When you and your bestest internet friend decide to start a website, you do it for two reasons: Cash money, and sweet, sweet poontang. But, shockingly, you eventually find the mounds of cash and steady stream of swimsuit models in and out of your bunk beds can only make you so happy. That’s when you realize it is time to find a lady and settle down.

Ioannis and I are both at different stages of this realization — I’ve been married for nearly a year and he is in a Category 5 Serious Relationship (easily classified by questions about when he is going to make an honest woman out of her - as though she is some girl he knocked up in an Arby’s parking lot).

This lady status allows us to take place in a ritual as old as time itself — the ancient rites of emasculation. If you’re a Bible-type, you know the story of Samson and Delilah and what happens when you sell out your manhood. You’ve probably embraced the New Testament ideas of her sweeping your stinky, unkempt feet with her perfume-soaked hair; but slow down, sailor. You’re not Jesus, and that means you are going to have to figure out how to bend without breaking.

Sadly, no one has come close to figuring out a Biblically accepted solution for scene control. So instead, the only real way to feel better about it is with a new and probably recurring column we’re calling “Emasculation Theater.”

Sometimes, we’re whipped so hard we might as well be eunuchs. Hopefully this will be therapeutic for us and educational for all of you.

Enjoy.

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Act I: So You Think You Can Make Me Watch Reality TV

There is nothing more tiresome than reading someone’s rants about how much they categorically hate reality TV as an entire genre. Yes, everything is whitewashed, edited and possibly orchestrated by evil druids, but that’s just part of the fun. Railing against such cheap and mass-appealing tripe is about as productive as cursing McDonald’s for producing homogeneous food choices around the world. [Editor's Note: Wait, we plan to do something like that in a near-future blog post, so kick either of us in the scrotum for being derivative next time you spot us.]

It’s here, it’s sometimes queer (looking at you, Ru Paul/Logo) and we need to deal with it. Luckily, the wife is not drawn in by most of the crap out there. When she’s bored, occasionally she’ll waste time watching Brett Michaels hop on a tour bus and plant his seed in fifteen different ladyholes. But she eschews the Bachelors and Real Worlds that many men are forced to endure.

She sees the majority of her gal pals gathered around a plate of overpriced sushi, downing cosmos and lamenting the fact that some douche they don’t know left some whore they won’t remember in two years for another whore they don’t know. And she gets frustrated that they put more time into solving stranger’s relationship issues instead of going out and meeting real-life douches currently inhabiting all Dallas Uptown bars. What she hasn’t yet realized is that compared to most other guys, I am getting off free.

It’s probably my own fault for occasionally puffing out my chest about avoiding this crap, but there’s a real sense that I owe her something for this good fortune that drives all of the rest of our TV watching. “Turn off that game, and be grateful I don’t make you watch Desperate Housewives or Grey’s Anatomy.”

That leads us to Compromise TV. Compromise TV is the lady’s vengeance for being dragged to sporting events… Or watching an Anaheim Ducks vs. San Jose Sharks game in bed for no real reason… Or listening to me hum the keyboard cat theme while chasing a live animal around the apartment for the hell of it.  Among a list of Compromise TV shows that you’ll be learning about over time is the FOX summer milestone [ED: shouldn't that be 'millstone'?] “So You Think You Can Dance” (or, as real fans call it: SYTYCD).

I am actually entering my third season of SYTYCD and know it could be much worse. I usually enjoy watching people with a real talent compete with others. And the wife has spent the majority of her life dancing, with our relationship getting to the point where I took lessons just to stop embarrassing her and/or to keep her occupied and away from those rhythmic minorities when we go out to dance clubs.

On the show, they have top choreographers come up with some cool routines for the top 20 contestants, interesting personalities, hosts who make me want to chew on a revolver less often than most, and a nice mix of straight guys, gay guys, and hot chicks to keep up the sexual tension. Anyone could literally be doing anyone - it’s like spending the night at Zac Efron’s place!

The problem with SYTYCD is the initial tryouts. The main show requires each dancer to try a variety of styles; forcing the ballet dancer to figure out how to rumba or the hip-hop dancer to dance a perfect waltz. I’m prepared for your ridicule, butI will admit that it is surprisingly interesting.

Unfortunately, in the tryouts, everyone just does what they do “best” in a short solo. These routines are usually good but boring, average in every way, or horribly bad. Horribly bad never quite does it for me… I know American Idol fans get excited when the home school kid who sings in his church choir crashes and burns on an old Partridge family song. But there’s no denying that tryouts for these shows fundamentally changed after William Hung decided to cash in on funny Asian talk and America’s gentle lacism… Er, racism.

Now it is all about trying to do what you think would be funny and ironic rather than just actually being funny or ironic, and that self-awareness makes a huge difference. If you don’t understand the distinction, try to remember the world before Ashton Kutcher wore a trucker hat for the first time. That may not really make sense, but I’m trying my hand at making sweeping Klosterman-esque generalizations.

TV is adaptable though, and the salty tears of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition watered a new TV tree (dig that intense metaphor!) with an emphasis on sad backstories and disabilities. Now, every reality show wants to shove their version of the Tragic Story down your throat. Maybe someone overcame a disability to cook a souffle. Perhaps they raised a sick sibling with AIDS. They might have gotten emancipated from their crazy parents or barely survived a certain hurricane and celebrated to see LSU win a national title. That’s all cool - I never get tired of vicariously celebrating the lofty triumphs of the human spirit.

On the most recent episode, they had their latest variation on the heartwarming contestant ready to go. I’m not heartless… It was cool to see a girl with only three vertebrae pull off a fairly intricate routine with minimal mistakes (beyond her physical limitations). But it also felt empty, because the show insisted on beating us over the head with her.

And she was just the second or third dancer on the show’s season premiere. When a show can’t even make it through 20 minutes of showtime before pulling the Tragic Story card, that’s the Reality TV equivalent of violating the corollary to Godwin’s Law. You lose at television, SYTYCD. But, they decided early in the editing room that she was going to be the bait on a dangling hook, keeping viewers from clicking over to Dancing With the Stars or America’s Next Top Dong.

Watch for yourselves; her audition starts at about 1:20.

After dealing with Susan Boyle and her hype for the last few months, it just felt odd to see the same thing from the same people (yes, SYTYCD is all part of the same sneaky Brit empire) so quickly. Am I supposed to cry, tell my friends, watch repeats or just not react at all because we have evolved pass noticing these disabilities?

The judges went out of the way to tell the girl she has no shot at winning, so it seems odd to spend 10 minutes of the show on it. Am I being too jaded here? Do we need to see the kid from Life Goes On go on the next season of the Contender, even if it is obviously to his own detriment, just so we can get the warm fuzzies and learn a valuable lesson about not giving up?

As for the rest of the show, I don’t remember much. One guy pretended he was driving a car through dance and it was kind of cool. The rest of it just leaked out the side of my head onto the couch next to the mind-waste puddle Lakers/Nuggets post game show on TNT.

I know that next week will bring another “two hour TV event” for the wife and I to enjoy, and it will once again be 100% audition-focused. Maybe I’ll even catch the start of another scandal in the gay community!

What I don’t know is what I’ll do to reassert my manhood after this season of SYTYCD is over. Hookers and gambling binge in Vegas? Pop a cycle of Clemens’ Best brand steroids? Maybe I’ll buy a gun to make myself feel like a big strong man.

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That concludes Act I of Emasculation Theatre. Join us next time when we talk about musicals, group dinners, pets, pedicures, volunteer groups or something else so pitiful we can’t even best to put it in the previews yet.