THE GAME OF LOVE

Well, it’s been a while since we gave out one of our "What Were You THINKING?" awards. For those of you who are not familiar, the award—a brass boot with a self-inflicted bullet hole—is given to the person, persons or organization who has performed the most ill-conceived, boneheaded, geez-I’m-glad-that-wasn’t me-who-pulled-that stunt during the awards period. (The "awards period" is defined as any week when I’m running short of column ideas.)

This week’s winner of the Brass Boot is a joint award given to the Fox Network and the participants in Fox’s recent "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire" special. In case you missed it (and aren’t you glad you did) this thinly disguised slave auction featured a bevy of hopeful beauties lined up for the scrutiny of the multi-millionaire in question, the improbably named Rick Rockwell, who purports to be some kind of real-estate developer. While Rick watched, the women paraded in bathing suits and answered questions like "what would you do if you found another woman’s phone number in his pocket?" (Since the answers were graded, not only by Rick, but by a panel of his family and friends, we can safely assume that the answer "geld the cheatin’ SOB with a plastic fork" was given, but I’ll bet a few of them were thinking it.)

Towards the end of the show, Rick made his choice (a comely blonde E.R. nurse from Santa Monica named Darva Conger) and the two almost-total strangers got married by a judge right there on the stage. Given the show’s obvious inspiration, I had to wonder if His Honor was going to respond to the couple’s "I do’s" with "Is that your FINAL ANSWER?"

You can’t help but wonder just what kind of woman would agree to be part of a stunt like this. But what I really wonder is, what kind of MAN would do this? I mean, think about it. Being the multimillionaire of the title means, basically, going on national TV and admitting, "Yeah, I’m rich as all-get-out, and I STILL can’t get a woman the normal way." Why don’t you just have the word "LOSER" tattooed on your forehead and get it over with?

A special award, however, has to go to the Nevada judge who performed the wedding. Anyone who could face these two and say things like "The rings you are about to exchange represent your love," and do it with a straight face, is plumb wasting his talent in the judiciary. Get this man a White House job, before the tobacco companies snap him up.

Unfortunately, after the show aired, the fairy tale began to unravel. Court papers filed by a former girlfriend surfaced claiming that Rockwell shoved and slapped her, twice entered her home without permission, vandalized her car after she broke off their engagement, and threatened to "find her and kill her." Seems that Mr. Romance has a restraining order against him from said former girlfriend. Well, it shouldn’t be a total loss. Maybe Fox can edit the honeymoon videos together for a new special called "When Bridegrooms Attack!"

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it may be that the Rickster isn’t even a multimillionaire. Rockwell, a former stand-up comic and "Star Search" finalist whose major claim to fame is his appearance in the sequel to the classic bad movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," may have substantially overstated his assets. Fox defends itself by saying that Rockwell signed an affidavit assuring them of his wealth. Oh, well then. I mean, if you can’t trust an affidavit from a failed stand-up comic, who can you trust?

The network, finally, decided it had had enough. It cancelled a planned rebroadcast of the special and announced that it had shelved plans for another episode in which a rich woman got to examine her own herd of beef on the hoof in hopes of finding a suitable bull for her own stall. Fox apparently has decided to return to its roots in quality, highbrow programming like "World’s Goriest Traffic Accidents" and "The Guinness Book of Enormous Disgusting Bodily Growths."

Oh, well. Television is, after all, all about illusion. I just hope we don’t next find out that Darva’s not really a blonde. That would just crush me.