For those of you who have never had the pleasure, ElimiDATE is a "reality" "dating" show that comes on late at night.  Usually, one guy meets up with four Girls Gone Wild types in some public location, say a park, and eliminates one girl at a time, until only one (arguably the "winner") remains.

Oh yeah, during the entire date the women insult one another's character and appearance, often resorting to name calling, sometimes resorting to blows. The dwindling and increasingly desperate group usually ends up in a bar or a hot tub, or sometimes a bar that has hot tubs. The last episode I saw ended up on a loading dock, but that was a surprise treat, not to be expected.
From time to time, they have one woman and four guys, with the guys being "elimiDATED" but I think they have a hard time getting four men to act that stupid on a regular basis, so that is a special "treat".

Anyway, there are basically four types of ElimiDATE "women":
1. The agressive, catty bitch, who is a complete slut, and who is marginally good looking or might be trailer trashy;
2. The agressive, catty bitch who matches wits with #1 but has an iota of morals, sometimes is a marginal slut;
3. The catty quiet one who waits to be eliminated to bad mouth the others and then run;
4. The short girl who doesn't have the nerve to open her mouth in the presence of #1 - 3 above, often the tomboy.

Most of the time, the order of elimination is #3, #4, #1, with #2 being the "winner". To get rid of #1 or #2 first would make the show bland, or at least, possibly civilized. To get rid of #1 or #2 first would mean no catfight at the end.

One has to hope that these ladies are acting this way for some sort of gain, perhaps a lot of money, and that this is not indicative of the real younger generation. I can't imagine a real, valid relationship coming out of one of these shows.

The guy is no better. He plays the girls against each other. He talks about his erotic preferences, goading them to be loose.

The ElimiDATE website has profiles of the "contestants". These profiles consist mainly of name, age, height, and what each does.

Jennifer, 22 and 5'7" says, "I like making fun of people for amusement." Now there's a lovely lady.

Watch her duke it out with Kate, 22, and 5'8". "I have no problem being naked."

Ken, a bartender, says he wants a blue collar girl who is crazy in the bedroom. "I'm a little afraid for these ladies. There's a lot of testosterone flowing through this body and I don't know if they can handle it."

I can't even imagine my husband suggesting such a meeting for our first date. "Oh, there will be three other women? Call me when you aren't quite so busy," I might say, just before writing him off as the biggest jerk in the world.

(from a Braun shaver instruction booklet)

Full of weirdness, I say.

Full House, when I think about it, was one of the more irritating shows on TV. It was a bunch of men raising a bunch of little girls. If I were a single gal interested in one of the Full House guys, I would have run quickly once I got a glimpse of the freaky living arrangements.

Tonight, I turned on the TV in preparation for a little VH1's I Love the 90s, but this crap was on. Like a trainwreck, I had to watch for a while and I even took pictures.

Surely, Dave Coulier, in this particular episode sitting in a bathtub wearing a life vest, with a bucket and goggles on his head, can't have been thinking anything other than "career-limiting move". And, there is John Stamos sitting on the edge of the tub, and no one in the 1980s thought that this was just a tad gay? Only moments before these pictures were taken, the Olsen twin(s) were also in the bathtub. At least you were spared that.

At least John Stamos was a good-looking musician guy character who ended up married on the show and had ladies falling all over him off camera, and he even married a model in real life.

Dave played Joey, the strange one usually wearing some sort of freak beaver, superhero or milk carton outfit who would have conversations with rubber chickens. In spite of this, he's probably a really decent guy, although rumor has it that Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know" is about him, which isn't so nice, now is it? After all, that song has the "F" word in it.

Full House comes on for hours at a stretch in the middle of the night, and being somewhat nocturnal at the moment, I try to use it as an electronic sleeping pill. Like real sleeping pills, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

And I understand that Dave Coulier is on The Surreal Life's third season to air on VH1 in September (with, rumor has it, Charo, and some other less important characters). I like The Surreal Life, or at least I enjoyed the season with Tammy Faye, Vanilla Ice, and Erik Estrada, who seemed to be really decent people, and if I am ever looking for roommates, I'll look them up.

But perhaps, like MTV's The Real World, The Surreal Life will be all downhill from here. Hope not. Maybe, by now, Charo will even be speaking English without spitting on people.