"Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself"

I guess it's only right that my first post here is a bit of an introduction to give everybody a bit of a hint at what you may expect from me in the future.

So here we go - I'm a bored, 45 year-old Midwestern zero whose day job consists of taking care of the books of my family's business. In my spare time I've been a writer for a number of local publications - mainly music reviews and previews, but I've also dabbled in television, movie, and political opinion pieces. I even hosted an advice column for a couple of years.

I'm also a weekly guest on a local rock radio station, where I "kick" somebody out of town. These rants can be found at scotthudson.blogspot.com.

It's only fair to point out that I'm NOT a fan of reality television. In my opinion, American Idol is everything that's wrong with the music industry. I gave Survivor almost one season, but the product placement and selective editing drove me away long before the tax dodger collected his prize.

Yet I've always been a fan of Big Brother. Although this fact perplexes the majority of my friends, the reasoning is simple - by far it comes the closest to "real". Sure, the producers commit some of the same casting sins as every other reality show. It's also obvious there is some behind the scenes manipulation to ensure certain events occur. For the most part, though, once the contestants enter the house we see them as real people. In fact, thanks to the multiple cams what we wtiness is even more real than what the other contestants see. If a contestant is a complete phony to the others, we're the first with the ability to call them out.

Sure, the actual network broadcast stinks. Historically, it's been the most low-rent production of the entire reality genre, and the producers commit every editing sin possible. But those of us who watch the live feeds know the "truth", and it's always been fun to nitpick what's not true (or has been overplayed/underplayed) on the CBS version.

Thanks to the writer's strike, we have a special new season ready to kick off in a couple of weeks. What can we expect? I'm happy to hear there's no silly couples/ex's/feuds/America's Player garbage. Could this be the season where there's no silly "twists"? Probably not, as I'm sure there's other schemes to attract headlines. But it will be interesting, particularly in the early weeks, to see how the contestants deal with the difference in the weather. Will the smokers sit outside all night, like last summer? Granted, the weather in Southern California is a lot nicer than in my chilly part of the country, but even late in the summer seasons we have seen complaints about the dropping temperatures.

I'm also hoping that the rush to get this season underway will cut the number of "professional" reality show contestants. Almost every season has been plagued with houseguests (I hate that term) who have either appeared on other shows or were in the running. Hiring nothing but "semi-pros" could be argued as the easier way to go, but wouldn't it be nice to have a "pure" version to watch this spring?