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Did you know I watch a boatload of TV? I do. In fact, I watch TV even when I’m not watching TV. How do I do this? Simply by the mere fact that my TV is almost always on. It’s only not on when I’m sleeping (and even that isn’t always the case, as I do love falling asleep to the TV.) I LOVE MY TV! I do! So sue me.

Due to all this TV being (sometimes subliminally) streamed in to my subconscious, I have seen a lot of programming. Even programs I wouldn’t normally watch. Even I have standards. Sometimes I’m just too lazy to change the channel or the batteries in the remote. I don’t love everything on TV and that is especially true of television hosts. Some of you hosts are just phoning it in and that bothers me. I mean, you’re getting paid to host a show. That’s your job—to talk about stuff and not be annoying. Regular people do that everyday! Without pay! Couldn’t you at least try?

Look, I’ve held my tongue long enough and feel that my criticism is constructive. It is only meant for you to improve yourselves. Is that so bad? Not at all. No need to thank me. Unless you really, really want to. In that case, please send cheesecake.

Vern Yip, Host, Deserving Design: Who do you think is really deserving, Vern? Let me guess. You? Or at least your sub-par design? That’s right. I’m on to you. This whole self-sacrificing act is so played out. Even you’re not buying it anymore, which probably accounts for why your designs get shoddier and shabbier. To be honest, I don’t actually watch your show. In fact, I groan, loudly, when I flip to HGTV and you’re on. Which is damn near EVERY HOUR! Quit hogging my favorite network!

I got news for you, Vern. Your pathetic show has been on long enough (for whatever reason) that no one is surprised you’re going to decorate TWO rooms in the house instead of the one you said you were doing. Why are you pretending it’s a surprise? Oh, I know! Because you like seeing “non-actors” have to “act!”

“OMG, we had no idea you’d do the master bedroom too! We thought for sure this would be the episode you stopped pretending you only have budget for one room!”

That’s right, Vern. We’re all on to you. The only element of surprise for these poor saps will be when that dresser you crafted out of substandard MDF scraps caves in on itself when they pack it full of boxers and knee high stockings. Oh, yes, that will be rich! You should make a show out of that!

Kelly Ripa, Co-host, Live with Regis & Kelly: How annoying can one woman be? My god, you’re like a fly! A fly that finds you when you’re just about to fall asleep! Yes. THAT’S how annoying you are. Do not scream anymore. Do not interrupt Regis anymore. Do not play the dumb blonde act for laughs. It’s not funny and you’re probably not even a real blonde. And please, stop checking yourself out! Do you have a couple of assistants holding mirrors stage left and right of you? What are you looking at?! Maybe you too are marveling at how your pipe cleaner legs can possibly be strong enough support your pumps.

For the love of God, Kelly, you played a talk show host on All My Children and you were actually good! Can’t you employ some reverse method acting skills and channel your old alter ego, Halley Vaughn Chandler Cortlandt McIntyre Santos? And eat a freakin’ sandwich while you’re at it.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Co-host, The View: I’m shocked, Elisabeth, that you and I could probably check the same box on a survey when asked our age. You’re a freakin’ old Victorian woman trapped in a 30-something year old body! You are the very definition of shrill. Have you not made enough money pimping your antiquated, uptight, and downright embarrassing opinions on daytime to have that giant stick removed from your ass? People our age do not have thoughts like you. If anyone needs a gay BFF it’s you. That’s right. I said gaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

Whoopi, Sherri, and Barbara, Co-hosts, The View: I have left Joy off because she’s actually tolerable. I would never watch the rest of you voluntarily but I will if I’m in the gym with no magazines and my other television choices are golf or Money Watch on CNN. (And believe me, you top Money Watch only because of the current state of the economy.)

I have two words for you henpeckers: STOP IT! You’re making the rest of our gender look ridiculous! Really, ladies? We can’t sit around a table drinking coffee without yelling at each other for 55 minutes? The problem appears to be with Elisabeth. Is it my imagination or are you all really yelling at her? In that case more, more, more!

I have fantasies of being on The View. For real. I dream of Whoopi calling me up and saying, “Come on out here and talk about this D&D thing just so we can get rid of Hasselbeck once and for all!”

And once I’m on there poor Elisabeth will ask me if in my free time I perform satanic rituals and carry my sword to Safeway and spear melons in front of children.

