Stupidest Fake Wrestling / Talk Show Host Cross-Overs

A lot of people use "stupid" as a pejorative insult and in many cases it is....but in the field of Entertainment, "stupid", isn't a bad thing at all and in many cases is a compliment.

Would things like Strange Brew, Beavis and Butthead, or something like that be enjoyable if it wasn't about the antics of stupid people? Would I sit and watch an episode of Beavis and Butthead if it was about two brain surgeons discussing brain surgery techniques? Of course not, I watch that to see two insipidly stupid dudes fucking up and hurting themselves. Stupid rules.

One of the most stupid forms of entertainment over the years has without a doubt been Fake Wrestling, again this isn't an insult, Fake Wrestling is the good kind of stupid. I mean where else can you see as much drama-laden, over the top, stupidity as you do on Fake Wrestling? Very few places offer the same amount and same kind of stupidness that is offered to you in gallons with Fake Wrestling.

????

How stupid is this shit? I've seen a guy light a fire cracker no where near his opponent...yet something about the flash caused his opponent to be bedazzled and swoon. I've seen shit on this shit that's so dumb that I often just stop and wonder what the fuck I'm looking at. Basically, what I'm sayin' is, Fake Wrestling is so stupid that's it's veritably surreal.

I'd describe Fake Wrestling as Stupid Performance Art as opposed to any other way to describe it and, again, that's not an insult....there's times where the art is so stupid that it's very very cool and very fun to observe.

Often at times, people from the Real World will cross-over into this Land of Stupidity...we all remember Mr. T (star of TV's The A-Team) showing up at Wrestle Mania One, we remember the great Liberace popping into this world as a "Celebrity Time Keeper",  many recall Mike Tyson teaming up with DX a few years ago to fuck someone up, or when Beetlejuice showed up to get smashed with a guitar, and recently the legendary Pee Wee Herman stopped by to hang out in this strange land.

But...Mr .T, Liberace, Mike Tyson, Beet, and Pee Wee are people you'd expect to pop into the World of Fake Wrestling to perform some Stupid Performance Art from time to time....these are guys who genuinely fit into that world and don't seem out of place at all whilst immersed into it.

As the title of this article suggests, there's been times where a breed of human known as Talk Show Hosts have ventured into this land to engage in SPA (stupid performance art) as well.

We shall be looking into five instances where the Realm of Talk Shows and the Realm of Fake Wrestling intersected and ran congruently for a set interval of time.

Entries shall be ranked on a scale of 10 (ten being Super Stupid and zero being Retarded).

Jon Stewart (intersecting with) Seth Rollins

Recently a feud was birthed out of the fiery taunts directed by one Seth Rollins towards one Jon Stewart. Rollins would taunt Stewart from his camp on WWE's Monday Night Raw whilst Stewart would retort said taunts from at his home base at the The Daily Show.

It didn't take long for his war of words from their base-camps to escalate into an all-out face-to-face beef between the two as a few days after the initial taunts Rollins totally showed up on the Daily Show to put Stewart in a head-lock.

It seems the beef reached its boiling point yesterday,

 

Shots were fired off left and right yet as you could plainly see when the time came for fisticuffs to erupt...Stewart kicked that dude in the dick and skadadledaddled himself to safety.

Now, people might see that as cowardice, but look, I've read Sun Tzu's Art of War and am versed in all 36 divine stratagaems of combat. Do you know out of all of the 36 divine stratagaems of combat which one Sun Tzu himself referred to as the most divine of the divine tactics? Skedaddlin' that's which one.

If shit is getting hot, man, just poke a dude in a eyes, or kick a dude's nuts, and Skee-Fucking-Daddle....that's honestly the best advice anyone can ever give someone. If you're ever in doubt about the outcome of a fight, do like Stewart, and SKEE DEEEDLY DADDLE out of the mother fucker post-haste.

