Hotdogs

 

I have a confession to make. Late Tuesday night , for a single, fleeting moment in time, I… well… here goes… felt sorry for Hotdogs.

I know, I know. Trust me, I know. It really shouldn’t have been possible, and I can assure you that I have since restored my common sense. But I just couldn’t help it.

You see, I had the pleasure of witnessing the return of the Hotdogs Uplate Game Show. And here was a man – the most vile, painful man – so seemingly oblivious to the reality of a delusion that made him quasi-famous as a Big Brother housemate. Hotdogs was, let us all remember (it’s unpleasant, I know, sorry to make you go there), the archetype of the sleazy wog real-estate agent; and he believed in his archetypal charisma so much, that he honestly thought he was destined to be a Star™. He actually believed it. Amazing, I know – but so endearing did he become to a public who very much enjoyed the cruelty of laughing at a man so delusional, Hotdogs ended up ironically being the only housemate of his series to get a gig.

 

I wondered if Tim Brunero would soon grace our screens in some manner; but imagine my surprise, when one night I turned on my television to find Hotdogs tempting me to spend big, on one of the most obviously corrupt scams that commercial TV had ever stooped to conjure. It was breath-takingly awful.

There he sat, pretending to be waiting for a call. It was presented as a “race” – leading us to believe that Australia was really that stupid and that only a handful of people were watching it, competing with us in the mad scramble towards a bundle of cash. Never mind that the phone was actually running hot the entire time, while Hotdogs pretended to sit there in a silent studio where nobody in the entire country had solved the puzzle. Never mind that in actual fact you lodged your answer on an electronic registration machine, and, knowing your answer, viewers with wrong answers would be systematically chosen and called back, just to provide the effect that everyone was getting it wrong. Eventually, they would pull a correct answer, and solve the puzzle. Never mind that you were actually lodging your correct answer, alongside hundreds of thousands of others. It was the most transfixing sham I had ever seen. I questioned the soul of Big Brother, but here was the true epitome of the modern ethos of commercial television. They were so openly scamming the unsuspecting public of hundreds of thousands of dollars; and then pulling the pose of being the generous friend as it gave away pitiful amounts like $250, after receiving tens of thousands in revenue from the 55 cents of all the poor people who had fallen for it.

“C’mon, guys!” Hotdogs would say, with the presence of a cardboard cut-out that had been possessed by some ex real-estate demon. “Why isn’t anybody ringing? It can’t be that hard guys, The Dogs wants to give away this cash!”

And he believed in it, of course. Who else, but the delusional ex real-estate agent could stand there and give it such a horrifying all? Who else could refer to themselves in the third person, and not even flinch? What the fuck did he care if he was scamming your money? That’s what the Dogs was born to do – he’d been doing it for years now, already. His dream, after all, was just to do it on a national scale – to be famous for it – and, most importantly, to feel worshipped for the charisma with which he did it.

Occasionally, I would find myself working in the midnight hour, and I would return to the horror of the Hotdogs Uplate Game Show. No matter how low it got, it managed to continuously decay. Eventually, they realised just how gullible the general public actually were; and boy wasn’t that a happy day for them, when they realised that more money could be made, if the puzzles were made so easy that every sucker could ring in with a correct answer that would find nothing than a registry machine. Kaching! At least, initially, I would find myself occasionally drawn to solving the odd puzzle of interest. In the end, the show was demanding the kind of intellect required to solve:

Who’s this Australian actress?
N_CO_E KID_AN

This would be followed with Hotdogs talking about how he wouldn’t mind shagging her, and how he reckons if she met him, she no doubt would.

“You can’t resist the Dogs!” he would grin, with his tongue wagging.

You just watch me.

