Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

The most incredible twenty minutes of television I’ve ever seen began with an advertisement for DIY Network’s Disaster House. It premieres tomorrow night at 10PM (9PM Central), and I will be watching. Oh, you better believe I’ll be watching, and not just because of the promo videos. I want to watch this show because, my hand to God, I had this idea first.

As I have occasionally mentioned, I watch a lot of HGTV. I’m in it mostly for the design shows (and lately, Renovation Realities, which gives me peace of mind because, while I might be unreliable with a hammer, I will never be so stupid as to believe that I can destroy or build a significant percentage of my home without professional help). On the other hand, the shows that revolve around the buying or selling of homes do nothing but enrage me. People talking endlessly about curb appeal, or the finishes of the vacant McMansion, or the need for a privacy that borders on absolute isolation, the lack of priorities boggles my mind.

That’s when GDeeeeZL (not his real name) and I came up with our own HGTV show to add to the line-up. I dubbed it “Fuck This House!” The show’s sole purpose was to find home owners who had given up on renovating, upgrading, and mortgaging their properties, and instead decided to collect on the disaster insurance. That’s where DeeeeZL and I would step in, gleefully demolishing the house with blunt force, the artful application of fire, creative use of power tools, and our own flawlessly sculpted bodies.

Needless to say, I can hardly wait.

We scrolled through our cable listings to find the DIY Network, and, changing the channel to confirm that we do indeed receive it, we were immediately greeted by a commercial for the Neckline Slimmer. Please, watch the video, I beg of you. I have nothing more to add to this.

And then, interested in a local news segment that had been advertised as “Why AUTISM Is On the Rise,” I turned the channel once more. An attorney for the plaintiff in a sexual assault case stood before a bouquet of microphones and said, “Do I believe that the defendant has the skill set to shoot my client from a very great distance? Yes, I do.” Granted, the defendant was a policeman, but still, it was a strange way to construct a sentence.

Sometimes TV is entertaining in unexpected ways.