HURL! Television has reached it’s limit.
Eating, Entertainment, Fast Food, Food, Hollywood, television
TV Blows Chunks!
Written by Andrew Torchon
The most recent installment of television game show shenanigans let loose on
HURL is the next generation of train wreck entertainment to air on the one channel that actually shows promise at being cutting edge in a world of bland terrestrial network TV.
G4 has some unique and funny programs but unlike savvy and sarcastically fun stuff like X-Play and Attack of the Show, this newest attempt to use gross out humor coupled with a competitive venue highlights the ever increasing public fascination for witnessing humiliating and debasing behavior towards our fellow quaffed and couture bipeds.
Segments of The View,
The brave new world of instantaneous viral gratification has spawned the historic outpouring of cyber exhibitionism where by any nimrod with a flip phone can catch their best buddy smashing his nuts while attempting to skid across an outside step rail, face planting on just about any surface imaginable (the best being asphalt which is of course, apropos), or, in this case, releasing an esophageal fire hose of their intestinal contents.
Now that’s funny!
You say that footage of a person projectile vomiting his or her guts out has already been done? Too true; in fact the Internet is splattered with many a YouTube submission of people from across the globe who have offered all manner of ingestible bits and pieces, liquids and sauces emitted in raucous detail for our viewing pleasure, if you can call it that.
In fact to date YouTube by itself has over 73,000 entries just under the search criteria of “throwing up”. But HURL ups the ante in the poker game of how much can one viewer stand.
From the fertile brains of the people that gave us Code Monkeys and introduced America to the sometimes perverse world of Japanese TV comes the epitome of low level amusement where the thrill of gluttonous shoveling via Competitive Food Eating Contests are combined with stamina breaking events that are guaranteed to crack the equilibrium, churn the stomach like a night on the Bering Seas and rival the gravity stress training devices at NASA.
Oh sure it’s always funny until someone throws up and then they announce the winner
So now you really have an original recipe for a nightly diversion providing you haven’t had your dinner and wanted a good reason to start your diet or go off food entirely.
But to be fair some of the best college memories are episodes that involve partying until we were so blind that the home coming queen suddenly made the left turn from happy go sluttish drunk to retching idol worshiper down on bended knees praying to the porcelain God Ralph.
“I don’t care about my shoes!”
Ah good times, good times. Of course it goes without saying had we, after wiping away tears of laughter shed at the expense of a friend who you knew would be there to hold your hair away from the bowl as you offered your tribute, did we wish –
“Dude, if we could have just gotten her on a rollercoaster after that last malt 40 and anchovy pizza, then we would have seen the spew in Technicolor. Sweet!”
As anyone will tell you most humans find bodily secretions, noises and emissions to be rather disgusting unless produced in the right settings and time. Timing is of course everything. That being said it is interesting to note that the current state of the general populace’s exposure to the world seems to be limited to the Internet’s predilection for all things humorous and violent and that any number of these subjects can be found by the thousands with the right keywords and a click.
Is it then any small wonder given this wide spread access to these extreme vignettes that people have become desensitized and numb? The web has afforded us tremendous opportunity and provided a window in which to view the most beautiful, the most violent and the most incredibly dumb.
We’ve seen it all from a hit and run driver leaving an old man in the streets to die while people casually walk past him taking little note and even less action, to the inhuman act of terrorists as they beheaded Daniel Pearl. Even the acclaimed video of 2 Girls 1 Cup has accumulated more viewers and reproductions than all the news about the
So who do we blame for such mindless fodder? No one and everyone.
It is unfortunate that most network and studio executives in charge of creative development are neither creative nor developed; the viewing public shares the same amount of guilt if not more for these kinds of shows.
Why? Because we watch them!
On one hand HURL does get points for taking a repugnant so-called sport like Competitive Eating and adding to it what everyone who watches these kinds of tournaments always wants to see in the first place – someone blowing their bowels through their athletic cake hole.
It remains to be seen how well the show will fair but judging from the continuous stream
of raunchy humor, disgusting behavior and an endless supply of videos showing people hurting themselves in a repetitive parade of groin shots, prate falls and sneak attacks it seems like HURL might just become your next MUST SEE TV.
Unless of course they decide to go even further and introduce “So You Think You Can Crap?”
Torchon @ November 9, 2008