But you have to wonder where the line is for some of these desperate reality show types, who, after all, can only hope to become famous for being not-famous (i.e. for playing "themselves," not-famous people, on television, where they will become famous and have to keep up the façade that they are still leading a normal life even if they were on Jimmy Kimmel the night before, since otherwise the whole illusion would be shattered and they would have to go back to being actually not famous, as opposed to constructed "reality" of non-famousness).

Which is all a long way of saying: how desperate do you have to be to go on a casting call whose main requirement is being too tired and/or busy to have sex?

First of all, welcome to life. We're all too tired and/or busy to have sex. Sex was for the pre-recession Clinton-era of fecundity and cigars. Now we can barely get it up to sext.

Second: No one would ever go in front of a large room full of people and admit that they are too tired and/or busy to have sex, because a) it's embarrassing, and b) no one cares, because we are too busy thinking about how we just want to go home and jump in bed with our partners for a good five hours of rest before we have to get up and go through the same daily grind again tomorrow.

It's hard to imagine what sort of demo this kind of schadenfreude would even appeal to. The people who relate to it won't get that quickie high of Jersey Shore, in an "at least my life isn't that bad," kind of way, because it is that bad. (In fact, Jersey Shore lost all its cachet as soon as the stars started sobering up and stopped slutting around.) Will it be entertaining? Inspirational? Will Dr. Drew be involved, and will Honey Boo Boo slap him again? These are the questions we kind of want answered, and we won't rest until we get them, or at least until we just slump over from exhaustion, because it's been a really tough week, you know?

If only this was a real show (YouTube)

And then it gets dark. Real dark.

The initial joke of the first episode plays on those Real World archetypal characters--the slut, the jock, the gay guy, the virgin--before going evolving into a different sort of parody than the one promised in the opening sequence ("Six sexy Americans alone in a house with nothing do...except get nasty"), and that leaves you feeling a little sick inside.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0App7QizQCU
"I think the fact that we're all getting a stipend to have sex with each other might violate state law," is our new favorite quote for 2012.

Episode 2, which came out yesterday, could have easily been a disappointment after the stellar premiere, and though it never quite lives up to the "Tombstone pizza contest" line, it does manage to keep itself on track with by satirizing the conventions of these shows without ever going veering into absurdest slapstick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1tD_TsZQJqI

If you think MTV producers aren't kicking themselves for not creating Sex House before, then you need to be paying more attention: we keep expecting a cameo from Snooki, but we're not sure if she's had her baby yet.

Selling Higher

In the increasingly shameless game of New York city real estate, Michael Meier takes the cake for most grotesque publicity stunt to date. As part of his "Selling Higher with Michael Meier" video series—who needs reality T.V. when you have YouTube?—the broker decides to use a time old advertising technique to sell a Chelsea Loft: hot, nearly naked people!

"To market it, I'm putting together a really provocative photo shoot" he says, strapping on a pair of his sick motorcycle gloves and mounting his Ducati in the video discovered by The Real Deal. Cue girl in a thong taking off her shirt,  in a shower a with brief-clad beau. Cut back to Mr. Meier sitting on his bike:  "Let's go behind the scenes!"

Popping wheelies around Chelsea in "his" Ducati (instead of taking the plane or  yacht) the desperate-to-be-cool kid finally arrives at 103 West 26th street. The next agonizing four minutes show Mr. Meier having make-up applied, various unattainably attractive people dry humping around the apartment and shots of the interior. "I'm ready to move in!" he says excitedly.

We're ready to vomit.

eknutsen@observer.com

The sausage fest of 'Comic Book Men' (AMC)

Today over a long lunch at Caroline's, actor/director/oversized advocate Kevin Smith discussed his new AMC reality show, Comic Book Men. The series, which focuses on Mr. Smith's own New Jersey comic shop Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash (as well as the kooky individuals who both work at and patronize the store), has been given a prime spot on the channel: directly after the zombie drama The Walking Dead.

After various mentions of how high he was, Mr. Smith took questions from the audience. The Observer enjoys a good comic book now and then, so we just had one question about the "reality" show...where were the female comic geeks?

