Hall of Shame Moment: Vanilla Ice, Hypocritical Psychopath

For those of you who caught the second episode of The Surreal Life, was there any doubt in your mind that Vanilla Ice would soon be gracing the pages of The Reality TV Hall of Shame? Well, here he is with his very own Hall of Shame Moment, and it’s well deserved.

I hardly know where to begin. His behavior on Episode 2 would have qualified him for induction here for three separate incidents, so let’s look at them separately. Following each offending instance I will offer a little reality check in case Vanilla stops by this site looking for tips on improving his behavior. See? I am more than just the Shannen Doherty of reality television writers; I’m here to help. Before I start I would like to apologize for the terminology, but having watched him in action other words just fail me. To all the genuine psychotics in the reading audience – I mean no offense. I’m sure you are all lovely people. Please don’t hurt me.

Psychotic Break #1 – The Salt Incident

Vanilla is about to sit down to a breakfast of bacon and eggs he has prepared for himself. Sounds idyllic – it isn’t. He can’t find the salt, so he proceeds to vent his frustration over this by loudly freaking out and then he devises a solution. He’ll just break into the pantry that is off-limits to the cast. He takes what appears to be a knife and jimmys open the door, despite Erik’s pleas that he not vandalize the house. He breaks into the pantry and rummages around for the salt. Apparently breaking into a part of a home which was specifically locked in order to keep you out, to take what doesn’t belong to you in order to satisfy some passing need for seasoning, isn’t against his moral code. Oh, and while he was in there he was also hunting for some sugar, which begs a couple of questions: 1. What the hell did these people buy when they went grocery shopping the day before? And 2. Does he really act like he needs more sugar?

Reality Check: If you are shopping to stock a house, make a list so you remember to purchase everything you consider essential. Know that sometimes in life situations can be imperfect, so it is better to learn to let some things go even if it means eating the occasional unsalted egg.

Psychotic Break #2 – The Brownie Incident

The housemates bake brownies to take on their rounds to say hello to their new neighbors. Sounds benign – it isn’t. At the second house the neighbor isn’t receptive to strangers with a camera crew at her door offering chocolate and hospitality. She says something to the effect of not having time for celebrities and while none of the housemates are pleased with her rather terse, but understandable, response, Vanilla loses it once again. While walking away from her house and down the street he is shouting. His words were not only extremely loud but as ugly as I have witnessed on reality TV: "(inaudible) dick in her mouth! Whore! F**k her and the horse she rode in on! Stupid bitch! You don't like celebrities?! You live in Los Angeles, you stupid German bitch!" And he goes on to berate her for having an accent yet again. He isn't playing – he is seriously and frighteningly angry. Who does this?

Reality check: Not everyone you encounter in life will welcome the opportunity to stop what they’re doing to cater to you. Learning to handle that with a modicum of grace will serve you well. It’s a lot harder to get away with screaming obscenities when you aren’t being trailed by a camera crew. You might want to dial it down before you are confronted with the fact that many communities have laws on the books against disturbing the peace and public profanity.

Psychotic Break #3 – The Hypocritical Has-Been Incident

Here Vanilla proves once and for all that he is a tedious suck-monkey (thanking Buddy Seigal for the fitting phrase). Not only should his moment in the sun end now with being booted out of the house, but his previous 15 minutes of fame should be retroactively revoked. In the first episode of this season we saw Vanilla losing it over pictures of himself in his heyday which are part of a mural in the house. He scrawled red X’s through them in order to make the statement that this isn’t who he is and he hates any and all reminders of his previous image. Sounds crazy – it was.

He claims he is no longer the cheesy bubble-gum rapper famous for bad hairdos, baggy pants, and shamelessly stealing riffs from legitimate artists. Now he’s worse. The second episode he begins by commenting that he doesn’t like Gary Coleman’s involvement in this show as it gives it a certain cheese factor. He says this without a trace of irony. Come on, look who is on this show, he couldn’t smell the melting cheese long before Gary showed up? During their little sojourn at Mel’s Diner he proceeds to call Gary a girl while he bars his entrance to the men’s room. That’s classy enough in and of itself but that isn’t even the tip of the vanilla iceberg.

