"Wax, pomade, gel, hairspray, um, glue, mousse.... Let's go, let's go I'm not done yet, Bro. I'm not done yet! Did I say wax? Hah?"
Yes, he said "glue." This is Thomas Lis, a.k.a. Tommy Hollywood, whose interests include "excitement, girls, hair products and more excitement" auditioning for Lake Shore, a show that has not even begun filming, but appears to be peaking this week.
Almost a half a million have watched the disquieting "sizzle reel," a preview introducing the show's eight-person cast and the "drama" between them.
And every major Canadian news outlet has expressed concern, disgust and mild horror at this response to the MTV hit Jersey Shore.
Lake Shore is merely a ludicrous imitation of an American show that is already losing its currency. (If someone suddenly got the bright idea of making Survivor: Winnipeg at this late date, it would be another example of such a brain wave.) One of the canons of pop culture is: By the time you are a Halloween costume, you are on your way out.
What distinguishes the hard-partying, sex-crazed Jersey Shore cast, who offended many by proclaiming themselves to be "Guidos" and "Guidettes," is their uniquely ugly-hotness and their actual closeness. Within two episodes, they became, with the exception of oddball Angelina, a tightly knit para-family, vowing love and fealty to each other. Their wild nightlife therefore is viewed in the context of their traditional values and heart.
Watching Lake Shore's sizzle reel, one is mortified to see Steve Martin's words (on an episode of 30 Rock in which he played a lunatic who watched Canadian MTV) - "They always get it wrong, don't they?" - come true.
Since pulled from YouTube, but available on Perez TV and elsewhere, the reel is already well-known for some shocking moments: a muscle man mildly derides gay men; and a woman says she hates everyone, "especially Jewish people."
This sort of controversy feels canned and forced. Because the members of the cast are so parlously lacking in charisma and the show so challenged by the inauthenticity of its connection to the original ( Lake Shore is not a spinoff of Jersey Shore), the cast must have been ordered to act as offensively as possible to get attention.
And if we take the bait, if we take umbrage at the obviously falsified scandals, we are only drawing more undue attention to this pseudo-event.
Which is too bad, because the show could have been good, repellent fun.
I have always wondered about the inner lives of men in cars blaring music loudly enough to cause brain damage; about the woo-girls - the women who yell "Woooooooo!" at random intervals throughout the weekend - of the kind of person who is desperate to be famous without the heavy lifting and talent usually required.
Then again, the sizzle reel tells us enough.
It has already been so widely quoted, this montage of unctuous, attractive young people praising themselves and signifying, rapidly, drinking, dancing, violence and licentiousness. In the reel, the eight are labelled according to their ethnicity: We have the Turk, the Albanian, the Vietnamese and so on.
These categories are meant to refer to Toronto's diversity, but such divisiveness (unlike Jersey Shore's para-family) only sets up these groups in the manner of a cockfight, as Sibel, the Turk, has already threatened to beat up Robyn, the Jew; and the lone Gay (actually, he's called "the Lebanese" and he's a designer; the others insist he's gay) will certainly inspire the animus of the twitchy Albanian.
Further, this kind of essentialism - is every Pole, for example, a bisexual drunk, like Karolina? Is every Italian man given to calling himself "No. 1 Wop?" - is a reductive means of simplifying racism. Will viewers recap the show by saying, "Yah, the Jew was shooting off her mouth, so that Wop guy got all up in her face."
Really, what is wrong with this country?
Instead of even trying to create original art, or at the very least, imitate (as America does with Britain) better shows, we are always expressing our gross sibling rivalry by making hostile, almost insane impersonations: As a nation, we are like Steve Buscemi's character in The Wedding Singer, drunkenly loathing his more successful brother, then attempting to win his approbation.
In This Is My Country, What's Yours? Noah Richler writes of Canada's "psycho-geography" that within us resides the "belief that better lives are being lived Elsewhere."
Gloomily, aspiring producers stare across the border, taking vilest note: "Muscle pigs. Sluts!"
Beside the notes, they write - as Jay McInerney's excited editor did, years ago when first encountering the Bright Lights, Big City manuscript - a series of exultant dollar signs.