Guilty Pleasures
There are many things we enjoy that are not front page news; those things we hide, even from our spouses.

There was a time not long ago when I enjoyed going to the shooting range and exploding a few $20's by ripping up silhouettes 30 feet away. There was no real reason for being what amounts to a gun nut. It's not like I was in the witness protection program or pursued by aliens. Besides, aliens are impervious to bullets. Aren't they?

So having come to my senses sometime in 2006, I packed up all my guns and headed to Dick's Gunroom in The Falls to sell back this self-indulgent habit. So much for the erstwhile soldier of fortune.

Lately it's been more passive pleasures, like certain reality shows. I will leave the deep, philosophical reasons why we like these experiments in human deviance to my fellow blogger Ryan Haidet. I just know what I like. These shows include "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Hell's Kitchen." No problem there. They are among the most watched shows this summer.

But something happened this Tuesday night that, frankly, is embarrassing. I watched TV. Nothing odd about that, but while I was watching I was laughing almost uncontrollably, to the point where my mother-in-law, Omi, became angry and wanted me to stop. Then Monika came in and she started laughing, too. What were we watching? "Wipeout."

If you don't know about "Wipeout" it is about as stupid a show as one could imagine. Twelve players are turned into human pinballs in one a sloppy obstacle course after another; the sloppier the better. There's mud and padded shapes just made to mess with the human body and things move, slip, swing, fall, slime, punch, roll and even poof, as in a pit filled with flour just because the contestants look funny when they climb out. It makes the humiliation that much better.

The show's hosts are the best and worst of Sports Center, including the attractive Mercury pitchwoman who somehow is not quite as charming when she's talking to a guy covered in mud as though she were interviewing LeBron. Even the contestants are fitting the model of ridiculous and sublime. The winner last night, for example, was a 6'4" surfer, I think, who took over the role of "color commentator" as his fellow competitors slid off a giant top, bounced off waterborne trampolines - not in a good way - and finally fell short of his wining time. I was in stitches.

I will probably never watch Wipeout again. It's one of those shows that you enjoy once knowing full well it will never be the same. But just like the guy who was eliminated on the "dreadmill," sitting there lost, forlorn and covered with sweat-soaked baking products, I'm ashamed. But it was great fun.