One more post before I actually get to work. Faizal told me about a reality tv show in the UK that sounds hilarious. The producers selected people who had opposite lifestyles (for lack of a better word), and made them live together for a week. In one instance, they found the most effiminate, young gay guys, totally into clubbing, hair, fashion and techno music, and made them live with two soccer playing, masculine, muscular, dumb jock blokes who were extremely homophobic.

Not only did they have to live together, but they had to do each other's favourite things. So the gay guys took the two homophobes to a gay club that had male strippers, sex in the back rooms, guys groping each other. I can only imagine how hilarious the bloke's reactions were. I think Faizal told me that the gay guys had to go to a soccer game or something, or maybe it was a straight pub, full of rough, rowdy men. At times the household got very intense, and you'd see the two gay guys sitting on their bed, crying on each other's shoulders because the blokes were so mean to them. Or you'd see the blokes grossing out over different gay things.

In another situation, a middle-aged housewife had to live with the lead singer of a punk band. He'd have parties with other punks, they're all drinking, doing drugs and going crazy. He had a crazy punk hairstyle and clothes, and the housewife is totally bland, shocked, and trying to clean up after him. She has to go to one of his concerts. Can you imagine? Perhaps he had to go have dinner at her home with her husband and children.

What I love about this idea is it asks the question, "How do we get along when we have different values and lifestyles? How do we negotiate our interactions, and how do we influence one another, find common grounds, while maintaining our own preferred identity?" I wish this show was available on DVD.