I don’t think there’s a shortage of prissy, hipster fucks that can’t stand Dancing with the Stars. They don’t like it because, well, everyone else DOES like it. It’s a reality show. It’s a game show. Or any other surface reason that these people can find to devote the love and care that they only reserve for, well, not loving or caring about anything.

But one thing these people have in common is that they will dismiss a trifle like Dancing with the Stars“¦ Without actually having seen it. No, that would take away too much time from listening to tuneless indie music and watching small out-of-the-way movies for no other reason than the fact that they’re small and out-of-the-way.

I do not want to be like these people. They’re pants are tight, their sunglasses are oversized, their music is shitty, their women lack fire, and they have never wept with joy. So I took it upon myself to sacrifice my March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day) and the early part of my March 18 (National Hangover Awareness Morning) towards watching the season premiere of Dancing with the Stars and writing this column about it. Because I at least want to WATCH the show before I condemn it. This is the first episode of the show I’ve seen, and throughout all this, I have learned one very important thing:

That the only thing more annoying than prissy, hipster fucks”¦ are prissy hipster fucks when they’re right.

Insulting and tedious even by reality television standards, Dancing with the Stars reveals with the grim reality of a golf club to the side of the head that twenty-five million viewers (over six percent of the population) have lost even the basic will to be entertained on any level whatsoever. It attempts to make a competition out of dancing. I know there are dance competitions of every amateur and professional level going on anywhere in America on any given day. But let me lay something out for you. Dancing is to be done under two circumstances”¦

In the privacy of your own living room when no one is looking, shamefully, because you suck at it. This is how I myself dance, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

And as a last-ditch attempt to get laid if you don’t have good looks or a personality. But there’s a weight-limit on this one. There’s a line between dancing and imitating a bag of Cream of Wheat being thrown into a paint-mixer.

Competitive Donkey Kong is more of a sport than dancing”¦. No seriously. Have you seen that movie yet?

But anyway, Dancing with the Stars, for the uninitiated, is a dance competition hosted by two people so boring I didn’t even bother learning their names. The three judges, who preside over the contest with dainty and lace-covered fists, are some plasticky-looking clothes-rack, (Carrie-Ann Inaba), the requisite crusty Simon Cowell clone (Len Goodman), and some demented dwarf-weasel on meth and Red Bull (Bruno Tonioli).

The process for selecting is an interesting one, combining people I’ve never heard of, (Mario, Cristian de la Fuente) with people who make my ass ache with hatred (Penn Jillette, Adam Carolla) with people I legitimately thought died ten years ago (Priscilla Presley). They dance with professionals and you, you lucky viewers you, can vote on who gets to come back next week.

They’re introduced, they dance, the judges make pithy and sexually suggestive comments, and they go to the back to get their scores. Repeat for an hour and a half.

Can some drama and excitement be brought to this, a show devoted to controlled and pleasant forms of jumping around? I think there can be. To start”¦

• Instead of paying for the rights to songs that will be played by a cover band, why not just play the actual songs? Now I’m not saying that Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” was the best song in the world, but hearing the swing version was like listening to Yoko Ono being skinned alive by a loudly orgasming Gilbert Gottfried while Panic at the Disco was playing in the background. Send these spawns of Samhain to the HOLIDAY INN BARS FROM WHENCE THEY CAME!
• At least one point, every season, there must be a small land mine placed under the stage. Nothing lethal, mind you, just enough to take off a couple of toes. Keep these fuckers on edge! And the cool thing is that if after the thing goes off and it maims them they can STILL manage to finish their dance, they get immunity from being voted off. Do you know what the sight of Adam Carolla hopping around on stage with half a foot, screaming in pain is? CHERRY-FLAVORED AWESOME IS WHAT IT IS!
• Instead of having commercial interruption, how about we just spackle the contestants in logos Nascar-style. This isn’t because I want to watch more of Dancing with the Stars, but because I don’t like the specific commercials on ABC. I got a lot of “The Bachelor starts next!” You remember The Bachelor, don’t you? The show where all these skanks try to latch onto a man they’ve never seen before in hopes of getting married? That commercial ran so many times that now it burns whenever my TV tries to take a leak.
• There should be some kind of award or voting bump or something for the female competitor with the least spangly outfit. It’s like their moms fucked a Bedazzler. And if one of these women has the sheer intestinal fortitude to show up to dance wearing sweatpants and an ironic “Emperor’s Club” t-shirt? Then it’s the same as the land-mine rule. They can’t be voted off for a week.
• A light year is a measurement not of time, but of length, gauging the distance light (which is the fastest force in the universe) can travel in a standard year. The Horsehead Nebula, for example as an astonishing 1,500 light years from Earth. That, dear readers, is the length of my hatred for that insufferable, annoying dick-sneeze Bruno Tonioli. His high-strung nature combined with his accent, create the second-coming of Roberto Benigni, of which the scars have not yet fully healed. Hook this man’s nuts up to a car battery and give him a shock to the grundies every time his heart rate gets above a certain level. Either he’ll calm down or go into cardiac arrest. In any case, it may not fix the show, but it’ll make it easier to watch if I ever have to do it again.
• Replace the current hosts with Gary Busey. Do you have any idea how awesome that would be? THEY’D NEED ARMED GUARDS! Can you imagine the post-dance interviews? “Congratulations. The Wolf-God was in your Starhouse tonight, I can tell you”¦ I’ll touch your peenie for paint-thinner money! C’MON! DON’T MAKE ME HURT YOU!”
• Someone exuding universal manliness, like Edward James Olmos or Powers Boothe, should come on stage every once in a while and slap that goofy fucking grin off of Steve Guttenberg’s face. I understand he’s a happy, nice guy, but seriously, the only times you should grin that broadly for that long is if you just got out of prison or you’re getting blown by Heidi Klum. If not, then KNOCK IT OFF! Stay away from those kids, Mayor Goodman!
• I end with a serious one. I know this is a better reality show than the likes of The Moment of Truth, Supernanny, and Who Wants to Tongue-Bathe the Lithuanian Dockworker?. But what elevates my attitude towards this show from “distaste” to “white-out hatred” is the fact that this is the only celebrity game show on network TV that DOESN’T play for charity. They compete for ego, exposure, and the ugliest trophy this side of the Grammy. If they do good, then the show kind of rubs that altruism off on the viewer, and we can have a little more of an emotional investment in who wins and who loses.

And I wanted an even ten of those, but I wound up with half a page of legitimate notes and THREE pages of “If we were sensible we would seek death — the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.” Just that, over and over.

Lovecraft wrote that. Though plenty of viewers of Dancing with the Stars would say “‘Lovecraft?’ They make sofas, right?”

So if so many are delighted so much by so little, what on earth would happen when the REAL entertainment gets here?

-The opinions expressed by Dr. Royce Clemens in his Doom Dispatch column do not necessarily reflect the views of Geeks of Doom.-