Monday, December 27, 2010

A Wild World

I kid someone I know for watching "Horders" because basically it's rubber necking.  It's an hour of TV devoted to carny freakshow snapeshot of someone's unfortunate life.  Well, here's the sad truth, we are all rubber neckers at one time or another.  For me, it was "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia."  My Hellbilly white trash now has a face, and that face is the whites.

This documentary, produced by the folks that gave us "Jackass," follows for a year the crazy life of the huge White family.  None of them have a proper job, and they spend most of their time doing drugs, alcohol and parties.  This often leads to interesting sidelines like shooting your uncle in the face and the following police stand off.  Local law enforcement opines that if the Whites weren't around their crime rate would drop by half.

The odd thing is there is a soul of art running through this misbegotten ragtag family.  The family patriarch invented some new dance steps and was getting to be quite famous before he died.  After he died his five boys tried to follow in his dance steps.  Three died in various stupid ways, one ran off to the midwest to become legit, and the last is now something of a local legend.  Maybe a loco legend, besides dancing he's done things like huff gasoline for ten years.  He's not quiiiiiite stable.

I admit this was just fascinating to watch, but I'm glad I live far far away from the Whites.

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