If you’re anything like me, you’ve already wasted several hours of your life watching carefully-crafted whack-jobs gobble up other people’s property. You know, the show with the beguiling Brandy, that dithering hipster and the angry dwarf that yells “YUUUUPPPPP!” all the time. Surely you’ve seen it. If you haven’t, know this: it’s changed the face of the storage locker industry. Now, when lot owners go to sell the residue left behind by deadbeat tenants, more than just your weird Uncle Murray shows up to bid on that box of broken toasters: soccer moms, drunken sailors, girl scout troops … news crews. It’s gotten so bad, yours truly was recently spotted loitering by these cathedrals of crap. But I wasn’t alone! A certain reporter was along for the lurk, holding a GoPro and giggling like a schoolgirl.

Who can blame him? Re-enacting your favorite low-budget TV show can be a lot of fun, especially when you’re surrounded by the southen fried hucksters we knew we’d find sizing up all that detritus. Speaking of terms you had to look up, you know this one? joie de vivre. It’s a French term for ‘joy of living’ and at the risk of losing my curmudgeon card I must admit, I grinned like an idiot the entire time I shot this piece. See, 2012 has been a bitch and while I’m still mourning the loss of my prodigal father, and I found a dip into this celebrated dustbin served as a musty form of therapy. And you thought we were just padding newscasts! No way – everything we do is dripping with intent, whether we’re hijacking the zeitgeist or simply fawning over bent sheet-metal.

But don’t take my word for it. Watch the clip and see how reality stacks up to the best non-fiction story-boarding modern television has to offer. Or better yet, shit-can the Tv Guide and get outside. While you’re at it, clean out that garage, would ya? I’m pretty sure that stack of coronet valves will bring big bucks on the open market, not to mention what it will score after it’s aged for awhile in some cinder-block temple. Am I reading too much into this? Probably, but since this isn’t my first TV show tie-in, I’m allowed to riff on the differences between cable casting calls and the true nature of man. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a box of vintage peanut brittle I think even I can unload on eBay. Watch my purse, would ya…