Sadly, my last Real World as another season has come to it's merciful conclusion and now I have one less thing I have to look forward to during the week. I'm so addicted to MTV reality TV show crack that I've given in and started watching The Road Rules . I didn't mean to, it's just that I started to get into Sarah on the show- the one whose not pretty, athletic, and apparently not hooking up with everyone else and is probably gonna get booted for not being one of the Beautiful People. My kind of person.

Oh, so off topic. Anyways, here's my last Real World bit.


Awhile ago somebody on the Real World boards posted this article from the local Walla Walla newspaper. Tonya is, as we all know, from Walla Walla and this is a story about her appearance on the show.

Walla Walla woman hits big time

"In the beginning, she wondered if she had made the right decision.

When the camera was 2 inches from her face and the microphone's battery pack felt like a tumor hatching out of her back. When a techie in the control room had sovereignty over her bedroom light. When others living in the bubble with her - the lesbian, the Jew, the pastor's son, the recovering alcoholic - had nothing in common with a foster kid from Walla Walla."

The Jew? The Jew? Yes, besides the obvious subtle anti-semitism of it all, it's just so funny for so many reasons. Is that a Real World type- you know the gay male, the angry black male, the ho, and now, the Jew? And they didn't even mention the fact that the pastor's son (Theo) is black or that the recovering alcoholic (Chris) is gay. Which, I guess is either an attempt to be politically correct and not point out someone's minority status (except, for the Jew, of course) or they didn't think that Theo's being black or Chris's being gay isn't that big of a deal, while Cara being Jewish is. Which makes you wonder just how backwater Walla Wall is and whether or not Tonya was surprised Cara didn't have horns coming out of her head.

And it's funny too that while Cara is Jewish, it's not like she was an observant Jew or even made a big deal out of it other than mentioning it on the first night they all met and everyone was trying to figure out what role they were on the show. It's not like they showed her going to Temple over the High Holidays or anything like that. She wasn 't even Jewish enough to pull something as dumb as the all-time classic RW/RR moment when Amaya begged out of a pig-feet bobbing contest because it was against her religion yet didn't understand why it was a big deal that she ate a sausage sandwhich that morning for breakfast.

Somehow it makes me think of the great scene in "Annie Hall," where Woody Allen sat for dinner at the Hall family dinner, the Jew in the Super-Wasp house. As he sat there and got more and more paranoid while being drowned in a sea of Waspdom, he pictures himself as he thinks they see him, a Hassidic Rabbi sitting there with the black hat and pius. Is that how they imagined Tonya saw it, with Cara as some Hasidim woman in wig and dress?

On the other other hand, wouldn't it be kind of fun if they had an Observant Jew on the Real World? They've had an alcoholic lesbian, damnit, why not an Observant Jew. Wouldn't it be great if they had one? And I'm not even talking about a semi-religious one, I'm thinking how great it would be if they got a Hassidic one. Just imagine the beginning, the opening credits, you know, the whole "this is a story of seven people…." And as they introduce the typical group of self-absorbed frat boys, attention starved media whores and wanna-be models, they'd cut to Shmueley in pius and yarmulke?

Just imagine the drama too. You can just see Shmuley there, in confessional, quoting from the Talmud or Maimodes to describe the latest doings of the house. Like "oy, that Kyle can be such a shmuck and oh, those lips on Keri. What a shiksa. But as Rabbi Ben-Nachman said, he who can't decide between the past and future is stuck somewhere in between." Or he'd do what most rabbis do and be the one who comes between people and settle an argument. Like for the traditional fight over dishes, he'd sit there between Aneesa and Cara, nod his head, twirl his beard, and then finally come up with a solution.

Comedy gold, I's tell ya.