One of the highlights of my television year was on last night. While
there have been better episodes, i.e. more unethical, this one still bore the
hallmarks of entertainment designed by Donald Rumsfeld. It was the “Challenge”
edition of The Biggest Loser.
Or, Get A Fatty To Shit Themselves To A Better Life.
This year they were taken to Switzerland to be challenged by going from
high places to low places. The reward for getting enormously heavy was to let
gravity do its job.
(If I didn’t know a little something about Galileo and falling bodies,
I’d suspect that the tubbies would be better at that than the rest of us. The
real challenge would be getting them to go up…
but I digress.)
Last night, Switzerland played host to, by weight, about 18 Australians.
By headcount, about five. Even though it's ANZAC time of year, I've got to say that the Swiss were
incredibly brave.
They got those fatsos up in helicopters, on thin suspension bridges,
hanging off ropes and all sorts of other adventurous stuff. I mean, who wants
to pilot a helicopter with a hysterical shifting load in the back that could
roll you into a mountainside at any moment?
For that matter, who wants to stand on a wire-and-sky-hook construction,
ninety metres above the earth, with a panicking fatty? They drag you down just
like the fabled drowning man. They don’t have much to live for. If you’re
lucky, they just take a bite out of you as they shamble past to throw
themselves off the platform. More likely though, they make a lunge and hug you
all the way down - like the last lamington at the gates of a health farm.
Who’s the guy who does a tandem sky-dive with a panicking lardo strapped
to the front of him? The physical limits of what a harness and parachute can
take beggar the imagination, let alone the opportunity for the
fatty-in-free-fall-feeding-frenzy-fiasco where the instructor arrives back on
earth as nothing more than a pair of hands gripping the chute controls, while
the ‘contestant’ dabs at the corners of their mouth. Croix de Guerre for that
guy.
Last night had some high points, but mostly low. The Swiss will be
convinced of a few things after dealing with this lot of winners:
- The only response to anything outside the set of experience even narrower than the set of their own eyes, is “Or Mar Gawd”
- The only response to having just achieved something momentous, such as relaxing and letting the equipment and tour personnel do all of the fucking work as per usual is “Or Mar Gawd! I didn’t think I could do it. I am so brave.”
- Despite the wheezing and asthma, those lard-balls can really scream. There’d be wildlife in those cliffs that are going to grow up slightly deaf and fearing a legendary wild-thing they once saw swing by
Yup, the rolly-pollies really did us proud last night and I was relieved
to see that the angry lesbian who pulled the full Gabor before her jump, was
able to pull it together enough after her jump to make another pass at her instructor
- before waddling off to the all-you-can-eat buffet. It was a win for equal
rights all around. I’m pro-Gay Marriage. I’m anti-Gay Cannibalism.
Next year, I’m looking forward to a naked chubster fighting their own
weight in angry lemurs and another, using nothing but Sellotape on their
eyelids and a giant adult nappy, to fake their way into the Sumo grand finals.
