I Am Still Alive

Quick, semi-embarrassing fact about myself: I sent an application to be on MTV's "The Real World" after the debut season. It was the springtime before college, and I thought it would be a totally fantastic experience, based on what I saw of the NYC crew. I still think that first run was great as an experiment, it was pretty entertaining, and the people were mostly just themselves and not shoved into roles yet or playing out manufactured drama for the camera. In my 18-year-old brain, getting on the show was a shot at trying out independence in an unknown city at the network's expense. I am thankful that I wasn't interesting enough to make the cut because, yikes, check out what that show got started (also that LA season was turrible). As much as I lament that I didn't seize on my imaginary potential to be a dancer/singer/aerialist/whatnot, I never had an impulse to be really famous - not that kind of famous, anyway. I'd love to be, for example, author-famous, where you get name recognition, maybe some critical respect, decent earnings, but people only rarely spot you on the street. I'm detracting from what made me want to write about this at all, though, which is that MTV ran a couple of old seasons over the past weekend to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show (ugh, don't even), and I caught a few bits.

I remember so well that first cast, and that Sunday afternoon I got my mom and friend Tanya sucked into a marathon, leaving our French project untouched and prompting my mother to declare herself president of Norm's fanclub (she was the first gay-rights activist in my life). There were no Eric Nies fans in the house. Re-viewing as an adult, it was so quaint and cute. Everyone had their own thing going on. Eric sucked as much as I remembered. The network ran some other seasons during the night, and I started to watch the Las Vegas one but just couldn't. I remember watching it upon the original airing, but no. No. That's the trash we've come to expect from reality television. We all might have been better off if Jello Biafra had gotten his wish oh so long ago.

But it's time to live in the now: Eastertime! Family! A hip-hop show! The approaching weekend is already one for the books.