What's So Funny? Is this the Hill you want to die on?

You can tell a lot about people by what’s in their DVR; series recordings say as much about a man as the company he keeps. Peruse my DVR, and you’ll find out that I’m pretty much the shit. First show recorded? John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show on Comedy Central. Bam! Comedy-snob all in your face like that! What’s next? Just a little show called 30 Rock. Bam again! Some dope, hilarious viewing in your area! Then there’s The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and a brand new episode of No Reservations. Add a little Jeopardy to the mix, sprinkle a show called Birding Adventures, and you can clearly see that I’ve got all my boob-tube bases covered.

But I’d be lying if I told you that it was always this way, that television trash never made its way onto my DVR.

“Did you actually record The Hills?” my roommate asked me a while back.           

“Fuck you, Monty!” I responded, embarrassed. “You record Numb3rs, and I never bring it up! Solving crime through math? The only crime math ever solved was who bored the shit out of me!”

But he was right to be incredulous. MTV’s The Hills is a horrible program. Vapid Los Angelenos riding daddy’s credit cards from meaningless internship to overpriced brunch, all the while mewing like she-cats in heat. And yet I was hooked.

I couldn’t believe Heidi would just turn her back on Lauren like that! I couldn’t believe Audrina would keep going back to skeezy Justin! And how damn hot Audrina was! I mean, that Carl’s Jr. ad! Sweet Jesus! And Spencer Pratt! Was that guy for real? Or was he pulling one of the greatest coups in reality television? Acting the complete asshole to channel his 15 minutes into 15 years?

I loved all of it.

And then one day, I stopped loving it. One day I woke up, and as if someone had slapped the taste out my foolish mouth, I realized that The Hills was the worst kind of cultural detritus. I know not what cruel spell I was under, but I moved on. And, apparently, so did some of the cast. 

You can tell a lot about people by what’s on their bookshelf; what they read and purchase says volumes about who they are. And if you have any of former Hills star Lauren Conrad’s latest tomes on your bookshelf, do us all a favor and deeply, deeply cut yourself.

It seems that while the rest of us were busy trying to forget her, the little Laguna Beacher nobody believed worked for anything was cranking out steamy young-adult novels. L.A. Candy was released last summer, telling the “fictional tale” of a young reality star coping with the pressures of Hollywood. And now, less than a year later, she’s on her second book, Sweet Little Lies, and will make an appearance this Friday for a signing at Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch.

Just don’t ask her to personalize your copy or pose for a photo. Oh, and actually, if you haven’t already picked up a free numbered ticket for the event—available starting last week, and surely by now, almost sold out—you should probably just forget the whole thing.

You know that dramatic music they used to always play toward the end of Full House, that syrupy, hammer-home-the-lesson soundtrack that accompanied the delivery of each episode’s moral? Play that music in your head right now. Got it? Good.

Ahem.

Reality television is enjoyable because we—the viewers, the ones “in” on the joke—feel superior to the idiots the cameras are being pointed at. This is morally justifiable for us because, in actuality, the idiots—the reality stars, the ones not in on the joke—usually profit from the venture. We laugh, but that’s okay because somebody is getting paid. But the moment we start buying books from these people, the moment we start pretending they have anything to offer us other than pulling up their wife-beaters and showing us what “the situation” is, that balance skews. Then the court jesters aren’t jesting, they’re fleecing the kings—and that can’t stand.

We can allow reality stars only as far as dance-monkey-dance, but once that monkey decides to write a book about a “fictional monkey” dancing, and then sell it to us with ridiculous, pop-star stipulations, it’s time to replace the fucking monkey. Because that monkey needs to realize that there are a million other blonde drama-queen monkeys just like it, irritable bitch-monkeys ready to dance on America’s TV screens just as soon as America tells them to dance. Provided, of course, that America’s roommate has finished watching Numb3rs.