And here is a good example of what I was talking about in The Sydney Morning Herald article I wrote, where I reminded everybody that regardless of all this talk of Big Brother being taken off the air, the show was hardly at the point where it was about to end it’s journey into modern consumer hell. May I remind everybody that when Hotdogs finally left our screens to make way for the Mike Goldman extravaganza (unlike Hotdogs, quite a professional, admittedly charismatic, sleaze), everybody chuckled and presumed it was bright lights out for The Dogs. The Logies took it upon itself to crucify The Dogs, and he was gutted, and hung out to dry by just about every facet of media – highbrow, or otherwise. The Dogs was, after all, lower than the lowest lowbrow. The lowbrow could sneer at the Dogs – he was just that bad.

But the night after BB06 finally – thank fuck – left our screens, quite a nasty shock crawled out of the Ten kennel. The Dogs was back. Bigger, and better, and more soul-less than ever. The media thought Dogs was gone. They were wrong.

Even worse, it was competing with Quizmania – yes, other channels (so quick to criticise the depravity of Big Brother, I might add) decided to throw decency to the wind, and make a shitload of cash while scamming the public just like Ten was. And just how cheap are these ex BB housemates? What possible motivation could be behind giving two ex BB stars that nobody for the life of them could remember (or would want to, particularly) this gig? Surely, there are desperate people out there who are actually talented? Quizmania’s blonde BB bimbette is like Romper Room on Ritalin. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to miss Tony Robbins.

But there’s a slight change to The Dogs, this year. He’s not alone. Perhaps responding to Quizmania’s bizarre format of alternating between three separate hosts, Hotdogs now has co-host, Chrissie. And boy, isn’t she a treat.

In fact, Chrissie actually has some talent – a scrap of it – but it is a small surprise that quickly fades in pleasure. Chrissie enjoys chastising black culture, and declares every third caller to be a “Homie G”, before mocking the archetype – despite none of the callers sounding even remotely black, or even slightly resembling the Eminem culture. She also enjoys lampooning the Thai mailbride archetype, and intermediately, for no apparent reason, launches into strings of “Love you long time!” Her voice also has a way of being akin to having a mafia boss place your head in a vice, while applying a powersander to it. It’s that unpleasant.

But there is one pleasure to Chrissie that evidences an interesting marketing decision for Ten. Chrissie is remarkably cruel to The Dogs. The feisty sparring male/female comedy co-host thing is, apart from being based on archaic ideas of gender division, quite popular with ten. It’s one of those bizarre conventions that for some reason, has survived – like the smiling bimbos of game shows that never make us blink even once when watching Bert’s Family Feud. Big Brother has its own in the Ryan and Bree dynamic, and it has been rehashed with a vengeance in the all new Uplate Games Show.

What’s actually acceptable in this hybrid of the conventional, is that Chrissie doesn’t just spar with the sleazy male – she beats him to a pulp! Chrissie cuts down hotdogs almost every second; she mocks his masculinity, calls him stupid, and even occasionally physically assaults him. It’s understandably appealing.

But then, for this strange moment, I felt bad. People hated Hotdogs so much, that in the end, Ten had decided that maybe the only way to make this man compelling was to allow the audience to watch him get ripped to pieces, night after night. Everybody has been laughing at Hotdogs for the last year – now even his own show is. That’s its new “thing”. He stands there, desperately believing in his own neon light. But he’s a loser. That’s his pull, now. He’s so pitiful, we love watching him cling to his delusions while we continuously belt the shit out of his integrity.

What a horrible thing it is. It’s a dark kind of entertainment. The dark ages are ablaze with neon lights, flashing “Give your money to us!” And even the people used to front the scam are being screwed.

It bothers me still, in part. It bothers me, at least, in what it says about the machine behind The Dogs. But I couldn’t sustain my empathy for the man himself.

It first dwindled with the terrifyingly complex puzzle;

Name this country
T_RK_Y

“I’ll give you a clue,” he grins. “Slap!”

When a lucky bogan is finally chosen to win the money, The Dogs revels in his charisma; “Did you get my clue, before? Slap? Get it?!” He sniggers. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, mate. It was,” says the bogan.

The next game was a picture puzzle, where viewers had to pick the difference between two seemingly identical pictures of Shane Warne (he had a crease in his forehead in one).

