Unreality Shows… By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

January 26, 2012 Whitney Farmer 1 Comment

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A, and is tired of lousy television.

The club is underground. A neighborhood bar is above us and has a perfect view of beach sunsets. Or did.

The bar – a recent subject of a reality show – went out of business last weekend.

All of us had watched the show, hoping to cheer them on towards a turnaround. But what we witnessed was a train wreck. They were bound by a confidentiality agreement and didn’t tell us anything that had happened behind the scenes, but we knew anyway.

During the show, there was an ambush moment when they were presented with a notice that their water was going to be shut off because they were late on their bill. Their shock and claims that they knew nothing about it were real because the tenants on that wing of the pier don’t pay the water bill. It is handled directly by the landlord.

There were the standard but good operational reminders – Clean!!…Spend less!!…Sell more!! – but it wasn’t worth the price that the business paid. They were closed for regular business during the shoot, and most of their regular customers were left out of the grand re-opening in favor of a roomful of Hollywood extras. They got a new ordering/inventory system and some cool new barware. But a massive majority of server/bartenders are trained up in a completely different POS system, and the barware that was featured isn’t carried by local distributors so it can’t be conveniently re-ordered.

The snazzy redecorating was done with staples and glue and included features that violated health department regulations. So, after the shoot was done, they were still closed while their friends from the local area volunteered their labor and materials to help get the renovations back up to code.

Since then, they have been open but I knew there were problems. The most telling reason was that their employees would come to me with resumes looking for work. But we are at full staffing, and the best I could do was invite them in to a show to spend some time with us and listen to music.

Everyone has a story that they hope no one hears, and everyone is faced with the urge to gossip. It’s the rubber neck syndrome that is hoping to catch a glimpse of something gory when driving by a car wreck. If successful, the best outcome is that the conscience is seared by horror and regret but recovers and leads to compassion. Unfortunately, sometimes the conscience begins to become damaged to the point of not working. It has to see something worse to get a thrill again.

When it is our story, there is much to be said about confessing our sins and being the first one to the punch. It becomes part of the history that created us when what we hide comes into the light. Others can learn what we learned without having to go through it, or at least we can all sit around and laugh at ourselves.

There is a guy who comes into the club who has ironically become a celebrity by working as a reporter on a gossip show about celebrities. A few weeks ago, he drank too much and we had to cut him off. It was a group conspiracy with his friends to get him to leave. We all lied and told him that the afterparty was at his house and that his friends needed to take him home to get ready. They led him off into the night with guitar picks from the band stuffed up his nostrils as souvenirs. But he came back last week, and he brought more friends.

But what if the sins are Gingrich-sized, and then are brought to the light and might interfere with ambitions? Apparently, the smart answer might not be honesty, disclosure and humility.

During the most recent of Republican debates, Gingrich has been displaying a very successful strategy when faced with accurate allegations: He never answers the question, shifts the focus to another topic, then goes on the attack.  It is a fascinating moral car wreck to watch and is visible each time he is confronted with concerns regarding his past actions as a public servant or as a private citizen in matters that speak to his moral fitness.  Watch reruns. The three-step strategy is replicated each time.

There was a clip a few weeks ago of an interview that showed Gingrich becoming teary when he spoke about his mistakes and some family loses. In it, he said that he had asked for forgiveness from those he has hurt. The ex-wife with M.S. who he cheated on and then asked for an open marriage and then a divorce when she said ‘no’ said that he has never asked for forgiveness. And now he is calling her a liar. His defense of his actions regarding his first wife when he asked her for a divorce when she was in the hospital for breast cancer surgery is that they were already separated when he wanted to marry his mistress, and that the tumors turned out to be benign anyway.

Truth is important. But pitted against ambitions for fame, fortune, and power, it doesn’t matter very much.

Quote of the Blog, from niece Keeley: “Did you hear about the hipster who burned his tongue? He couldn’t wait for the coffee to get cool”