By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

How many times are we going to hear about how the people on this TV show are gonna eat rats?

If you have been hiding in a closet somewhere with Elian Gonzales for the past few weeks and haven't heard about “Survivor,” it's a new game-show-like TV program that sets a number of semi-nude people on a semi-deserted island to see which ones can ”survive.”

Somehow, having a camera crew filming all the events doesn't make me think life or death. It makes me think, “America's Favorite Home Videos” meets “Gilligan's Island.” I am hoping by the third or fourth episode some faux-Hanson band will crash land on the island to lead the castaways in a rousing go-go party. This is what we need more of these days... more fake realism.

“Survivor” is the icon for everything that is wrong with our thinking nowadays.

A semi-unknown island, Palau Tiga off the cost of Borneo, is the setting for the Regis generation's, own private “Real World.” Like MTV's “The Real World,” there is bickering, almost-romances and lots of inhumane living conditions on “Survivor.” “The Real World”'s gross-you-out digs are generally million-dollar loft apartments, though — just being kept up by misunderstood losers who make the token fire-breather/rap-singer/lesbian roommate look normal by comparison. Which reminds me, why in these real life shows does the person with the worst body always work the hardest to show it off?

So, here is what most of the country is watching; mankind's real-life struggle for survival that would be a vacation emotionally from what most of us face in our lives daily. This stuff is just so fake.

At least in professional wrestling they smirk at us once in a while. Pamela Anderson Lee's fake chest is at least watchable. This stuff is embarrassing. How fearful are we supposed to be for the contestants when there is a round-the-clock medical crew on hand.

At least Jim Bakker went to jail for his fake world. Jail was probably a relief from living in that Hades known as Tammy Faye.

It seems like everything in our society today is blatantly contrived. It is the politician's image that matters, not the man. Every singer or band is just a cookie cutout of another: N'Sync are the Backstreet Boys, Christine Aguillera is Britney Spears. I could make anyone into a rapper — just have the kid break the law a few times, get a criminal record, get a drum machine, and recite Dr. Seuss, substituting an obscenity for every fourth word.

“Survivor” is a ruse. It is a nothing more than “Frankenstein,” a fabrication of semi-honest moments in a semi-honest location filmed with semi-shaky cameras.

It's “Lord of the Flies” for Prozac Nation. It's “Robinson Crusoe” as reported by the National Enquirer and Entertainment Tonight. Like the house-of-cards companies that fuel the Nasdaq, this thing looks great on paper but will never turn a profit. In addition to the million dollars that the winner gets, does he or she get a date with Darva Conger? Now THAT would be a show.

I love the excess of television and the crazy sensationalism that goes along with it. Just quit trying to sell me the garbage as truth. I want the garbage to be garbage. I want fiction. We love fiction. We don't want or need to know everything.

Even my innocent parents knew that to get little Ricky, Lucy wasn't always alone in her separate twin bed. Yet, I am sure they were happy to be spared the details (It would have been funny though, to end the episode with Big Ricky's signature line... “Lu-cee!!! Huwhat happened!!”).

“Survivor” is a ruse. It is a semi-truthful representation of semi-actual events. Because, like with all of us, as soon as the cameras start rolling everyone plays to the audience, not to themselves.

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