And I’ll say, “Oh you dingy broad. Where do you come up with such antiquated views? Everyone knows sorcerers don’t carry swords!”

And for the first time in the history of The View there will be laughing! And laughing upsets Elisabeth even more than sorcerers on the loose so she’ll storm away from the table as fast as her tweed pencil skirt will allow. And again they’ll all cheer! “Yeah for Shelly!” If fact, they’ll realize I’m a much better representative for the 30-something ladies and hire me on the spot. Barbara Walters will even let me commute from Seattle because she admires how much I love my job and my condo and commitment to the orphan dogs at the shelter on most Saturdays. She’ll be so inspired by all of this that she’ll make me one of her most fascinating people.

On second thought, I love The View! It fills me with warm fuzzies! I can’t wait to meet my new co-workers!

Paula Dean, Host of various cooking shows on Food Network: Hey, Paula. Nothing beats your mini cheesecakes with the Reese Cups in the middle. Seriously. It’s the only reason people come to my Christmas party every year. But dear god, woman! You’re falling apart before our very eyes! You’re supposed to make us want to eat the foods you labor over for a ½ hour, but you’ve become less appetizing than a plate of sweaty deviled eggs baking in the Georgia sun.

Licking your fingers (and those of your guests! Yek!), sticking your face under a chocolate fondue fountain, making those thinly veiled sexual innuendos to every man who dares darken your Cuisinart. It’s GROSS! I assure you, Paula, your Southern lady counterparts are not happy with this behavior! And come on—the accent? It’s getting thicker?

Dat looks real good, dunn it, y’all?

Say what, Paula? I can’t understand you with your butter, toffee, heavy cream, bacon fat laden fingers in your mouth! Clean yourself up in every possible sense of the word and chill the heck out with some coffee cake. And use a fork, will you?

Paula Dean’s sons, hosts, cookbook authors, and coattail riders: I don’t have a problem with nepotism. In fact, I love it! But you have to have the goods to back it up and you don’t. You’re boring, obnoxious, and about as appealing to look at as a bucket of eel heads. About as intelligent too. Go away. It’s time to find a real job.

Contestants on What Not to Wear:

Oh, how I sometimes want to dress myself in scrubs and midriff-showing, suede fringe covered tops. Why? Because I want someone to swoop into Jimmy Mac’s Roadhouse where I think I’m having lunch with my co-workers to celebrate someone’s birthday but really it’s all a ruse to stage a big intervention where Stacy and Clinton “from TLC’s What Not to Wear” hand me a “Bank of America card with $5,000 on it” and make me agree to dump the fringe, scrubs, and everything in between and “come to New York and shop by” their rules. Bring, it, Stacy and Clinton!

But they won’t bring it. Not to me, anyway. Somewhere down the line I decided fleece isn’t for pant-wear and crocs belong on babies and… well, babies are pretty much the only acceptable wearers for those things and it’s only because they lack the motor skills to take them off. Jealous doesn’t even cover my feelings for those mostly women and rarely men who take to the streets of NYC in search of new clothes. And sheer, unadulterated rage doesn’t scratch the surface of what I feel when I see them migrate to fringe and fleece and scrub-like attire (which they somehow find in SoHo boutiques?) Please fringe-wearers of America! Stacy and Clinton are trying to help you!

Here’s what I need to know:
1. Do Stacy and Clinton make them return the garbage they pick out Day 1 when the go shopping on their own?
2. If they run out of the $5,000 the show gives them (courtesy of Bank of America—let’s be sure the sponsor’s get their due) can they pitch in their own money? $5,000 doesn’t as far as you think. I mean, I could make it go pretty far. Hey! That’s a great idea for a reality show. Give 2 shoppers $5,000 and see who builds the best wardrobe. It’s battle of the bargainistas! Bright that, Stacy and Clinton.

I have to know. Do you know? If you do, please tell me! But I digress.

My problem is with the ingrates who not only dress poorly and embarrass their friends and loved ones, but also have the nerve to sometimes shun S & C and the chance to be verbally abused and humiliated all in the name of radically transforming their lives on national television. What is wrong with these people!? I know, right?

Okay, my work here is done. No need to thank me, fellow viewers. Don’t let anyone tell you watching television isn’t a good thing. I can already feel the world becoming a better place.

Shelly Mazzanoble

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