Reality Bites

Webster's defines "synergy" as "the dumb-ass melding of two things that were too wrong and awful to stay separate for very long." Case in point: The inevitable cross-pollination between reality TV and what Reuters calls "the '80s revival." The wire service is reporting that producer Mark Burnett ("Survivor," "The Apprentice") is joining forces with INXS, the Australian band best remembered for the hits "What You Need," "Kahlua, My Kahlua" and "Down The Boozer With Stan." (I may not have these exactly right, as they come from some notes my assistant Debbie hurriedly cribbed from the Internet.) The result: "Rock Star: INXS," a new series starting tonight on CBS and continuing for 39 episodes over a grueling 13 weeks. The show is built around the band's search for a new lead singer, which they need because original frontman Michael Hutchence killed himself in 1997, despondent over the discovery that his career had been a lot more interesting thirty years earlier, when Jim Morrison had it. According to a press release, the band's surviving members decided to go ahead with the series now because they "need money really badly," and also because Burnett did that pinwheel thing with his eyes and hypnotized them into thinking it wasn't repellent. And say, did somebody say "repellent"? Because the show will be hosted by semi-pro freak show Dave Navarro, who used to be a rock star himself until he decided that working even that hard was a drag, and the bizarrely pneumatic Brooke Burke, who, whatever it is she does, she's now doing it here! Wow! Now how much would you pay? No, I mean to avoid having to watch this. Seriously, how much would you pay? Because I'm cashing in some bonds.

(Hang on, this just in from the "Rock Star: INXS" web site: Burke currently stars in EA Games' hot new video game "Need for Speed: Underground 2" where she plays Rachel Teller, a street-wise adrenaline junkie who runs an elite, underground street racing circuit. For her performance, she received a Spike TV Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Human-Female. I'm not making this up, because I'm not this funny.)

Look, Mr. Irresponsible has done some terrible things for money. I don't want to go into details, because honestly they're a little hazy, but I'm pretty sure I remember playing Russian Roulette for cash in the back room of a Cambodian gambling joint.  That's a summer session at Andover compared to "Rock Star: INXS." Can these guys really be so desperate that they actually need to do this? Don't they have families they can put the arm on?

Luckily, there's a life lesson here: There is no shame in losing one's fortune -- particularly if one has gained it in a pleasant fashion, like, say, being a rock star, and dispensed of it in the pursuit of mindless good times, like, say, a rock star. There's a reason why the phrase "Easy come, easy go" has been cited in languages dating all the way back to Aramaic. Where one loses the good will of one's community is in kvetching unattractively about the loss. And make no mistake, that's what "Rock Star: INXS" is: a 13-week, 39-episode kvetch, a whine for attention writ large, a mooching electronic panhandle. This sort of thing not only demeans the supplicant, it plants the seeds of psychic stress in the audience, reminding them as it does of good fortune's fleeting fragility. It is, as an act, anti-social. So if you find yourself fallen from the Olympus of free spending and palmy times, do your society a favor. Don't go on TV. Do the right thing: Go away someplace remote -- someplace like Australia, say -- and take to the oldies circuit. There are worse ways to scratch out a living. Although, to be candid, I can't think of them just now. Still, you see my point.