Stupidty Quantifiers:

General Silliness: 7/10

Drama Stupidity: 9/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 7/10

OVERALL STUPIDITY: 8/10



Jerry Lawler + Andy Kaufman (intersecting with) David Letterman

Memphis Wrestling was some real old school shit that existed before Fake Wrestling was monopolized and if you watch all these Memphis Fake Wrestlings on the youtube you'll probably be pretty entertained by this stupid shit. The premise of the show was mainly "stables" of wrestlers led by a manager versus other "stables" of wrestlers led by a manager. Jimmy Hart rose to prominence in Memphis Wrestling as the head of a stable as did many other managers. You don't really see managers too much anymore but they were good because unlike most of the talent....these manager characters could act.

Memphis used to get famous people to stop by and chill, for example here's that Batman Adam West showing up (for no reason):

I don't really know what's going on here. Either Adam is jet-lagged, drunk, or really not happy to be there and is really trying to act odd to make them regret flying him out there. I love shit like this. Adam West, in my opinion, is THE ONLY BATMAN, no other people who played Batman can even come close to what West did with the Batman character.

Another guy Memphis got to stop by and chill was Andy Kaufman....but Kaufman was a little more enthusiastic about being there than West was. Kaufman made a whole shtick out of his appearances on this show and really pulled out all the stops to create some legendary Stupid Performance Art. He developed a feud with Jerry Lawler (Lawler is seen in the clip above speaking with Batman).

The feud between Kaufman and Lawler hit its fever pitch (as many know thanks to the Kaufman hollywood bio-pic) on the set of David Letterman's Late Night program:

The King slapped that mother fucker right in his fucking face. Back in the day most of the people watching this wondered if this was a shtick or not....both guys are good actors and played the SPA really well...no matter what venue they showed up in these guys sold their shit, man.

This was done so well it is barely even stupid...it's like a level of believability that almost makes you forget they were doin' a Fake Wrestling. The actual wrestling matches on Memphis between Lawler and Kaufman were pretty stupid though...mainly involving a whole buncha skedaddlin', turtling, wigglin', and all-around silliness.

Stupidty Quantifiers:

General Silliness: 9/10

Drama Stupidity: 10/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 7/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 9/10


Hulk Hogan n' Mr. T (intersecting with Richard Belzer)

Poor, poor, Richard Belzer. The Belz had the Hulkster and My Favorite Person Ever Mr. T on his program for them to promote Wrassle Mania One and all kinds of hijynx broke loose....

Basically, Belzer asked Hogan to practice some holds on him and Hogan proceeded to choke out Belzer and when the Belz hit the floor after passing out...he cracked his coconut open, observe...

Hold the phone though, THIS WAS NOT A SHTICK, Belzer cracked his head open and then successfully sued Hogan for a coupla million bux. Fuck, yo.

I don't know how to rate this one since it wasn't a shtick at all and that poor man got his skull split open...so, I'm just gonna give it a run of threes and move on.

Stupidty Quantifiers:

General Silliness: 3/10

Drama Stupidity: 3/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 3/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 3/10


Rowdy Roddy Piper (intersecting with) Morton Downey Jr.

This bit featured the in-ring talk show Rowdy Roddy used to host during live Fake Wrestlings. I don't really know why they do these bits, it's like, they want to take a break from the fake wrestling to set up new feuds...I guess that's the reason for the in-ring talk shows.

Piper invited a man with his face painted red known as Brother Love and the late great Mort Downey Junior to join him at Wrestle Mania V for a nice a little chat. I guess you'd call this an insult competition or something. I used to do these at school but we called them "Shafting Competitions" back when the word "shafting" was briefly popular in the early 90s.

Piper proceeds to verbally abuse Brother Love until he skeddadles out of the ring and home to his mommy...and then Piper turns his verbal fury unto Downey.....yet is shocked when his verbal abuse is ineffective against him.

Fuck man, Morton Downey Jr. is unverbally-abusable...he eats insults for breakfast and shafts for lunch. Verbal abuse is like bread n' butter to Morton Downey, he loves that shit. This fucking guy has the nerve to breathe smoke directly into Piper's fucking face, holy shit, right in his fucking face! Even after Piper politely asked Downey to stop blowing smoke into his face the guy just keeps on blowing smoke RIGHT IN his FUCKING FACE. Can you believe it?

