More "Big Brother" Than You Can Shake A Stick At

I've made no secret of my love for the CBS reality show "Big Brother." I find it the cream of the crop when it comes to reality shows, what with its soap opera histrionics, its loyal fan base and its deeply involved quest to uncover everything that makes a human being who they are, what makes them tick, and often what makes them go BOOM. By trapping people inside a house with no outside contact in real time for three months (if you last that long without being voted out or ejected) and letting them expose the human condition--there's that term again--in ways matched only by the high-quality programs on HBO, it's pop culture post-modernism at its finest. This isn't even mentioning the dozens of other incarnations around the world, which vary in their games, houses, sexuality and sociological implications. I could probably write a good 5,000 words easily on the topic, but I won't subject you to that torture.

To show my devotion, my mother and I were present at Season 5's live finale due to my second degree association to one of their editors (who is now working on "The Amazing Race") and some last minute film school hooky.

Usually, unless you were paying over $10/month for the 24 hour live feed internet service--which is reportedly very low-resolution and often cuts away when really good things are happening--viewers get the free (and admittedly more-than-enough) one hour three nights a week, edited almost on-the-spot by those aforementioned wonderful editors.

According to Variety, however, it seems that Showtime (partnered with CBS) will air three hours of (mostly) uncensored live feed a night on their Showtime Too (ShoToo) channel midnight to 3 a.m. ET (which sounds much better since I'm on Pacific Time) starting along with the premiere of the show on the fifth of July. The channel comes with most Showtime packages and can easily be found on any TiVo subscriber's list of seven gajillion channels.

There you go. Another thing to add to my TiVo. My fiancee is going to kill me.