If everyone else jumped off of the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?

There's a phenomonon sweeping the nation. No, I'm not talking about this blog. Obviously it's not updated as often as it could be. What I speak of is the wave of amateur contests modeled after the NBC "reality" show THE BIGGEST LOSER.

In the last week alone, I've heard of four different contests, at four different workplaces. People are teaming up, or sometimes just going head to head, in weight-loss contests, to win a pool of money thrown in by the participants.

The act in itself is fine by me. I have no problem with people losing weight, hell, I could stand to lose more than a few dozen L.B.'s myself. And the office pool is one of the oldest traditions running. So to combine friendly competition with personal fitness, well that sounds like a winner to me.

But here's the rub. Why did it take a crappy, poorly lit, exploitive television show to "inspire"everyone to hit the gym and cut back on the McDonald's all of a sudden? Are the masses in this country REALLY that brainless, that people cannot even lose weight unless they see people on TV doing it first?

Maybe Mark Burnett could produce a reality show about being charitable, about caring just one iota about the political state of the world, or racial and social tolerence, or perhaps just being CIVILIZED AND NICE TO EACH OTHER. Maybe then the great unwashed would follow suit.

And along the same lines, I slipped into the local ACE hardware for a light bulb over the past weekend, and came face to face with a life-size cutout of THE DONALD, Mr. Trump, bad hair and all, in this wacky yelling pose very similar to the above AP photo. Some sort of promotion ACE is running with THE APPRENTICE. As if screws and paintbrushes have anything to do with Manhattan real estate, the presence of THE DONALD should inspire us all to give all of our hardware business to our local ACE.

Trump was bad enough, but then, right there by the checkout, was a lifesize BILL RANCIC cutout. What exactly has that moron done, anyway? Other than "win" the first APPRENTICE contest (where he lost out to the Harvard MBA, the infinitely more well-spoken and polished Kwame, hmm wonder if the best man won THAT little popularity contest...), what has Bill Rancic done in this world to merit any of us caring one iota about him?

I'll answer that for you. Absolutely nothing.

At least I only have to wait a month or two until the next AMERICAN IDOL is crowned, then their picture will be splashed all over and we can forget about THE DONALD, at least for another 13 week ad cycle....

Gotta run. My cynicism is dripping all over the place.