Bad boys, bad boys back for 23rd year

"UH! Bad boys, bad boys Watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do when they come for you?"

Ok, I admit it! Like a moth to a flame, like a flower to sunshine, like Oprah to a baked ham, the sound of that opening theme sucks me right in. Time to get my redneck on, Whoop! Yo! Honey! Crack me a beer and pour me a bowl of Cheetos, willya?

That's right, kids, "COPS", the first and longest running reality show, is back for it's 23rd season of officers of the law kicking some criminal ass. My Saturday night isn't complete until I've watched an hour of screeching trailer trash, weeping mommas and stumbling drunks.

COPS premiered on March 11, 1989 and has followed officers in 140 different cities in the United States and in Hong Kong, London, and the former Soviet Union. There's no script, no host, no artificial drama. What you see happening on your TV screen plays out in the streets nearly every single day.

That's right, just down the block, some half naked fella with tinfoil wrapped around his nether regions is stumbling down the middle of the road, drunk as a lord and smelling as ripe as a week-old bag of garbage in the Texas sun. About a mile or two in the opposite direction, two fat tattooed "sales girls" are shrieking incomprehensible obscenities at each other and pulling handfuls of overdyed hair out in clumps. Meanwhile, over in the alley behind the mall, a guy as tanned and wrinkled as an old leather sandal is mumbling through his gums that he didn't think riding a lawn mower down the middle of the interstate was against the law.

And, as always, down past the 7Eleven, some punk kid decides to run from the flashing red, white and blue, makes the po-po chase him over fences, across yards littered with plastic pools and angry dogs and, inevitably and oh so hilariously, plunges into a mass of brambles and/or old barbed wire fencing. They drag his scratched and bleeding ass out into the light, throw the handcuffs on and repress grins when he starts to whine that his wrists hurt.

I hoist a drink to you, men and women of law enforcement. It can be a shit job, but I'm glad you're out there doing it and keeping my law-abiding ass safe.

Thanks and stay safe out there!