While I was watching the Twins/White Sox game yesterday on Fox, I saw an advertisement for one of the network's summer reality shows: Don't Forget the Lyrics, hosted by Wayne Brady. No, that's wrong, I thought to myself. That is not the name of the show. I went on the Internet to clear up this confusion and discovered that Fox and I were both right. NBC is producing an identically premised show called The Singing Bee, hosted by Joey Fatone. Both shows play snippets of songs and ask contestants to sing the next line. I favor a full-employment economy for D-list celebrities along with other working stiffs, but it appears to me the producers are scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. Thinking of barrels made me think of monkeys and caused me to reflect that no one has produced a reality TV show based on the well-known tendency of monkeys to shit in their hands and fling it at persons or things that annoy them. Imagine the fun! And there are many ways to spin the premise. You could have teams of humans dodging monkey-poo on NBC. CBS could feature a game in which one person at a time tries to anger half a dozen monkeys, and the one covered in the most poo at the end receives a cash prize. Fox could recruit teams of humans to shit in their hands and throw it at each other, and bill it as the ultimate back-to-nature reality show.
In the meantime, I have got a real stumper to suggest for the "Final Jeopardy" round of one of these singing shows: a live version of the Doors' "The End" that asks contestants to sing the line after "Father, I want to kill you."
