Friday, October 20, 2006

Flavor of Love aka The Ghetto Bachelor

Wassup, Y'all!

I'll admit that there are times when ol Ty misses the boat and ends up hatin' unnecessarily. From way back (2004) I've been keeping my eye on that faux romance reality show The Bachelor (mainly because the premise is every homeboy's dream to have 20 women jocking for your attention. Yes, it's shallow but...) and openly wondering why they even bothered to put any minorities in the show because they would never get chosen and never be asked to be one of the bachelors. Then they flipped the script and would sometimes recruit a bachelorette from time to time (a shorty culled from the group of women cast offs from the Bachelor shows) who would vie for the attention of 20 men. Still the same comment applied - no minority would ever get picked to be either the bachelorette or one of the 'pick me!' bachelors. So y'all know me - I was crying about how unfair all that was when all I had to do was flip over to VH1 and tune into Flava Flav's reality the show, 'Flavor of Love' to get a ghetto-fied dose of The Bachelor....

For those not familiar with Flav's show (and how can you not if you're ever over at VH1? It's one of their top rated shows. Kinda similar to how Jerry Springer was once a top rated show...), the set up is very similar: 20 shortys get together under one roof and vie for the chance to be Flav's #1 shorty. In the meantime and in between time, there are copious amounts of clowning, cat fighting (both physical and verbal) and back biting. All to win the love of Flav (who, if you take some time to get past that gold grill and that 'Greatest Hype Man in the Business' act, is actually pretty cool. It's no coincidence that VH1 tabbed Flav for his own show once they saw how audiences reacted to him on their other reality show for B level entertainers called 'The Surreal World').

So here you have Flav giving all his shortys nicknames like Bootz, New York and Deelishis, putting them through the paces and kicking all but one to the curb just like The Bachelor. The difference here is that there's only one bachelor and in order for him to continue on next season, his romance with his 'one true shorty' must fall apart so he can return looking for a new love. The 'fall apart' part isn't difficult as with most people on reality shows these days, they're only there to get noticed, get their quick 15 minutes and hopefully get paid for it.

Now my boy Cat Daddy (who never misses an episode) hipped me to VH1 again cribbing The Bachelor's mojo by building a show around one of Flav's cast offs - Tiffany 'New York' Patterson. The new joint is called (not surprisingly) 'Flavorette' which will no doubt feature such ghetto-fied action as stealing each other wife-beaters, doo-rags, gin & juice and what not. I'll withhold judgement until I can check out an episode but I'm not holding out much hope for anything classier than Flav's original joint. I like EURweb.com's quotes which anticipates 'more over-the-top mess' (which is also known as a 'hot mess' down at Winkey's Corner Store) and NY feeling herself by stating "I like it when the guys go at each other," she says. "I'm a prize, I'm so worth it - frankly, it turns me on."

Hmmm...I wonder why Flav decided not to choose such a modest, demur shorty as New York?? Good luck Flavorette, homeys!! But you boyz might want to check in with Tony Parker first to see just what you need to do to step out with a HIGH MAINTENANCE shorty...

Peace@Least,

Tyrone

No comments: