Save the drama for your mama...

According to this article, the next MTV Real World will be taking place right here in sunny Denver, Colorado, in a crappy-bar-turned-penthouse in LoDo. (That's "Lower Downtown" for you non-locals... a hotbed of drinking, wilding, and sports.)

When the Real World was raging from weekend marathons on tv into my impressionable teenage mind, it seemed like being on the show would not only fulfill my destiny of becoming a household name, but also would be the most fabulous way of taking a crow-bar to my closet door. Two birds with one homo. Before there was any common group goal (such as running a tacky radio show, running a tacky charity event, running a tacky pseudo-tanning salon, etc.), I remember some members of the cast gigging it up in Manhattan or San Francisco, trying to make it as artists in a square world. The other housemates sans odd day job would laze around the Ikea-equipped pad, smoking and quizzing each other, meme-style. What a life!

Now the show serves as a seasonly reminder that we still haven't been able to progress past the same old bullshit. A straight guy doesn't want to hang out at a gay bar! Eating disorders still exist! Stop the fucking presses! As much as I would hope that a show like this would portray the person behind the rampant alcoholism, it just doesn't make good copy. But after 17 seasons, the problems are formulaic and gimmicky... different facets of the same turd.

I will say that, although I've only seen a few episodes, Janelle from the Key West cast rocks my world. She is the most down-to-earth housemate MTV has ever seen. I pray that after the show ends, she wipes her hands of MTV altogether and goes on to great things; I would hate to see her bobbing for apples on the next 12 seasons of Real World vs. Road Rules Challenge: The Infernal, Labyrinthy Gauntlet.

Anyway, here are my predictions for The Real World - Denver:

• The previous season had a gay man; this season will have a lesbian, or, better yet, a FTM. She'll find the Denver Detour and fall in love with a "lady" trucker.


• The housemates will shop at Skye and get their asses kissed, but find that they don't want to pay $200 for a t-shirt, either.


• None of the housemates will drink microbrews; all will drink Hpnotiq & Red Bull.


• The biblethumping castmember from Colorado Springs will leave the house after the second day, after he finds out one of his roommates is on birth control.


• This roommate will be replaced with John Madden, the "Hillary is a Rapist" guy.


• The house will feature a shower in the entry way.


• Honey, the children in Denver are going to mess this show UP. Not only is everyone going to want to be on camera, but a bevy of twentysomething girls are going to get drunk, go back to the house, and proceed to throw up on everything. Not only that, but the out-of-state housemates will never acclimate to the altitude, and proceed to throw up on everything. The show successfully mass-distributes Denver's reputation as a city of bad, messy drunks.


• Someone will give the house address to the homeless, telling them it's the new shelter.