Flavor of Love

My current regime of weekend nightshifts at the garage and days during the week at uni has left me with a somewhat erratic body clock; it’s like being perpetually jet lagged without all the bother of actually travelling anywhere. I can sometimes lurch into wakefulness in the wee hours and I have found a more modern version of counting sheep.



All I have to do is flick on MTV and there is the perfect mind numbing antidote, TV programmes that don’t require any of my brains higher functions, just the brain stem, that relic of our reptile ancestry is stimulated, keeping me breathing whilst I’m dimly aware of colours passing before my eyes and garbled nonsensical sounds wash over me; before I know it I’m back into a much more convincing version of reality.


A couple of nights ago however, I was startled back into alertness by a show that makes the rest of MTV’s American celeb-reality formats look sane by comparison – I had stumbled upon the arrestingly bizarre ‘Flavor of Love’. This is the happy tale of Flavor Flav, the front man of Public Enemy, who is on a quest to find ‘true’ love. Mr Flav was apparently badly burnt in his last relationship with Brigitte Nielsen, so is wary of dabbling with another famous woman. Naturally a reality show is a safer environment for Flavor to find the woman of his dreams.


Those born circa 1990 are probably wondering; who the hell are Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen? Well Public Enemy were a hip hop group who allegedly made ‘politically charged’ music and the track ‘Fight the Power’ was their most famous offering. Flav also wore clocks around his neck, to which people used to say: “WOW! How like totally COOL”, for we lived in simpler and more forgiving times. Brigitte Nielsen was quite tall.


The best thing about this show are the contestants, who are the most stupid individuals on the planet; if you were to measure their collective IQs it would tally to that of an average poodle. They go on ‘dates’ with Flav and give the impression that they would do ANYTHING to win this show to capitalise on their 15 seconds of fame, including listening to Flavor’s nonsensical ramblings. I do not know if it’s because he’s meddled with too many drugs over the years or received a savage blow to the head, but with his 1000 yard stare and tourette's like mumbling, Flav does not give an impression of balance and composure.


If you get a chance to, you should watch one episode of this show for some jaw dropping comedy value; in much the same way as everyone should watch one episode of ‘Pimp My Ride UK’ to have a good laugh at the madness of Tim Westwood’s persona. Unfortunately my new accommodation doesn’t avail me with Sky in my room, so I will need to find some new sleep remedy; however I doubt I’ll see anything as monumentally insane as ‘Flavor of Love’ for quite some time.