Reality bites

It takes a lot for Caught In The Net to be shocked but even our flabber has been gasted by the latest Reality TV wheeze to come out of the States.

Shot on the streets of Las Vegas, Bumfights features homeless men attacking each other and performing dangerous stunts.

“We give ‘em money, liquor, whatever and they repay us with favours,” says a spokesman for the show. These “favours” include

bare-knuckle fighting, indoor sky-diving and a Thunderbird-fuelled version of Steve Irwin’s Crocodile Hunter.

“Jackass to the extreme… I’m shocked and I’m not shocked by much,” says Howard Stern, while charity worker Gary Weik fumes, “It’s the ultimate degradation of those weakest in our society, the rape of the homeless.”

You can make your own mind up by logging on to www.bumfights.com

If you think we’ve reached overload here, spare a thought for our trans-Atlantic cousins who currently have 158 Reality TV shows to choose from. There are even more on the way with Fox “seeking six couples who’ve recently filed for divorce for a no-holds-barred game show offering both cash and the division of joint possessions. Participants will be quizzed on how much they know about the other person’s life and have a chance to tell their side of the divorce story.”

All the grisly details can be found at www.sirlinksalot.net/iwantadivorce.html

Do any of your friends, family or acquaintances look like a Walnut Whip? If so, the slaphead happy people at www.combovers.co.uk would like to hear from you. Far from sniggering at those who part their hair half-an-inch above the left earlobe, the site is a celebration of the extraordinary lengths people go to camouflage their chrome domes.

Next up on the megabyte merry-go-round is www.whatsbetter.com, which when we dropped by was pondering whether Spicy Tomato Wheat Crunchies are of more value to the cosmos than Dolph Lungren (82% of respondents said, “Yes, they blimmin’ well are.”) What sounds like a complete waste of everyone’s time is, in fact, highly addictive and on its way to becoming the summer’s big web craze.

Where does art stop and publicity-seeking self-harm begin? That’s the question Warwick Arts Centre attendees have been asking themselves this month as Italian artist Franko B stages Aktion 398, a performance installation which finds him bleeding onto canvas from a stomach wound. The background to this – and other acts of artistic waywardness – is available at www.fierceearth.com

Finally, the search for that “museum quality ” doll of Fidel Castro is over thanks to www.blitzkriegtoyz.com $60 buys a hand-painted likeness of El Commandte complete with olive green dress uniform. If that’s a bit tame for you, their War Criminals Of The 20th Century series includes Mussolini, Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.