“I love Warney!” he declared, before providing a voice over for the photo of Warney on a mobile phone. “I think he’s saying ‘honey, I’m at work, I’ll be working late, tonight.’” He laughed, as he always does, at his comic genius, before sighing, “Living legend”.

But the piece-de-resistance had to be his advice to the living legend. Let us not forget (I can’t, no matter how hard I try) that ten chose Hotdogs for the show, despite (and more realistically, capitalising on) the arrest of The Dogs for obscene public behaviour, after being caught getting a blowjob in the carpark outside a nightclub where he was giving a post BB appearance. Did it bother BB that their star had done this while not only on the BB P.R payroll, but during one of his official promo gigs? Hell no, they hired him as the only member of his year to get a gig on TV.

“Hey mate, I got in trouble once,” Hotdogs tells the photo of Shane Warne; “and I just denied it. That’s what you gotta do, mate. That’s what I did. Deny, deny, deny.”

Chrissie is a welcome addition to the bowels of commercial television. Hopefully any minute now, Ten will shit out the whole thing. But you and I both know that isn’t going to happen.

“I’m just here to be stupid,” he admits, at one point.

Yes. And I’ve no doubt you’ll be here for some time, yet.

The next night, I received an email to inform me that Chrissie, enemy to The Dogs, had been taken off the air. After two nights!

What happened? How do you manage to get canned in 48 hours? Surely, she wasn’t slotted in as “special guest” – there wasn’t anything terribly special about her. Someone, somewhere, in a very nice suit indeed, had made a decision. Usually, this means that a secretary was fielding angry, disappointed viewers. What was there to be angry about?

Oh, dear. Did people all over this country actually feel sorry for The Dogs?! Did they defend him? Was my fleeting sympathy a casualty of a synchronicity that rolled across the nation, leading all to momentarily lose their rationale, and in a strange (wrong) moment, declare; “Get that bitch off our Dogs!”?

Like Mel, I feel compelled to fall to my knees – or, at very least, publish an official apology – and beg for your forgiveness. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to feel sorry for The Dogs. Really, it was never my intention to partake in any action that would leave Dogs alone to froth at the mouth all by himself. I was invaded by a misguided sympathy. It's a disease. I call upon all the members of the Jewish community, to help rid me of this terrible affliciton.

 

Anyway, I returned to the witching hour, to observe the absence of Chrissie for myself. There he was. Free to let it flow as he pleased, without some grating faux-feminism to stop the roll of the Dog.

“I know what the ladeez like!” he assured us – without any lady present to question the assertion.

 

Come back, Chrissie!

The next night, it was even worse. Hotdogs was joined by an almost-special guest. There he was – one of the few current Big Brother housemates I ended up genuinely liking (perhaps in that way one finds themselves drawn to John Howard, if you’re locked in a room with him, alongside Alan Jones, and Margaret Thatcher).

Rob? What the hell are you doing!?

Well, to be fair, he’s not hairdressing in Wollongong. But it would be lovely if Rob, who managed to use his two-minute notoriety to promote an AIDS charity (while cowboy Dave contributed to the world the knowledge that his father had hugged him three times), did not end up becoming the antithesis to Chrissie. Functionally speaking, the threat to the dominance of the Dog was now perfectly counterbalanced by a happily self-sacrificing homosexual, who took Hotdogs’ patronising homophobia dressed up as acceptance, all in good stride.

I think it was once the sex education began, that I finally reached breaking point. I can find Hotdogs’ unknowing self-degradation vaguely amusing (I’ve forsaken my moment of sympathy now, as you can tell), but the degradation of Rob is too much. When Rob first entered Big Brother, I had a terrible sense of something I chose to completely ignore, for the sake of all involved. It returned, on the Uplate Game Show.

“How did you end up gay?” asked Hotdogs.

As Rob explained in the house, he had declared his homosexuality by the age of 12. At 12, I hadn’t even begun to face the internal conflict that is the difference between wanting to be with Madonna, and wanting to be her.

“And how did you work that out, by then?” asked Hotdogs.