Right in the guy's fuckin' face.....

Here watch it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1vxekc_piper-s-pit-wwf-wrestlemania-5_sport

As you can see in the link, Piper gets the last laugh (well it was his in-ring talk show after all, they were on his turf), as he unloads the contents of a fire extinguisher directly into the face of Morton Downey Jr, Wow.

This bit would have been better without that fucking tomato faced jackass "Brother Love" in the pit....that asshole can't act for shit. Piper and Downey did some good SPA here though, they did some good shit with this pit bit.

General Silliness: 9/10

Drama Stupidity: 6/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 10/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 8/10


Hogan et al. (intersectin' with) Jay Leno

I didn't really get this one at all. Unlike the trash talking fun ones like with Downey n' Kaufman n' others...Leno played a super baby-face character that kind of came off as like....I dunno how to describe it...he looked like a kid from those "make a wish foundation" type charities who got his wish to be a wrestler with Hulk Hogan. It just looked weird...like a big child is what he looked like.

Video here: http://www.wwe.com/videos/jay-leno-diamond-dallas-page-vs-hulk-hogan-eric-bischoff-road-wild-1998-26009542

He plays it like he's one of the gang, like some little kid who the wrestlers let throw them around because it's the child's make-a-wish wish. It's just strange looking...but it's not really stupid though.

I don't even know if I'm allowed to use the word "stupid" in this situation because I think Jay Leno really is slightly mentally handicapped in real life and therefore you're not allowed to say that in that situation.

You see, the rules with calling someone stupid or 'tarded is this...you can call anyone you want stupid or retarded from a president to a pauper as long as they are NOT legitimately mentally handicapped. In the case where someone is genuinely certifiably mentally disabled then you cannot refer to them as being stupid or as a retard...you have to give the mentally challenged people a lot of leeway and be positive when you talk about them.

I honestly believe that Jay Leno is borderline mentally handicapped...I mean from his "comedy" to his odd looking pudgy face. When you watch him in this fake wrestling you really see a child who's living his wrestling dreams and he looks like a big fat mentally disabled child.

So in that case, since I'm not allowed to call him stupid due to leeway reasons I have to shoot zeroes down the line on this bit. I don't want to call a borderline mentally disabled man "stupid" because it's not correct in this day and age. Therefore, Jay gets a very "special" rating of all zeroes.

General Silliness: 0/10

Drama Stupidity: 0/10

Miscellenous Stupidity: 0/10


OVERALL STUPIDITY: 0/10


Assessment

From most stupid to least stupid. Some entries are being omitted in the final tally...Belzer gets removed because it was not a mutually agreed upon shtick and therefore wasn't exactly Stupid Performance Art and Jay Leno gets removed from the assessment because his was more of a "very special boy" living his wrestling dreams and wasn't really SPA either:

WINNER: Kaufman/Lawler on Letterman

Runners-Up: Jon Stewart/Seth Rollins and Morton Downey Jr./Rowdy Roddy Piper

 
Kaufman and Lawler on Letterman wins...that shtick is pretty tight. They sold it to the point where the average viewer who wasn't familiar with Memphis Wrestling probably had no idea it was a shtick and was like "holy shit" while watching that bit. Those two assholes can sell bits and Letterman acted as a good mediator that kept the shit brewin' up good.

Great Moments in Literature 2: A Look into the Character Growth of one "Stan Gable"

In the last installment of "Great Moments in Literature" we explored the change in the "Bob Backlund" character from the WWE over the changing seasons of history.

Here: Great Moment in Literature 1

For this installment, we shall be looking into a character from the wide world of film, he is the highly interesting movie character by the name of "Stan Gable" from the Masterpiece quartet of films known as "Revenge of the Nerds."

The fictional character of "Stan Gable" was portrayed by Ted McGinley (most know him off of "Married: With Children" fame).

