Celebrity Paranormal Project Review (and a lil kick for me)

Celebrate good times... yeehaw! I’ve been awarded the BESTEST BLOG OF THE DAY for Thursday, October 26, 2006. I knew it was only a matter of time before my genius was revealed to the world… I just didn’t expect it to be in this particular way. For those of you not in the know, the Bestest Blog of the Day is an offshoot of this website, the Bestest Blog of all Time (a win-win situation). If you don’t know about it, I suggest you hustle your lil’ fanny on over, because all the really cool bloggers hang out there.

Like me. J

Thanks, Bobby Griffin, you the blogger, dude.

For those of you new to this site, welcome, welcome! I take requests and you can email me your suggestions for what to review at meowkaat@hotmail.com. Now, come in and enjoy my biased view. I’m so honored to be the bestest blog of the day and all the nice things Bobby said about me, etc. etc. Now I’m all flustered!

OK… back to the business of bias.

Celebrity Paranormal Experience (the photo above is both a photo of screeching for getting the BBOTD award and the screech of fear from the show...pictured: Donna)

VH1 Sunday nights

If you are one of those people who likes getting creeped out, who thinks that things that go “bump in the night” might be ghosts and ghoulies as opposed to your cat trying to scare the crap out of you and then giggling behind it’s paw, you just might find this new VH1 show to your liking. If you don’t like this kind of crap, cease your reading at once!!!! I don’t want to scare you with my oh-so realistic descriptions of this chilling new television program. Still here? Ok, fine. You’ve been warned. Now….

Even if you don’t believe in the soopernatural, you could be like me, and always in search of the amusing and unbelievable. Or things that make you laugh your ass off. In either case, it is quite possible that you will watch this show just to hear Gary Busy spout his almost incoherent spiritual psychobabble at other celebrities while they nod, smiling nervously and glancing at each other out of wide eyes, obviously wondering if perhaps he is the paranormal entity with which they are intended to interact.

Celebrity Paranormal Project is a lofty title. According to the celebrities having the experience, they were not told what they would be doing, who they would be doing it with, or that they might tinkle in their knickers with fright before it was all said and done. In the series premiere, which aired on Sunday and again tonight, five pseudo celebs go to the Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a totally freaky old place where it is said that 63,000 people died of tuberculosis. Among them is Toccarra, from America’s Next Top Model (…and Celebrity Fit Club, but let’s not talk about her chubby days), Jenna, the Survivor: Amazon winner, Hal Sparks, otherwise known as Mr. Sarcastic on the “I Love the…” VH1 series, and Baywatch’s Donna d'Errico (El Hottie My Gottie). Oh, and of course, the friendly and ever increasingly odd Mr. Busey, who has had, he assures his new pals, lots of these kind of experiences. He mutters something about “supernatural”, “out-of-body” and “angels”, and the rest of his words are lost into rambling nothingness. But hell, that’s good enough for me. If Gary Busey says he’s had otherworldly experiences, and lots of them, I am not about to be a nay-sayer. In the style of all VH1 “Celebreality” shows, CPP is interspersed with little narratives from the people involved, giving their take, so to speak, on the action that went down. It is during one of these Kodak moments when Gary The Guru tells the camera solemnly something along the lines of… “Everyone who watches this show is going to learn something about themselves, and that’s why it’s so essential that everyone in the whole frickin world watches this and I mean it and I’m right cuz I died in a motorcycle accident and I saw angels and…” ok, I was paraphrasing, but you get the idea. I am not certain what we are supposed to learn about ourselves from the show, but we certainly learn a lot about the various celebrities’ fear-levels. (Hint- not real high, with the exception of the tough-as-tin Tocarra) Good enough for me!

The celebs are equipped with body-mounted cameras and flashlights and other interesting equipment that’s not like something you can pick up at radio shack- this is heavy duty, ghost-hunting gear! After they have inspected the premises, they need to determine where the ghostliest place in the place is. This, a dramatic-sounding narrator tells them (and us) is the Heart Of The Haunting, and yes, you can hear the capitals on the front of the words.

Among other ghoulish tales, we learn that the sanitarium had an upper solarium where children with the disease hung out, and Timmy is the spook who might just roll a ball at you if he’s in the mood. During the hour-long show, the ball appears and disappears from various doorways and halls and the celebs all note its presence or lack thereof in the same, breathy voice.

“That ball wasn’t there before!”

“The ball isn’t there anymore!”

The peeps split into pairs and head off to their assigned area, in search of contact with the other side. It’s scary enough, you’re imagining wandering around the place full of what locals call “Shadow People” and you’re thinking, yeah, I wouldn’t want to go there, but it’s not too bad. Then the trick is revealed. See, the celebrities, now ensconced in dark rooms, shadowy hallways, totally amped up, and freakin’ just a little….are supposed to split up. Base camp tells one of them to remain where they are and the other person to proceed to a different area, and this, my friends, is when it gets scary.

Who doesn’t have that deep, almost primal fear of being alone, in the dark? Add to that tales from the crypt, or just a few stories about the old place, and you’ve got the perfect combination for oh-my-god-what-was-that.

Since the cameras they wear are pointed right at their faces, it’s easy to see the terror descend as the seconds pass by and the celebrity is left alone. Jumpy- jump. Hearing things. Maybe a tear trickles down one cheek. This they had not counted on, and it’s not acting (or extremely good acting) when Jenna begins to bawl, “I want to get out of here”, or when Donna, left alone in the hallway to look for the Doctor Ghost, starts screaming hysterically when she hears footsteps and sees, sure enough, a shadow walking in her direction. All we the viewers see is some (poor) computer-generated ghosties, but the descriptions are good enough for most folks’ imaginations to fill in any blanks. Although we don’t hear screaming, we’re fairly sure they do, and when it looks like Hal gets a little shove from behind, well, we can believe he didn’t stumble. I admit it, my adrenaline got a little workout.

At the end they all troop back up together to hold some kind of a weird-ass séance that made no sense to me whatsoever. There was a scroll, and they put their hands in little handprints on it and chanted some shit, but I gotta say… if I were Hal Sparks (chosen as the best conduit to the spirits out of the bunch of them) I would not be saying things like, ‘Come on, and enter me, all you restless and possibly hostile spirits. Jump on IN, brothers and sisters!!!!” Isn’t that considered a no-no, even in the least religious homes? Inviting dispossessed spirits into yourself? Isn’t that a little dangerous, or if not dangerous, then plain old tacky? I expected Hal’s eyes to roll back in his head and him to start mumbling like Gary, but nothing of the sort. There were some loud noises, the temperature apparently dropped and then they wrapped that shit up quick. It was like, “Ok, we’re done here specters, you’re no longer welcome in us, forget I said that whole entering me stuff… so take off- let’sgetthehelloutofhere!” Yes, again I am paraphrasing, but you get the feel for the thing, right? That’s’ what’s important.

So it wasn’t convincing proof of the existence of ghosts and/or other ethereal beings, but it was good fun. Unless you’re a big party pooper- the kind of person who simply has to blurt out during the tense moments, “Oh this is so fake!” In that case, go away. And take your big, interrupting mouth with you. This is supposed to be fun, dammit.

A new episode is on next week- taking place at a prison for the criminally insane. I’m there, but like I said if you’re superstitious (or a chicken shit) don’t even try it. You’ll sleep with the lights on for a week.