out in the theatre, part of his costume falls off, or one of the lead actors doesnt show up. But NOT after over seventy people were just crushed to death and practically still lying around dead. Maybe he thought he could save the situation with his usual boyish inanity.
But would someone please tell me I am all wrong in the impression that the audience those who didnt die and were finally in the venueseemed to be clapping for the show to indeed go on despite the tragedy, for the million bucks to be given away as planned. Knowing us, some were probably muttering, What good does it do the living OR the dead, for the show not to go on?
Perhaps they shouldve let him go on with the show and give away the million bucks. ABSCBN probably now stands to lose a lot more than that anyway.
It comes at a heavy price of human lives lost, but I think noon time shows are gonna have to change for the better, if they are to survive at all. These shows seem designed by salacious minds with a genius for commercializing the lowest common denominator in people lewdness, stupidity, mendacity, opportunism and anything that titillates the seamy underside.
If the Lopezes are guilty of anything, it is their irresponsible liberal thinking in allowing these idiotarian shows to be aired, while they also do things like Bantay Bata, which would seem to balance things a little. But they dont. When they mix in children, midgets, old people and their scantily clad eye candy doing whorehouse aerobics in these shows, what happens to their Philantrophy but be a fig leaf if crassness and immorality are abetted by the main line of the business. Yet I am absolutely certain that they can make as much money without raising as much Cain.
I do hope that Willie Revillame is finished for good. And all his ilk. Theyre the ones that ought to be stampeded off the face of the earth.
This show, what happened, the aftermath, everything has WTF stamped all over it.