Glossary of Terms to be Used in Article

Nerd: A human being either male or female of high intelligence who dabbles in science and/or technological fields of expertise. Their commitment to learning has rendered them virtual shut-ins and their social skills are limited at best. They are awkward, weird, and appear highly abnormal to other non-nerd humans who observe them.

Jock: A human, ninety-nine percent of the time male, who's testosterone levels are higher than average. The Jock releases the excess hormones they produce by engaging in sporting events and fistfights. They do not care at all for Nerds and attempt to hinder the nerd and humiliate them any time they encounter one.

Self-Hating Nerd: These are nerds who feel ashamed of who they are due to the constant torment directed against them. They try to conceal their nerditude and live life behind a mask...they live in fear behind a costume they have created for themselves. They hide from their own selves.


Pre-Am-BuLation

We shall present Stan Gable's character over the course of four Revenge of the Nerds masterpiece films. The sections shall be broken into, (A) synopsis of film, (B) a brief thought about how good or not good the music portion of the film was, (C) a rating from 0 to 5 "stars" to denote how good the overall film was, and (D) a look into the Stan Gable character and its role in the film.

We shall conclude with an assessment of the Stan Gable character's overall transformation from the first to the last of the RotN films.

Yes, yes.


Revenge of the Nerds!

Let's get started,

1. Revenge of the Nerds

Synopsis: Two bestest of pals head off to college together with their hopes and dreams as high as the sky. Trouble is, they are nerds and what's waiting for them at college is not what they hoped for. The sports teams get all the funding and accolades whilst the smart students are ridiculed and tormented. The Jocks who persecute the nerds are led by the likes of the quarterback of the football team (portrayed by Ted McGinley), the coach of the football team (played by John Goodman), and the biggest dumbest man on the football team referred to as The Ogre (portrayed by the loveable Donald Gibb). Can the nerds band together and stand strong? Or will their persecution never ever end?



Musical Portion: The nerds bust into the talent contest with this number (and IT'S TOTALLY AWESOME...I can still recite every word of this song on command and verbatim)...

YEAH

Film Quality: 5 Stars

On the verge of tears...of defeat.

Stan Gable's Role: Stan Gable is the head villain in the film who leads the charge for the jock forces. He aims to not only make life difficult for the nerds but to destroy them. He is the anti-nerd, the complete polar opposite of what a nerd is. Nerds are his natural-born enemies and he despises every last one of them with every bone in his body. 

Once the nerds assemble and begin to resist the jocks aggressions and incursions into their territories...the tables are turned on Gable and he and his jocks must brace themselves for the end-all battle at the talent show. 

Gable's elite jock contingent, in the final hours, cannot withstand the unified forces of the nerds, the moos, and the Bernie Casey led Tri-Lambdas...who defeat the Jocks and leave Stan Gable shattered, broken, and in tears. Stan Gable was utterly defeated by his sworn enemies with the final insult being the head nerd making passionate love to his girlfriend. (Nerds: 1 Jocks: 0)

2. Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise

Synopsis: The Nerds, now a unified fighting force assembled under the Tri-Lambda banner, are invited down to beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Florida to represent their fraternity in the National frat convention. Trouble is...the Jocks flying the Alpha Beta frat banner (though weakened in strength and numbers from the previous film) have been invited to the convention as well. 

Are Nerds and Jocks destined to clash heads once more? Can the nerds cope a second time around...or will all gains made in the first battle be lost?

The battlegrounds may be the sandy beaches of Florida this time around...but the passions of the combatants will not be lowered due to the beautiful relaxing atmosphere. A boiling point is brewing in the Jock/Nerd WAR!

Musical Portion: A little rap thing. It's nothing to write home about.

Film Quality: 4 Stars

Stan Gable's Role: Gable is now a man hell-bent on revenge. He suffered the most humiliating of defeats in the first Jock/Nerd battle and his pride thirsts for the most coldest of vengeance and his heart burns with the hottest of rage.

