Brandy vs. Reality

One of the joys of having a younger brother (who also buys dvd's like they're crack) is that I exposed to all sorts of trashy programming that I would otherwise turn my nose up at. That how I was introduced to Johnny Knoxville, the world of Jackass and the amusement of watching guys get kicked in the nuts. Seriously. Sometimes it's a large miss though, like Bumfights, which was the most horrid thing I've ever seen. Teenagers paying homeless people to beat the crap out of each other. Seriously. So when he pulled out season one of Kenny vs. Spenny and said I absolutely HAD to watch it, I was a little apprehensive. I had once caught a couple of minutes of it on Showcase, and was again, horrified. The premise of the show is this: two roommates, friends since childhood, have competitions with each other and the loser at the end of each episode has to do a humiliation. Competitions like "Who can stay awake the longest?", "Who do kids like most?" and "Who can stay on a cow the longest?" usually see the eviler Kenny the winner. The show can be amusing, annoying, boring or appalling depending on the depths Kenny will go to win. In the few horrid minutes I watched initially, Kenny had a fake letter sent to Spenny telling him he may be HIV postive, and in total belief he had a meltdown. I didn't think it was funny at all, but I gave it another chance when my brother insisted I watch season one, mostly because they live and shoot the show literally down the street from my brother, on the border of the gaybourhood. One thing that kept me watching was trying to figure out how much was actually real, and how much they faked. There was one guy who was supposed to be a producer from L.A. to whom Spenny owed a couple thousand dollars too and was also the most annoying person on the face of the earth, who ended up being an actor I cast in my third year short film at York. Some of it was true though (he was not a producer from L.A. and I have no idea if Spenny owed him money...) Then there was the doctor who did rectal exams on the guys; I know him by the tasty banana bread he has brought us because he's a member of the holy institution I work at (and now I'm imagining rectal exam + baking = Ugh!) And then last night I caught an episode of season two (and I don't go out of my way to watch it.) The competition was "Who do old people like better?" Kenny had taken three little old ladies to see a singer (at another holy institution) along with his (fake) brother with downs syndrome. I also know the singer and ironically he was here (at my work) this morning and he said that he had no idea that Kenny's "brother" was a fake, and that when he finally saw the episode he was shocked and appalled, not just for being duped himself, but for the sweet little old ladies who were also lied to. I know, welcome to reality tv.