As we all know, Gary is a man of shorter stature; he said to Trishelle he is about 4’ 8” tall. Whatever his personality flaws may or may not be, he is a grown man of 35 and neither a child nor a pet. But Vanilla proceeded to pick Gary up, several times, and carry him about the restaurant holding him as one would hold a sack of laundry. It is absolutely inexcusable conduct and Gary appeared quite humiliated. While carrying him around on one occasion he said, “get in my belly!” in a very bad attempt to imitate Mike Meyer’s character, Fat Bastard, thusly putting Gary in the role of Mini-Me. All he succeeded in doing was bringing the horrific realization home that most of us would rather live in a house with Fat Bastard for 12 days than work a five-hour restaurant shift with this tool. On two other occasions while carrying Gary around he threatened to put Gary in the deep fryer. I’m sure he thought he was being playful. Lord knows I hope that was merely a bad attempt at humor, but put yourself in Gary’s shoes for a moment. You are being picked up and carried against your will by a man who openly dislikes you, who is clearly mentally imbalanced, and who has serious anger management issues. I can’t imagine a situation more awkward unless they were naked.

Great, now I have to go blind my mind’s eye. Sorry for the imagery.

Bad as that was, it gets even worse. Todd Bridges shows up. Todd and Vanilla exchange greetings and seem happy to see one another, Todd even calls him “Rob,” affording him a dignity he doesn’t deserve. Fellow writer Betsy Wasser informed me that they do know each other, they met when Todd kicked the crap out of Vanilla in Celebrity Boxing. [Editor’s Note: You can even click here to read the full recap on RealityNewsOnline, which apparently many of us had put out of our minds.] That I would have enjoyed seeing.

Vanilla jumps at the opportunity to try to get Gary to say the catch phrase, “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” to his former TV brother. Gary explains to Vanilla that he won’t ever say that phrase because if he says it even once, he will lose his credibility and his credibility is everything to him. Whatever you think of that statement, it is certainly his right to play along or not, whatever he is comfortable with. Vanilla goes on to badger him tirelessly to say it just one time. He loudly asks the customers in the diner if they would like to hear it and they all clap. Hey, can’t blame people for going along with the crazy man and trying not to make trouble. Gary becomes more and more embarrassed, which anyone with any awareness or empathy would have noticed, so of course Vanilla does not. Or does and doesn’t care. Not like either one would speak well of him. In any case he is relentless in his demands that Gary say it. Absolutely relentless. Erik pulls Vanilla aside to try to explain to him that just as he has issues with his past, so does Gary. It is the same thing though they deal with them differently. Yes, Gary deals with it by being too stuffy and serious and Vanilla deals with it by inflicting his rage on everyone around him. Erik is very calming and very patient as he tries to get it through to Vanilla that he is doing to Gary exactly what he doesn’t like done to him. Vanilla’s response is that Gary should just “get over it.” Well, we can see he plumbed the depths of his compassion to come up with that thoughtful rejoinder.

Imagine the scenario if the situations were reversed. What if it were Gary following Vanilla around demanding he sing “Ice, Ice, Baby” and asking the patrons to join in on the badgering? Think Vanilla would just get over it? Not judging by anything we’ve seen so far.

It got so tense Gary just walked off the show, but not before firing Vanilla and making him turn his coat over to Todd, which was very funny. Watching him get canned from a non-existent job was a little vindicating.

Is this display of heretofore unheard of levels of insensitivity over yet? Not by a long shot. Later, back at the house, we are subjected to what can only be described as a therapy session where Erik and Traci try to comfort Ice and at the same time try to give him a little perspective about the situation. At the latter task they fail miserably. He is so angry and ranting about the humiliation of being constantly reminded of his glossy, big-panted past and how association with the likes of a Gary Coleman degrades his very soul and the person he is today. Or something. I’m thinking all that degradation took place long before Gary rang the doorbell, but whatever.

Erik is showing so much compassion and even Traci is trying to be genuinely helpful, telling him he needs to be able to laugh at himself and not let the past haunt him. Erik even goes so far as to salve his ego by telling him he was a true original who didn’t get the credit he deserves and it isn’t his fault people used him to make money. A lot of blather about how Vanilla should not let his worth be determined by others. I wish they would both stop catering to this tunnel-visioned, self-absorbed narcissist. Every comment made to him to show that as hurt as he’s been he did the same thing to Gary is turned around by Vanilla to be all about his pain. There wasn’t even the slightest indication he could see past himself and his colossal issues. He whines some more of how damaged he was to be parodied by Jim Carrey. Did Jim Carrey ever pick him up and carry him around a restaurant, threatening to deep fry him?