Stan Gable is not a man who admits defeat easily and sends his well prepared Alpha Betas into the Floridian battlegrounds with all his bases covered. Never a stranger to devious schemes and now a master of the 36 divine stratagems of war...Gable is confident he will put the grimy nerds back in their place. Not wanting to cast himself directly onto the front lines and jeopardize the plan he works covertly behind the scenes...and entrusts the mission in the hands of Vice-Jock Bradley Whitford (the bad guy from Billy Madison) and The Ogre.

His ultimate plan succeeds in entrapping the Nerds on a deserted island...where he leaves them to die. Yet, the plan comes awry as the Jocks make a critical error of backstabbing The Ogre in the back when they felt The Ogre was of no more use to them.

The Ogre, after smoking loads of marijuana cigarettes with the nerds, befriends them and is converted into a nerd. The combined force of the Nerds' intelligence and Ogre's brute strength form the most dangerous team in history and it leads to the Nerds escaping the deserted island alive.

The Nerds now in alliance with The Ogre and re-united with Booger who was off doing hardcore gross-out loogie-horking training with the venerable Master Snotty...happen upon a shack of military surplus equipment and use this equipment to raid the frat convention grounds in tanks...to once again take home the glory of victory in battle. (Nerds: 2, Jocks: 0)

Revenge of the Nerds 3: The New Batch

Synopsis: Many moons have passed and many old grudges have settled. The Adams University which was turned into a veritable battleground has now seen an era of peace and prosperity in the last half-decade. The Nerds won, they re-fitted the gymnasium into being a computer center and erected a statue of Einstein to display Nerd honor to all those who's eyes bestowed upon the center. They built monuments to their past victories, is what they did.

Morton Downey Jr., a wealthy local Captain of Industry, has enrolled his son into Adams and is shocked to come back to his old stomping grounds to witness first hand the Nerd atrocity of turning the gym into a computer center. Morton Downey Jr.'s veins swell with unfathomable and unquenchable anger over the Nerds lack of respect for Jock culture. The great and mighty Downey Jr. makes an oath to himself to stop this swelling tide of Nerd change and restore Adams as the Jock stronghold it once was.

Music Portion: The Korean Elvis impersonator does something, and there's a rap song. Both are not worthy of writing home about.

Film Quality: 4 Stars

Stan Gable's Role: Stan Gable is no longer a star quarterback, now he is a lonely policeman who's pickup truck is in desperate need of repairs. He tries to exact revenge on Nerds through his pseudo-position-of-authority by giving them traffic tickets for infractions they didn't even make...but all in all..Stan Gable is but a mere shadow of his once proud self.

Yet...he's not the only one. The Head Nerd, Lewis Skolnick, has a weary mind from past battles as well. After claiming Gable's would-be wife as his own through hard fought battle and excellent sessions of love making...Lewis feels a new confidence. This new confident Lewis begins to hate his former self and he sheds all markings of his nerdom. He starts to wear cool clothes (well, sorta), he grows a stupid looking pony-tail, refers to himself as "Lew" and stops himself from laughing with his Jamie Cromwell-esque super-nerdy laugh. He believes he is a new and better man...yet just like Stan Gable...Lewis Skolnick is only a shadow of his former proud self. He has become...the dreaded Self-Hating Nerd.

Stan Gable sees this un-nerdy Skolnick as a sign of extreme weakness in his former proud enemy. He sees this as chance to prey on the once dangerous nerd and reclaim his would-be bride from the clutches of his nemesis. Gable finds a powerful ally in the dastardly yet cunning Morton Downey Jr. and together they form a nefarious alliance of evil. Through Mort's powerful connections he installs Stan Gable as the new dean of Adams.

Gable, now more cunning under the stewardship of the evil Mort Downey, attempts his clever ruse of stealing Lew's wife by using the old tactic of "keeping thy friends close but thine enemies closer" as he feigns remorse and apologizes to Lew...winning his nemesis' friendship. Lew Skolnick shakes hands with a veritable devil that Stan Gable has become...and behind Gable's back is the most sharpest of back-stabbing knives primed for the nerdly back of his enemy.