"The show's called Comic Book Men," Mr. Smith answered to scattered laughter. "I hope there is some female viewers, even if they don't feel that it's gender-oriented towards them." Of course, that implies the subject matter itself isn't interesting to women, giving you a glimpse into the way Kevin Smith's mind works. And it just got better from there:

It's not like there aren't chicks in the show...there are chicks. But the reality of the comic book stores is that these are the people who work in them. There's not a woman among them. When we originally showed the idea to AMC, they said 'It's a sausage party,' so we said all right, let's bring in a chick. And for the presentation we brought in and shot a chick, and it was wonderful and great, but then AMC, god bless them, said 'Well, that's not the reality of the show.'

Wait so which was it? The girl was great and wonderful, or "God bless AMC" for waking up to the fact that women and comics just didn't feel "real" enough for the very high criteria of reality television? He continued:

So for Season One we were less concerned with gender politics in nerdom, and let's put forth a reality show. And this is the reality: these dudes work here. Now, we could alter the reality of the show...but that would feel kind of weird. This is a snapshot of a store where these guys have worked for 20 years, and unfortunately it is a sausage fest.

Oof. All those crazy feminists and their "gender politics." If you're wondering why the show would publicly hold auditions for a comic book store where authenticity means "everyone has worked here for 20 years"...well, us too. But the woman originally involved with Comic Book Men was Zoe Gulliksen, who Kevin Smith had called "perfect" in an early podcast about the show. The Clerks director mentioned that store manager Walt Flanagan "learned a powerful lesson" after claiming that girls didn't know anything about comics and then meeting Ms. Gulliksen.

Too bad that's a lesson Comic Book Men never plans on showing us.

A former chef at Gallagher's Steak House, Joseph Cerniglia appeared on the British TV personality's show "Kitchen Nightmares," where he was told by Ramsay that his New Jersey restaurant was in such a bad financial state it was "about to swim down the f-ing Hudson."

Rachel Brown, another aspiring chef who was eliminated in the fifth episode of Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen," killed herself in 2007. 

Perhaps the titles of these shows — "Kitchen Nightmares," "Hell's Kitchen,"and others — have lost any of the edginess they once had, and are now simply morbid.

Fear not, eager audience members, all the crucial elements are addressed.

Booze:

He remembers the era when martinis came with lemon peel instead of olives - because olives displaced too much gin.

Light-hearted workplace lechery:

For 25 years his firm ran a secret sex contest, in which people voted for the person they would most like to sleep with. The winners would get a weekend together at The Plaza Hotel, and the event lasted into the 1990s when sexual correctness finally took over.

Shrewd self-invention:

This was one of the smaller, Jewish agencies. He says: "I worked there for two, three months and I was coming down in the elevator one night at 9.30pm and the new boss gets on and he says, 'Workin' late tonight, kid?' And I said: 'Ma nishtana halayla haze mikol haleilot?' which is a Hebrew prayer meaning, 'Why is this night different from any other?' He gave me a $3,000 raise before the elevator hit the bottom." Not every Italian kid from Gravesend, Brooklyn, could pull that off.

And of course, the dark side:

When he first started making money, he bought his wife some fabulous clothes. She visited her parents in Brooklyn, proud of her success. Her mother opened the door and said, "you look like a Jew".

Bonus points for casual anti-semitism! No word on sexless blind dates.

VIEW SLIDESHOW > WHEN GOOD TASTE GOES ON VACATION

Crain's says that the secret to his success is that he "quickly diversified" in the wake of the economic collapse, collaborating with the likes of LG Electronics, Victoria's Secret, and Payless.

Siriano also credits his youth.

"I value the fact that I'm young and new and fresh and still learning," he says in a video interview.

Cue the cameras! Mr. McLaughlin will be chronicling his search for love and shelter in a new weekly video segment called "The Search."

"It's a classic New York story," said his boss, Gersh Kuntzman.

Note the comments:

The series will follow 16 aspiring rap moguls as they compete in a series of challenges to determine their "savvy, street smarts, manipulation, power and the art of winning"--"the skills that took 50 Cent from the streets to corporate America." At the end of each episode, 50 Cent will eliminate a contestant. The winner will get a full scholarship to an undergraduate or graduate business program.

We'll have more details later, but 13 units are currently on the market in the building at 118 Greenpoint Avenue, marketed by Aptsandlofts.com, ranging from $399,000 for a one-bedroom loft to $699,000 for 950-square-foot two-bedroom. According to the Web site, the building is "conceptualized to cater to the creative individualist."