No, he didn’t. Wouldn’t that be cool, though? But I digress…

Not content to let the matter drop, he continues to beat the dead horse that is Gary Coleman’s cheese factor and drags others into the mix for good measure; he would have refused to do this show had Hammer been on this season. He says that Hammer is his friend and he likes him but he is cheese and so Vanilla couldn’t allow himself to be in the house with him. We learn here that Danny Bonaduce was in talks to do this show and no, Vanilla wouldn’t be in the house with him either because he would “kick his fat punk ass” since Danny has said bad things about him in the past. [Editor’s Note: Considering that Danny Bonaduce has been in several celebrity boxing matches and won, unlike Ice, who lost to Todd Bridges, you have to wonder just who would have done the ass-kicking.] I think the reason he wouldn’t have done this show with those two is that neither one of them would listen to this crap for more than about three seconds before verbally smacking him through the floor. But didn’t the editing lead us to believe none of them knew in advance with whom they would be sharing a house? He had no idea who would be there and was lucky he landed into this coven of peacemakers. Where are Vince Neil or Jerri Manthey when you need them?

So to recap: He is humiliated about being reminded of his past and feels it’s incredibly wrong of anyone to do so, yet feels zero compunction about doing it to Gary Coleman. He is enraged by strange woman rejecting his brownies since by his logic she lives in L.A. and how dare she not have time for celebrities. So therefore she willingly chose her situation and should deal with every aspect. Yet the life-choices he has made have gotten him into the situation he is in yet he shouldn’t have to deal with it and rather it is the world which should adapt to him. Danny Bonaduce has said bad things about Vanilla in public and should be beaten. He’s said bad things about Danny and his alleged friend Hammer with again, zero compunction. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Reality Check: Find some way to amass enough fame and wealth so you can insulate yourself from the entire world. If that proves difficult then try therapy. Yes, more therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. In the meantime, the next time someone offers you a chance to be on television, just say no. About these reality checks… cash them.

I know there will be those of you out there who think he’s just playing a part, this is all just his shtick. After all, Traci Bingham just went on Ryan Seacrest’s new talk show saying that she was told to play the part of the bitch and it’s a credit to her talent that no one knew she was acting when she got her Hall of Shame Moment. (Even if that was true, which I don’t believe for a second, the utter stupidity of being so unpleasant under the guise of your own identity… there are just no words. Also, it should be noted that somebody did believe she was acting – Erik accused her of being a plant by the producers to stir things up.) But for those of you who think that Vanilla was just playing a part here, hit a search engine and check out articles on his behavior during MTV’s 50 Lamest Videos. That was a show hosted by Janeane Garafalo, Chris Kattan, Denis Leary, and Jon Stewart where the top 50 worst videos ever made were played and mocked, and the top 10 destroyed never to be played on MTV again. Vanilla was invited on to destroy his own video. He took a baseball bat to it and then proceeded to take said bat to the rest of the stage. Among other things, he destroyed a table, swung and hit a mannequin of Debbie Gibson right between the eyes, and in the mayhem Chris was hit with some of the fallout injuring his foot while Janeane was curled up covering her head in a protective maneuver. He wasn’t kidding then either and Chris’ cries of “Nooooooo – Vanilla – NOOOOOO” ring in my ears as I watch The Surreal Life. For those of you who are still don’t believe that this guy is off, check out The Smoking Gun in regards to his arrest, January 5, 2001. He was charged with domestic violence for allegedly pulling his wife’s hair out of her head as she tried to jump out of the moving car in which they were having an argument. His two young children were in the vehicle at the time. He pled out to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to probation and ordered into family therapy. Do you think that was just his shtick, too?

I’d like to submit a dishonorable Hall Of Shame mention to the powers that be for ever casting this guy in the first place. If only Suge Knight were here.

Before Jamie discovered the joys of writing about reality TV, she interviewed musicians for the website she co-owns, AceFrehleyOnline.com. She can be reached with comments or job offers at j.goralski@sbcglobal.net.

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