Meanwhile, the new batch of Nerds at Adams (which include John "Nay-Nay" Pinette in a rare acting role) are no match for the tandem of Morton Downey Jr. and Stan Gable...they plead for the hero of yesteryear, Lew, to help them yet he is a self-hating nerd who defends his new "friend" Stan Gable at every instance of transgression. Their only hope lies in a lawyer they find in the Tri-Lambda former members database...the man known as Booger.

Downey devises a master plan of getting the Nerds framed and arrested for drug trafficking and it succeeds without a hitch...yet shockingly, in a turn of events no one expected...Stan Gable whilst testifying against the Nerds breaks down....

It wasn't tears of defeat....

Gable's heart was heavy for a long time and his conscience weighed him down like a rock....and right there on the stand he broke down and sold out the dastardly Morton Downey Jr. instead of the Nerds! But Why!?

Do you know why Gable was crying in Revenge of The Nerds One? Because of his defeat? No, it turns out that was not the source of this man's tears, not in the least. All these years...Gable was keeping a secret. Lewis wasn't the only self-hating nerd in this movie...Stan Gable...this whole time...since the very beginning...was a Nerd...a Nerd who hated himself.

In Revenge of the Nerds 1, all those years ago, while he was the star quarterback...that day when the Nerds won and defeated the Jocks....Gable wasn't crying because he lost...nay-nay...he was crying because he wasn't able to celebrate with them. Because he was not able to be true to himself and be a proud Nerd like he knew in his heart he was...he was relegated to solitude...unable to celebrate with his brethren.

Wow. That's fucking deep, word.

Revenge of The Nerds 4: Booger Gets Married

Synopsis: Booger gets married and a bunch of stuff happens.

Music Portion: Takashi sings a nice Japanese song at the end...it's still nothing to write home about though.

 Film Quality: 1 Star

Stan Gable's Role: Gable is now a full fledged nerd with a pocket-protector, glasses, and chicken-pox. Yes, chicken pox. He misses Booger's entire wedding due to being afflicted with a nerdy skin disease and has to stay in his motel room all week playing virtual reality video games and having nerd-sex with his nerdy girlfriend. 

He's in detente now, his character has finished its growth cycle. 

Cool.

Conclusion

The Real Stan Gable

The villainous Stan Gable went from a man who viciously tormented others...to a man content and happy to be himself. It is truly a great literary transformation that is warranted as being considered one of Literature's Greatest Moments.

What is the moral of the Parable of Stan Gable? It is "Don't Lie to Yourself...."

...Always be true to yourself, very very true to your own self. All of us should be truer to our selfs, big time.

Lying to yourself? That's just stupid, guy.

General Retrospective: Who Will be Remembered as The King of Trash TV?

Trash TV is officially dead, its run is over. Talk shows now a days fall into a very basic formula which promote various products (actors, actresses, consumer goods, etc.). The wild wild west known as Trash which brutalized the air waves for a good 30 years seems to be on its last legs. So, now that the genre is officially accepted as being close to or already dead, it is a good time to take a look back and attempt to crown a champion.

Some TeeVee historians tend argue the founder of the genre was one Alan Burke...who in the 60s would do an open show in front of a live studio audience which would sometimes be filled with very conservative people mixed in with the hippies/yippies of the era. The open audience would tend to boil over at times and it would get sort of unruly at times.

When other people started to emulate this genre, they not only tended to let small melees boil over in the audience but actively began to willingly encourage it or even plant actors in the audience to incite/instigate bedlam.

We shall focus on four particular hosts (or 3 and 1 honorable mention more like it). These 3 people are in my opinion the finalists for being King of Trash TV.

Preamble

To be considered as King of Trash, the show in question must have been highly controversial or even completely retarded, it must have been filmed before a rowdy or even asininely feral studio audience, and the studio audience must have been allowed to express opinions upon the subject matter despite how silly or fringe those opinion may have been.