Rob pulled his best naughty expression and responded, “Extra-curricular activities!”

The extra-curricular activites of a child under 12 years of age (remembering that he constantly assured us he has never even seen a naked woman, let alone been physical with one) that would inevitably lead him to decide he was homosexual whilst still in primary school (he also admitted in the house that he knew no other boys in school that knew as young as he did) is not something I particularly want to consider.

At this point, I changed the channel – upon which I found Quizmania, and in a frightening panic, turned the television off, all together. My life was infinitely richer, it goes without saying.

And I must confess, I have been sitting here at my laptop, waiting for the clever revelation that brings forth resolution in this discussion of The Dogs. It hasn’t come. I know I’m supposed to tie this off in some witty, poignant way. But I just don’t have that final stab in me. A week with Hotdogs, and I’m feeling a little stabbed, myself. By what, I’m not so sure. That’s the horror of the Hotdogs Uplate Game Show. The inevitable response is often as inarticulate as Hotdogs is, himself.

First, you have the nagging sensation that logically, there would be no reason to be writing about the Dogs, at all. Why, after all, did I put myself through The Dogs? Yes, it just happened to come on. But am I really that disempowered as a consumer, that I allow myself to be transfixed by whatever assaults me from the screen?

Thankfully, the answer is no. But I’m not sure that makes it any better. It means I was actually compelled by something. Something about The Hotdogs Uplate Gameshow made me engage.

But you see, I’m the kind of consumer that – perhaps for no other reason than the will to make my hell at least entertaining – will indulge in scenes of the cultural crime. They are compelling portraits, that for moments, I simply cannot resist.

Imagine if you travelled back in time, and you went up to yourself and said, “Here, I have a video from the future – this is what you will be watching one night, when you’re 30 years old.” Imagine if you played yourself a VHS of the Hotdogs Uplate Game Show. What would you think?

When I was 19, and a young communications student (I know, I know, but we were told there was going to be some “boom” that would leave us sitting pretty, and hey, we believed it), I first saw the birth of the infomercial. It seems strange to think that one night, I was sitting there watching some ad, at 2 in the morning, and that eventually, I would realise the ad had been going for almost an hour. That’s the kind of trip that 19 year old communications students pay good money for. I actually called my flatmate to the scene, so she could assure me I was sane, and that this commercial seemed to have no end.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, at 2 in the morning, watching a woman sell me steak knives for an entire hour.

“Why, it’s the infomercial!” I would tell myself, as I stepped out from the time machine. “And wait. There’s more!”

At this point, I would place a VHS in the VCR (loved those 90s, didn’t you?), and little Aaron would sit there, transfixed.

“C’mon, darling – give it to The Dogs!” he would grin to the caller who had absolutely no chance of knowing the solution to the puzzle (which is actually why they had called her).

“The first word is ‘big’, and the second word is what, Janelle?” he would ask her.

“Um… banana?” Janelle would answer.

“Oh, Janelle!” he would ooze, as he pulled his best slow motion constipation expression. “I’m sorry, love, it’s not. But keep ringing in your answer - The Dogs believes you can do it, Janelle!”

This the moment in time, my friend. Our time. I’ve put you there. The stab – the very meaning of this moment - I believe is a feeling that cannot be intellectualised. The Dogs, let’s face it, cannot be intellectualised.

But you feel it, nonetheless. There is a horror there, somewhere, that cannot be put into words. Evolution is something we far too often romanticise, and in the subjectivity of our present, cannot even see. But it’s 2006, and every night, Hotdogs - a man who threw himself into a cruel reality TV show, just to find the fame he thought he deserved, and was then arrested in the apex of his notoriety for getting a blowjob from a drunk fan at a PR gig - grins his way onto our widescreen plasmas, and tries to convince us that he can help people out of their poverty. By scamming their money. And in the ad breaks, there are two young porno-style models, and they are undressing each other to bad saxaphone, and a sultry voice suddenly says, “We want you, baby – call us now, and give us all your money”.

Reality bites. I hope I never leave my TV on at midnight, ever again.