TV Review: Most Daring

The by-product of an evening of ennui is often the serendipitous discovery of a previously unexplored cable channel. For me last night, it was a channel called TruTV. If it's on your cable system, you should check out this seemingly endless source of train-wreck TV, most of it amateur, hand-held fuzziness.

This particular show, subtitled Loonies in the Boonies, is dedicated to the certifiable insanity of rednecks and mullet-men (and women). As one might expect, there's a lot of beer consumed and a lot of automatic weapons fired (often at the same time). Also in abundance are pick-up trucks, ATVs, mud, obese men and women, fist-fights, and unimaginable combinations of the above.

The games that these cretins entertain themselves (and us) with are mind-boggling in their stupidity. One of my favorites was Cowboy Pinball. Here's how it works. In a fenced-in area, 6-foot circles are outlined on the ground with lime. Into each circle goes a redneck, and into the enclosure goes an angry bull. The object of the game is to be the last cowboy standing. For the bull, the object is to mutilate as many cowboys as it can. If the bull's not really into it, an angrier bull is invited into the enclosure. And there's the train-wreck!

Here's another one. Using a garden hose (!), tie an office chair to the back of a pick-up truck, place one brain-damaged redneck on the chair and see how fast he can be towed before he's bounced out. A variation on this theme is to put the moron on snow-skis and tow him on a dirt road until he wipes out. If things start to slow down a bit, the producers pump it up with a fight between two trailer park denizens, male/male, female/female, or co-ed. And apparently it's always fun to show hunters, so drunk they can barely stand, trying to load and fire shotguns without killing each other.

So this summer, when you're tired of re-runs, take a look for TruTV. Or you can just wait for the networks to come up with Celebrity Loonies in the Boonies. It seems to me it's bound to happen.