One notable omission is the Howard Stern show. This show is more a of an interview/comedy show more consistent with a late night formula than the Trash genre. The "Channel 9" version of the Stern show is close to meeting the criterion of Trash yet I would still classify that show in the genre of a comedy/interview late night program. It displayed many of the qualities of a Trash genre program yet it is definitely not caste in the Trash format and thus is not considered. Stern may indeed be the self-proclaimed "King of All Media" yet he is surely not King of Trash.

Total jabronies who are worthy of mention but who did not make the final cut: Donahue, Sally Jesse Raphael, Joan "Skeletor" Rivers, Wally George, that big one Ricky Lake, Geraldo, Maury, Steve Wilkos, etc.

If anyone is unclear of what the Trash Genre is, the following is a short parody by Mr. Weird Al which sums up the genre quite compactly...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9c4uYfYn3Q)

Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced into Weight Loss Programs!

On to The Trash

1. Jerry Springer

Sub-Genre: Scripted Trash
Show Biz Percentage: 100%

The poster boy of the genre himself, the mayor of Cincinnati turned Trash iconoclast. This was the show that really honed the facets of the genre that selled to the audience best and took the Trash genre to its epitome and peak level. 

The things that sold best were ridiculous ass shit, fights, tits, and just general weirdness. The producers figured out that if you script all the fights and pay women to show tits then you can have this each and every single show. The cutest thing on this show was after all this scripted nonsense was done...Jerry would offer up a sobering and downright silly "final thought" to attempt to summarize the circus that had just ensued. The "final thought" segment was so darned odd that it was pretty hilarious. You'd have like 21 straight minutes of brawls from some whacky hill billy lesbian love triangle...and then Springer would read his inner most and somberest thoughts concerning lesbian hill billy love triangles as per prepared for him before hand.

Sobering thought...

I think this show is still on which is literally like kicking a dead horse at this point. In this case I guess it is literally like marrying a dead horse at this point I should say (if you watched this show back in the day, a fellow indeed came on to marry a horse once).

Since it is scripted, 100% show-biz, and mostly features actors it is hard to laugh at it sometimes, but the scripted whackos still rarely fail at being funny. Everything considered, this was a pretty decent program.


2. Morton Downey Jr.

Morton is mediating...

Sub-Genre: RAW 
Show Biz Percentage: 25%

Oh goodness. Morton Downey Jr., oh my goodness. This was a wild one, and I really believe close to 3/4 of this mess was not a shtick. They put two opposing groups of people into a room, surrounded them by a non-screened studio audience, and refereed it with an in-yer-face chain-smoking maniac.

The format was Loudmouth #1 vs. Loudmouth #2 vs. Loudmouth #3. Three or four guests expressing usually fringe and polarized opinions. Downey remained unbiased to the discussion and mainly just told everyone they were wrong and that they were idiots in order to fire them up and get them to open up about even more or their opinions.

The thing I like the most I think on this show is when a heckler is getting loud and crazy...they don't kick the person out...Downey summons him down to the stage a la Rod Roddy or goes into the crowd and fishes them out and gets them to a mic to express whatever opinion they are hooting or hollering about. Chances are its either gonna be funny, crazy, or insane but it will be heartfelt and real that's for sure. Sometimes they were opinions that may well have been correct but were simply too harsh that no one wanted to admit they were true.

One day it might be jezus freaks, wiccan weirdoes, and new-age kooks yelling at each other whilst being presided over by Dracula (note: the lady with the poodle head hair is the only person in this episode not in costume). Another day it might be rap stars versus white supremacists or some other volatile situation. How 'bout one about cult experts versus nutty scientologists? That one's good too.

He'll even get all post-modern and existential on you and do a rude talk show episode about rude talk show hosts. Hey, why not?

The piece de resistance may have been a show in a rented out Apollo Theater, with a sold out audience of rabid christians, gathered together for a good old fashion debate between atheists and christians. The rowdiness and fights that break out in the Apollo were not scripted...that's raw right there. The only thing that was scripted in this debacle was when he dumped water on "loudmouth #2"...the guest obviously had a hat ready to take out to sell the gag.

