TV is the New Reading

‘Pop Fiction’ about

as bright as its ‘stars’

Thank “TMZ,” the celebrity news gossip site and its dull-witted companion television production (apparently it airs here on ABC at 5 p.m.), for blending celebrity “news” and gossip with media-relations garbage and just plain unsourced nonsense and plops it all into the public view with no consideration for ... well, the public.

As if in response, creeping out from beneath a rock on “E!” – the only network with an exclamation point – “Pop Fiction” is busy turning nobodies into has-beens in 30 minutes or less.

Going Andy Warhol one better – that is, in the future, everyone will be ashamed for 15 minutes – the people who brought you “Punk’d” send “celebrities” out to do silly things, baiting the paparazzi and then giving them the old “Made you look!” when it turns out they were just goofing around.

Pork fried rice

This past week Audrina Whatzername from “The Hills” (some sort of reality show on MTV that is watched by maybe a couple million people) got a temporary tattoo! And Lisa Rinna, some sort of soap star and fashion commentator, was seen canoodling in Malibu with a hot male model and what’s more her husband, Harry Hamlin – a movie actor from a million years ago and more recently some celebrity dance something or other – found out!

Audrina’s big gas was that she’d gotten Chinese symbols tattooed on her arm that read “Pork Fried Rice” and wouldn’t that be funny because they’d think she’d actually done that and report it everywhere and of course it’d be gone the next day.

The joke was on her, however, because it’s a tattoo and since she had to pretend it was real, she had it bandaged when she left the tattoo parlor and no one could see it. Also, none of the paparazzi could read Chinese anyway so her kanji-con barely made a ripple.

Pork fried affair

Then after a lot of fits and starts, Rinna and Hamlin took on their grand prank, which was to call every paparazzo they’d ever met and hope at least one of them would follow Rinna and her “new boy-toy” to the beach. They were caught frolicking on the beach and smooching on a hotel balcony. Then the paparrazi confronted Hamlin with the photos and he already had them framed and was going on about how good they were.

See, I think initially they’d been talking about having a fake fight, not playing it off as harmless fun. After all, they were hoping to get these images all over the tabloids and the Internet. As of Monday, the day after “Pop Fiction” aired, there was no discernable “gotcha” buzz online about any of them.

Funnier still was that while they were swarming Audrina’s tattoo parlor, actor Billy Zane appeared next door and the paparazzi swarmed over to him. Audrina almost had to beg for her audience back. And pity poor Lisa and Harry. The model drew more attention because he looked a little like singer Justin Timberlake.

Dim and dimmer

These D-listers are no less famous than they were before they clowned and mugged for the joke du jour, – after all, their appearance got them mentioned in this blog.

But the show actually gets worse. Host Peter Whoever in the same show intoned a voiceover about a fake wedding in New Orleans that we ultimately hear nothing more about. And is some “celebrity” having a kidney problem? Again, there’s no further mention of it in the show. Just these three pinheads.

What gives? Is it possible that after playing their little pranks, the stars back out? Or – what’s more likely – the paparazzi realized instantly they were being scammed and bailed, leaving the producers without even a fake story to run.

“TMZ” is awful. “Pop Fiction” is worse. But it may be inevitable. In a recent episode of the tabloid drama “Dirt,” Courtney Cox as “DrrtNow” editor Lucy Spiller complained that celebrities sign on for the whirlpool of attention and intrusion that they get, but in the end they also feed on it.

“Imagine what they’d do if we stopped watching them!” she exclaimed.

One answer to that – “Pop Fiction” – airs (for now) at 9 p.m. Sundays on E!

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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