Snide Remarks #661 The 2012 American Hunger Games

Welcome to the 2012 American Hunger Games, the country’s most exciting youth competition and bloodsport! A teenage boy and girl have been selected from each of the 50 states, and those 100 young people will murder one another on television until only one remains! Sponsored by Coca-Cola!

The contestants have gathered in the arena and are now waiting for the signal that will officially start the 2012 American Hunger Games. Looks like there’s been some kind of technical delay up in the production booth. They’re saying it’s going to be a few more minutes before they can start. The contestants have been standing there for a good five minutes, so now they’re starting to sit down on the ground, they’re taking out their phones, they’re occupying themselves while they wait. A few of them are chatting with each other.

Oh, here’s a tweet! One of the contestants — Mackenzie, 16 years old, from California — she’s just tweeted this:

grr dumb hunger games startin late!!! so board!! #hungergames

OK, now I’m being told that everything is fixed and we’re ready to begin! The contestants are getting back on their feet, preparing for battle — oh, not all of them. Looks like several are having trouble hoisting their obese, lazy carcasses into a standing position. I have to tell you, I have been covering the Hunger Games for years, and this is easily the fattest group of competitors I’ve seen. They just get worse and worse every year.

There’s the starting gun! The Games are underway! Right off the bat a few of the more athletic contestants are racing to the middle of the arena to grab food and weapons. They’re approaching the giant cornucopia where everything is stashed, and … OK, it looks like one of the boys is pretending to hump the cornucopia while the others laugh and take pictures with their phones. I think — yes, yes, those pictures are now appearing on Facebook, the boy doing the humping identified as Jordyn, a 15-year-old from Florida. Jordyn wants to be a bouncer at a nightclub when he grows up, and he lists his hobbies as “keepin’ it real and cold steppin’ to suckas.”

And right there at the cornucopia, we have our first casualty! Thirteen-year-old Ashleigh, from South Carolina, who had hoped to spend time on Facebook for a living when she grew up, has succumbed to a peanut allergy. Gotta be careful with those peanut allergies. Now several of the other girls have gathered around to make fun of her for dying. I believe one of them is tweeting … yes, here’s her tweet:

omg ashleigh’s dead body is soooo fat lol #hungergames

That tweet comes from 15-year-old Bella, of New Jersey, who told us that if she wins the Hunger Games but doesn’t get a car for her Sweet Sixteen, she’ll kill herself. Ooh! And now Bella is dead! Struck from behind with a baseball bat wielded by Jordyn, who has torn his attention away from pretending to hump the cornucopia long enough to get his head in the game! His buddies are high-fiving him now, taking more pictures to post on Facebook. By the way, if you favor Jordyn to win the Hunger Games, you should “like” him on his fan page, facebook.com/jordynhungergames. That’s Jordyn with a “y,” of course.

Back at the starting point, a lot of the contestants are still standing around, watching YouTube videos on their phones while they wait for things to clear up at the cornucopia. I see Caitlyn — 16 years old, from Pennsylvania — is conferring with her parents, who are now signaling to the judges about something. They seem to be upset about some element of the Games. I’m not sure what it is. OK, it looks like Caitlyn’s parents are insisting that the playing field be swept for ticks before they let their daughter participate. Yes, something about Lyme disease … they are concerned about Lyme disease … Caitlyn’s stefather is very agitated, he’s talking about lawsuits. Not sure how that’s going to resolve itself.

Now that the stronger competitors have gotten their weapons and food and scrambled off into the forest, some of the others are timidly waddling toward the cornucopia to get whatever is left, panting and wheezing as they go. Several have stopped halfway there to sit down and rest a while. Now one of them — I believe that’s Tighson, from Colorado — he’s 14 — he’s picked up an empty bread wrapper. It’s a wrapper that used to have a loaf of bread in it, now it’s empty, he’s holding it up, smiling, waving it to the crowd. His parents, on the sidelines, are cheering for him. “You’re doing great, sweetie!,” that’s what his mother just yelled. Good for Tighson, clearly giving it his best effort despite having no competence for anything, anything at all. According to the new rules stipulated for the 2012 American Hunger Games, at the end of the contest everyone, including the 99 who are dead, will get a trophy for participation. Tighson’s parents can definitely look forward to putting that on the mantel.

Now, a few of the boys have formed an alliance, it would appear. They’re working together on something. They’re running around with cables and wires, making a snare of some kind … OK, yes, I see they’ve rigged up a generator so they can play Xbox. Very clever boys. Now one of them is using the book of matches he found in the cornucopia to light his farts on fire.

Back at the starting point, a few kids have converted a bottle of water into a bong, and they’re passing that around while several others nap. It has been a long and grueling half-hour of work, and they are tuckered out.

Looks like a few more contestants have fainted dead away from heat exhaustion or food allergies. Two boys are openly sobbing about how the whole thing is unfair because the actual Games bear very little resemblance to the PlayStation version of the Hunger Games. One of the girls is demanding that the game-masters let them all start over again because she didn’t get a chance to do her hair properly, and it’s not fair. She’s also pointing out that Jenna is a skank. That would be Jenna from Michigan, a 17-year-old contestant who lists her hobbies as “music, boys, and being a skank.”

Along comes Jordyn, out of the forest, still the frontrunner in this competition. He’s creeping up behind a group of boys and girls who are listening to music on their iPhones while the boys alternate between trying to touch the girls’ boobs and insulting the girls for not letting them touch their boobs. Jordyn won’t be able to kill more than a couple of them before he loses the element of surprise, but who will he choose? We’ll have to wait to find out — the judges have signaled to him to stop where he is, because it’s time for a commercial. We’ll be right back!