Downey passed away over a decade ago from lung cancer (the chain-smoking got 'em) but this show left its mark for better or worse.



3. Timothy Stack

Sub-Genre: Parody/Satire
Show Biz Percentage: 110%

You've probably seen T. Stack pop up somewhere here or there on some show or other. He's a longtime character actor. Here for example he's bit playing some bit on Seinfeld and you've probably seen him some other place on some show...probably.

He's sort of forgettable I guess, but on the two shows where he was given the headline time he really had some moments. Stack was of course Notch Johnson on the Bay Watch parody show "Son of The Beach" and he was also Trash TeeVee host Dick Dietrick on the short lived "Night Stand."

Trash Talk was already done-to-death at this point and this parody version was probably the best way to go with the genre. It is a stage show more than a Trash Talk but the audience is there and allowed to yell and stuff so it meets the criterion.

It's odd to parody things that are basically ridiculous to being with. I love that movie Black Dynamite for example which is a parody of Dolemite...and Dolemite was incredibly ridiculous to begin with meaning the parody became a parody of a parody which makes it a Dual-Parody. Stack's "Son of The Beach" parody of Baywatch fits the mold of a compounded Dual-Parody as does his work in Night Stand.

How do you parody Morton Downey Jr. or Springer? The end result will be stupidity multiplied by 2 is what it will be. Stupid times stupid is stupid squared. Double Stupid is something original at least...it's not something you see everyday anyway. Having more stupidity is better than having no stupidity.


4. Honorable Mention: Wally Sparks

Sub-Genre: Fiction 
Show Biz Percentage: 110%

This was a film about a rude talk show host starring the Legend of Comedy Legends Mr. Rodney Dangerfield.

The son of a respected governor thinks it would be a hoot to invite his hero, trash talksman extraordinaire Wally Sparks, to a ritzy party his father is hosting. Misfortune erupts as Sparks gets injured whilst accidentally riding a horse through the gathering. The governor reluctantly lets Sparks host his show at his mansion while he heals his wounds. As you'd expect all kinds of ruckus breaks out and Sparks does what he can to boost ratings and deliver the sleeziest trash teevee from the governor's mansion.

This movie isn't that good...it's not an A+ Rodney movie by any stretch but it should still be included in this retrospective. I've wrote a comedy oriented blog for like a few years now and I've never once even mentioned Rodney yet....so squeezing him in here seems like a good moment.

Rodney is a freaking amazing comedian, top 5 of all time no doubt, but he's definitely not the King of Trash Teevee (at least not in real life).



Drum Roll Pleeeeeeeeease.....


The Official King of the deceased genre known as Trash TV is...

 

It was between him and Springer and though Springer is a funnier show, Downey's show was plain nuts. He was not necessarily always a likeable dude but his show was intense and freaking wild. It's probably the one and only legit trash talk show that ever existed. Some parts of it were literally crazy and at some times it was so raw it was freakin' real as fuck. More real than anything you'll see on a so-called "reality" show on modern day TV that's for sure.

(Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYdoZRVYEjs)

 

"Ya Drug Dealin', Slime Sucking Son of a BITCH....I hope that you die sloooooooooooow"

-Morton Downey Jr. (1932 - 2001)

EDIT (Sept. 20/2014): I gave Downey props for doing an odd idea of doing a rude talk show about rude talk show hosts. The idea was kind of silly yet highly original. I recently watched this episode of the Bill Boggs Midday show in which he did a talk show of a talk show host talking to other talk show hosts about doing talk shows:

here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQJeSJ45vjE

Seeing as Bill Boggs was the producer of the Morton Downey Jr. Show, I'm gonna go and assume that the idea of doing an episode of a rude talk show host interviewing rude talk show hosts about doing rude talk shows was in fact Bill Boggs's so the props for that original idea should be given to Boggs.