Ten Minutes to Wapner
My television has a new channel. It’s called the Style Network and it just appeared out of nowhere this weekend. I’m not sure if it’s here to stay or if they’re just giving it to me to take for a test run. Most likely they want to get me hooked on their channel and then they’ll come sweeping in my door and take all my money. Shit, I probably won’t even get a make-over out of the deal.

Now, I should note that I had many a far greater things happen over the weekend then the discovery of a new channel on my talking picture box. The weekend was well-rounded, balanced, perhaps downright wholesome in its content. But the only thing I feel like writing about right now is the Style Network. Well not really the Style Network in its totality (It’s still too early to weigh in on the entire network), but I will weigh in on a show I saw that has quickly risen to take over the number one slot in my cultural index of the ‘Decline of Western Civilization’.

I’m sure the pitch at the Style Network went something like this: “The show is a combination of ‘Queer Eye’ and ‘The People’s Court’.

The show is called Style Court. But sadly, Style Court has none of the sharp investigative powers of a probing Doug Llewelyn interview and frankly my Cuisinart has more make-over potential than the gaunt unemployed Cost-cutters workers they found for this monster. For those of you who haven’t had the privilege, the show goes like this: Plaintiff calls defendant ‘out-of-style’ a.k.a. ‘guilty of style crimes’, plaintiff and defendant bring their case to a judge and a ‘celebrity jury’, everyone laughs and pokes fun at the defendant because she wears sweatshirts all the time, then the judge gives a verdict of ‘guilty’ and the defendant, broken and despondent, is whisked away for a make-over, defendant then returns without sweatshirt, hair is pulled back, lipstick has been applied, everyone is happy.

My favorite part is the ‘celebrity jury’, which is made up of three people, whom I don’t think even the most culturally astute people could recognize. Could it be they just make up the fact that they are celebrities? Who would really know? The people on the celebrity jury just look hateful. Their faces all have the same singular resolve: when i am done here, I must kill my agent pronto!

Style Court like many of the current Turn Your Shitty Life Around type of shows leaves me scratching my head. I wonder where on earth they get people for them. Before this weekend, I hadn’t ever even heard of Style Court. Do you mean to tell me that there were already people lined up ready to take their spouses, brothers, mothers, co-workers and best-friends to Style Court? My new theory is that all the people who go on these shows are from Arkansas. Q.E.D.