Late Night Dining is Colorful...Always

I'm a fan of 24-hour eateries. While the quality tends to be marginal, if you are eating a meal at 3 in the morning under any state of duress, you aren't really inclined to care. Apparently, that didn't hold for this winner from Cartersville, GA:

Two Waffle House workers were forced to deal with an angry drunk man when he went in to eat a steak Sunday about 4 a.m.

According to the BCSO incident report, Matthew Todd Corley, 26, of Sunnyside entered the Waffle House at 10 Carson Loop, Cartersville, and demanded a steak.

The victims told deputies that Corley threatened to kill them if they did not cook him a steak. The female victim said he told her he would have the UFOs come for her.

According to the male victim, Corley beat on the tables with his hands before grabbing the telephone and calculator, also using them to beat on the tables. He also tried to jump over the counter during the nearly 30-minute ordeal.

Both victims provided written statements and, although they wanted him to go to jail, told deputies they did not want to press charges for the threats, which could have lead to charges of terroristic threats.

Corley said he had been drinking all day and was in a bad mood but did nothing wrong.

Corley was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

While it is fucked up that this dude was threatening the hard-working women and men of the night shift, I'm not sure that this counts as anything more than being a drunk asshole, not a terrorist. Sounds like a pretty regular night on Cops in fact. Wait, are we charging drunk guys on Cops for being terrorists? Uh oh.

The First Reality Show

With the glut of reality programming that comes on television now, it is nice to recall the more pleasant times when Fox showed programming like When Animals Attack and When Good Times Go Bad along with Melrose Place (Heather Locklear, you evil bitch) and Party of Five. In those days, Fox was on the forefront of creating the phenomenon of that floods our television now and has a channel dedicated to it, and no I'm not talking about MTV.

Fox went out above everyone with the brilliance that is Cops. It is the simplest of all concepts of all time: put camera crew with police cops, ride with police cops on calls, videotape all happenings. The sheer simplicity of this show is why it succeeded. We were put in shotgun to experience what it is like to be a cop, to chase down a crackhead that's hopping fences, or going to a domestic dispute. We have no better idea of what is going on than the cops; it's a radical and very fun idea. It reminds me of cinema verité in its lack of a clear plot or connectedness other than the fact that the people involved are cops.

This program started back in the 1980's and has, according to Wikipedia, shown over 650 episodes. Clearly, Cops has done something right. What it has done is make one of the first but the best reality show of all time. The informational tips aside, Cops still has its own character and doesn't feel like it has been sold out. I understand that Cops can't drop a product in here, but I mean that the situations and "players" are far more real than in other reality shows. The scriptedness of a lot of other shows is far too great for me and gets me into fairly complex structuralist arguments with myself about the (non) reality of reality and questions of authorship and detachment (read: things I deal with in art history). It is nice to watch a show where genuine emotions and reactions are present and shown in the forefront. It reminds me of the halcyon days of The Real World in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco when the roommates were starkly different and true tensions would boil up in the house. In two of those seasons, people left the house (David and Puck, if my memory serves me correctly). The shit was straight up raw funk. And the camera crew did not invade or intrude. They were neutral observers who were just following along.

Cops still lives by this simple mantra. As much as I love Project Runway, I can't watch it all of the time. There's all this built-in drama, an overanxious editor, and a lot of pomp and circumstance. I don't have to worry about that with Cops, as it is always consistent and simple. I can always turn the show on and not have to figure out what is going on or what they are supposed to be doing. Cops every week is three vignettes on the seedier side of America done documentary style, and that simplicity of concept is why it is the boss of the reality show.

The Fuzz Are Out to Get Me!

MPP:

Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges.[..]

The charges followed a Nov. 21 "no-knock" drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her.

Fulton County prosecutor Peter Johnson said that the officers involved in Johnston's death fired 39 shots, striking her five or six times, including a fatal blow to the chest.

He said Johnston fired only once through her door and didn't hit any of the officers. That means the officers who were wounded likely were hit by their own colleagues, he said.[..]

Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan said Thursday that although the officers found no drugs in Johnston's home, Smith planted three bags of marijuana in the home as part of a cover story.

The case raised serious questions about no-knock warrants and whether the officers followed proper procedures.

h/t: Crooks and Liars

Another Reason to Hate Laguna Beach

While it was mildly enjoyable to me for about five minutes, watching Laguna Beach became more and more of a chore as the season went on, as I had to feign interest in the goings-on of high schoolers in super wealthy Orange County, CA. Disregarding the lush surroundings and superlative camera work, it was watching a group of civilly disengaged, self-absorbed, under-read teenagers with weak vocabularies struggle through the faux difficulty of being extremely privileged and having every boy/girl fawning over them. As you can tell, I was not a huge fan of the show in any meaningful way. Now, I have less reason to like the show.

According to TMZ, pseudo-star of Laguna Beach Jason Wahler was arrested in Washington state this weekend. But this is not the outrage. The outrage is the hateful tirade that came upon being arrested:

Officer DePina, who wrote the report, says when Seattle PD arrived they found a "very intoxicated" Wahler passed out on the floor in a hallway on the third floor. When DePina tried to take Wahler into custody, the former reality star allegedly lashed out, calling the arresting officer "a nig**r, a fag**t, and a poor f**k." According to DePina, Wahler also stated, "that he was rich and would have my ass." Wahler, who was described as "belligerent and hostile," allegedy threated DePina a second time, saying, "Come down to L.A. county and get your ass kicked!"

Now, I don't necessarily like cops. I'd be the first person to go on record to say that. But! I would never contemplate swearing at a cop because that opens the door to getting my ass KICKED!

Regardless of this, Wahler should be ashamed of himself, but he does not need to make a public apology because his post-fact words don't mean shit to me. Honestly, I'm so sick of celebrities, regardless of their list status, making apologies for their language or actions. You do things. Bad shit happens. Unfortunately, it can be racist, homophobic, or sexist. While it might make a small group of people feel better and like the celebrity again, the hollow apologies make me feel the same as their original language: offended and disappointed. Any attempts to level with the public are only weak attempts to keep the money coming in and to not have people boycotting your performances. I would almost rather someone say, yea, I'm a homophobe and stand by it than issue a hollow apology. This would be disappointing for sure, but I would respect them more for standing on their laurels than trying to pull a bait and switch on me because I know that apology, no matter how many times they say it is sincere, is completely insincere.