Unreality television

Okay, it's time to admit a guilty pleasure of mine. I like Storage Wars. It doesn't matter which flavor - Cali or Texas. It's all good as far as I'm concerned.

So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I went over to my brother's house to pick up my girls after school (one of the advantages of having two brothers living less than three miles away) and heard that Dave Hester had been filed and was suing the show.

Mr. Hester, or the Mogul, as he's known, alleged that he was fired because he spoke up about the producers of the show "salting" up the lockers for television. To which I replied "So freaking what?"

Yes, Storage Wars is promoted as a reality show (is it?). But y'all know as well as I do that once they turn that camera on, reality goes out the window. It's a bit like quantum theory - you know, the very act of measuring something alters the probability curve. Think Schroedinger's cat.

Dave, Darrell, Brandi, Jarrod and Barry aren't real - they're just playing characters based on themselves. I don't watch because I think I'm getting a view of the life of the storage locker buyer - I watch because it's entertaining.

Early on, in fact, my wife and I figured out they planted stuff in the lockers. Some of the stuff they found in the lockers was just a little too odd and incongruous to have been put there by the owner. Just watch and tell me if you really think someone would put some of that stuff in a freaking storage locker. Our locker contains the furniture we have no use for, clothes and my old files.

So I don't care if Dave's telling the truth. If I want reality I'll watch college football or baseball. If I want entertainment, I'll watch Storage Wars.