From the Sports Guy
(This pretty much sums up my train of thought as I watched The Gauntlet last night. Except for the part about AC Slater. I think that's just a gratuitous SBTB mention.)
Q: For most of my life, the greatest athlete I had ever seen was A.C. Slater, but now I am pretty positive it is Alton Williams from the "The Gauntlet." Have you seen him? When I watch, I feel like an 8-year-old thinking Magic Johnson can do anything again. If Alton ends up losing somehow, I won't have anything to believe in anymore.-- Shaun Tygart, Salem, Ore.
SG: Quite simply, Alton is lifting us all to a higher place. There's nothing much more to say. He's the modern-day Jim Thorpe. Other than host T.J. Lavin saying the sentence, "That was a very challenging challenge," Alton's heroics have been the highlight of the season so far.
But here's my question: Why hasn't some name nonfiction writer spent a season with all of these MTV crazy people for a sweeping opus about celebrity and fame in the 21st century? I mean, this is a cottage industry at this point -- you have all of these unemployed rejects making enough money to survive in Los Angeles, partying all of the time, being treated like real celebs, hooking up with one another and getting into various forms of trouble. And that's basically their life. It's a life in which it's totally OK to scream at another person, throw that person's suitcase of clothes in a swimming pool, go dancing six nights a week and compete in challenges when you're wearing a thong and transferring body paint by rubbing it from your body onto someone else's body. Am I the only one who finds this interesting? What are their goals? What do their families think? How did they get to this point? At what age does someone like Mark (who's legitimately in his mid-30s) say to himself, "Maybe I should think about doing something else?" Do they keep coming on these shows because they like being quasicelebrities, or because they can't think of anything else to do for a living? Don't we need someone like Malcolm Gladwell to make sense of everything here?
Q: For most of my life, the greatest athlete I had ever seen was A.C. Slater, but now I am pretty positive it is Alton Williams from the "The Gauntlet." Have you seen him? When I watch, I feel like an 8-year-old thinking Magic Johnson can do anything again. If Alton ends up losing somehow, I won't have anything to believe in anymore.-- Shaun Tygart, Salem, Ore.
SG: Quite simply, Alton is lifting us all to a higher place. There's nothing much more to say. He's the modern-day Jim Thorpe. Other than host T.J. Lavin saying the sentence, "That was a very challenging challenge," Alton's heroics have been the highlight of the season so far.
But here's my question: Why hasn't some name nonfiction writer spent a season with all of these MTV crazy people for a sweeping opus about celebrity and fame in the 21st century? I mean, this is a cottage industry at this point -- you have all of these unemployed rejects making enough money to survive in Los Angeles, partying all of the time, being treated like real celebs, hooking up with one another and getting into various forms of trouble. And that's basically their life. It's a life in which it's totally OK to scream at another person, throw that person's suitcase of clothes in a swimming pool, go dancing six nights a week and compete in challenges when you're wearing a thong and transferring body paint by rubbing it from your body onto someone else's body. Am I the only one who finds this interesting? What are their goals? What do their families think? How did they get to this point? At what age does someone like Mark (who's legitimately in his mid-30s) say to himself, "Maybe I should think about doing something else?" Do they keep coming on these shows because they like being quasicelebrities, or because they can't think of anything else to do for a living? Don't we need someone like Malcolm Gladwell to make sense of everything here?
posted by Kit Pollard at
1:02 PM
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