Smells Like Teen Stupid

Oh Today Show, I've missed you so.

Remember when the world practically came to an end in the mid-90s because a couple of really dumb kids lit themselves on fire after watching Beavis and Butthead? Well, that show's been off the air for more than a decade and apparently its absence has done nothing to stop the epidemic of retarded teen pyromania.

Last week, 13-year-old Russell Gortzig of Deltona, Florida (of course) let a friend pour gasoline on his shorts which he then lit on fire with a cigarette lighter. Needless to say, Russell went up like a white trash Hindenburg; he now has third degree burns on most of his lower body -- which on the positive side might prevent him from ever being able to reproduce.

Turns out Russell and his friend were imitating a clip they'd seen on YouTube. And so this morning the kid, his mother and the older sister who was charged with watching Russell and making sure he didn't do something stupid like, say, lighting himself on fire all appeared on the Today Show to -- wait for it -- warn parents about the dangers of the internet.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that it was comedy gold.

Russell Gortzig lounged in a recliner in the family's living room, looking pitiful, with his leg clumsily wrapped up like Bo Derek in Orca; his mother and sister meanwhile sat on either side of him sporting irritated grimaces, the sister in particular looking as if she'd recently walked into the local Supercuts and said, "Make me look like Kate Gosselin." Joining them via satellite from L.A. meanwhile was some woman from an organization which pushes for "more responsibility on the internet," whatever the hell that means.

Overseeing all of it was Ann Curry, doing her best Serious Journalist/Concerned Mom™ impression, no doubt sufficiently belying the control room full of producers and directors laughing their asses off a couple of floors away.

She asked Russell's mother about the offending video clip that supposedly drove her otherwise intelligent, well-adjusted son to almost burn himself alive.

The mother responded, "Well, I always pay close attention to what my children watch on the internet, but you know how it is -- if they can't get something at home, they'll just go someplace else."

"Just like their father," I said to myself.

Ann then set her sights on the sister, asking her exactly what happened on that fateful day.

The sister said, "It was just like any other day, you know? I was doin' the laundry -- then all of a sudden Russell runs into the garage on fire."

I spit my coffee out.

As for Russell himself, he said he wasn't to blame for what happened to him. "I didn't wanna do it. But after my friend poured the gas on me, he dared me to light the lighter, so, ya know, I just did. But it wudn't my fault."

Enter the apparently humorless woman from L.A., who overlooked the facts of the case -- including the boy's claim early on that he had done it to "impress a girl" -- and laid the blame squarely at the feet of the evils of an unregulated internet.

Once again, comedy freaking gold.

By the way, this was all followed by an informative segment on "Today's Relationships" which featured an interview with the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine called "How To Get Him To Tell You the Truth." At that, I grabbed the remote and thrust it toward the TV, switching one channel up to the Maury show which at that very moment was revealing to a devastated husband that his wife had lied about him being the father of their child.

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