This is the true story

Posted by Cristin October 30th, 2006 at 02:30pm In Guilty Pleasures MTV

While at brunch with my mother this weekend, she finally proved that I wasn't adopted with the throwaway sentence "Oh yeah, I was going to {insert name of productive activity here} this weekend, but I got caught up in the True Life marathon. Have you seen the one on OCD?" Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes. Just for you, mom, here's my list of The Best and The Worst of MTV's True Life.

Bottom of the Barrel

• True Life: I'm Obsessed with My Dog. As someone who is obsessed with everyone's dog, this should have been a serious shoo-in for me. Instead I was given a model who dyed her poodle pink and a creepy couple desperate to breed their pug making inappropriate jokes about the size of their dog's, uh, equipment. Its only saving grace was the midwestern guy obsessed with his pitbull, and that was just because he had a random girlfriend who lived in south africa and was roughly 4-7 brackets above him in terms of hotness who came to visit while he and said pitbull were living with his mom. They never explain how the two met (internet?) or what the hell she was going with him (green card?) or why she got so upset when he tattooed the dog's likeness on his leg (hep C?).
• True Life: I'm Poor. This might have actually been called True Life: I'm Broke but it should have been True Life: We don't recognize that our audience is comprised of largely upper middle class white suburban kids who don't want to hear about how you got stoned and lost the money you were going to use to buy a car.
• True Life: I'm A Professional Gamer. This one followed a bunch of kids who get paid–wait for it– to play video games. I don't have a problem with this documentary so much as I have a problem with its subject matter– why are these kids getting money to sit in windowless rooms attached to joysticks when they should be out discovering what it's like to kiss a girl? And I don't want to hear the comparisons to professional athletics or professional poker. There's a Sad Loser aspect here that you just can't escape.
• True Life: I'm Rallying to LA. SOMEthing interesting should have happened during a flatout race from coast to coast, right? Car accident, police run in, accidental pregnancy, ANYthing? You would think that, wouldn't you.
• True Life: I'm A Private Wrestler. So, you're thinking, I could use some extra cash but I don't really want to, say, donate my eggs or do porn. But I am totally fine with having an astonishingly unattractive woman contract me to wear a bikini and bunny ears and film me wrestling other similarly dressed women for later broadcasting on the internet. This could have been as disturbing and lunch conversation topic inducing as the Plushie/ Furry True Life about which I can't reach into the deep recesses of my mind to gather enough info for proper discussion (remember that one? It was mostly people dressing up in large full body character suits and going to conventions to rub up on one another? This debuted when I worked at a children's bookstore and was frequently called upon to dress up as Clifford or Madeline and this True Life scared me to the core and I've thus, happily, repressed most memories of it) but instead it was just vaguely creepy, like those articles in Jane magazine that tell you how much money you could make by selling your used underwear online.

Best of the Best

• True Life: I'm Moving To New York. If only MTV had filmed this three years prior, I could have been famous! But perhaps it's all for the best as, instead of me, they gave us (1) a male model so alarmingly stupid he made me kind of respect Ashton Kutcher (2) the most spoiled little rich girl on earth who I later heard was quoted as saying re: her NFL boyfriend "Who cares if he's black– he's loaded!" and (3) a set of gay/ lesbian BFFs so adorable and kind hearted I want to track them down and force them to be friends with me, even though they wrote "NY OR BUST" on their car and then drove through Times Square.
• True Life: I Want The Perfect Body I. "Real men wear body glitter." Oh, sure. Of all the True Lifes, I want a Where Are They Now Episode for this one more than ANY other. Well, not on Calf Implants Guy, who my roommate saw at the VMAs this year. He's still a douche. But I'd love to know where the Sugar & Spice plastic surgery twins are, particularly the one who said "Now that I have my nose fixed, I can focus on my other goals, like getting into Playboy and getting a boyfriend." (wait, now that I think about it, was she on True Life: I'm Getting Plastic Surgery? I'm so confused! Why must you mock me, Gideon Yago!).
• True Life: I'm Going To Fat Camp. One of my favorites for MTV's uncanny ability to broadcast it whenever I was watching TV at the gym in college.
• True Life: I'm A Jersey Shore Girl. Maybe this one's a point of personal pride/ contention as the girls featured all grew up 7 minutes away from my childhood home, on the other side of the imaginary line that dictates you acquire a horrible accent and fondness for waterfall belly button rings. But really, this should have been called "True Life: I Want A Boyfriend But Can't Keep One," as that– along with highlights and fake nails– was alllllll these chickadees talked about. Whatever, I'm still going to watch it every time they rerun it.
• True Life: I'm A Little Person. This is largely a shoutout to my roommate, who DVRs everything cable television has to do about little people. What sticks out about this one was the storyline about the little person heading off to college, and how she had a regular-sized boyfriend… who she met at a little person convention. Um, what was he doing there? What a resourceful fetishist! He gets the boot before the hour is up.
• True Life: I'm An Urban Cheerleader/ True Life: I'm A Competitive Cheerleader. The Urban Cheerleader experience I enjoyed if only for the piercing look at how one achieves the title of All American Cheerleader, an accomplishment I previously thought to be reserved for the top tier of the finest high school athletes, but is actually available to people that fall during their roundoffs and throw enormous tantrums at Cheer Camp. Does this mean in order to get All American in football you just have to quote Varsity Blues and paint the lines on the field?
• True Life: I Have A Friend With Benefits. This one makes my list because I can never decide which "couple" I like better– the one that was enjoying a FwB relationship that spanned three states before the chick decided to transfer grad school programs and up and move to her buddy's city (for unrelated reasons, I'm sure) only to have him proclaim he was never attached to her, -OR- the hick couple where the dude is constantly mooning over the chick, who uses him for the booty and then flirts with guitar players RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM only to break down and cry in the parking lot and have her best friend give her the life altering advice of "Don't settle for the one you can live with– wait for the one you can't live without," which is straight off my favorite beer cozie.
• True Life: I Have A Summer Share. Another installment in the True Life: People From New Jersey Are Hilarious and Sad series. What do you do when you're pushing 30, working construction, and looking for an excuse to drink your face off and scam on bitches? Head to the Jersey Shore, of course.
• True Life: I'm A Staten Island Girl. First they take the cultural anthropology standpoint– how can an island be so close to manhattan geographically, and yet, so far? Then they give us three typical trials of staten island girls: How can I manage to move into NYC when I have thousands of dollars in credit card debt (from the 21 year old who proclaimed "I'm cut out for bigger things. People like me don't go wasted!" and also exclusively wore green eye shadow)? How can I rise above my accent to become a famous actress (from the girl who "went to boston for college and immediately called my dad to bring me home")? How can I find a guy to settle down with when I'm attracted to the typical staten island type ("spikey hair, works out, little orange from the tanning bed") and they "know how hot they are, and don't want to stick to one girl" (from a young lady with two masters degrees)? Finally, MTV decideds to pick on people who aren't from the garden state. And I love it.