By Buzz Byrne

While the producers of BIG BROTHER 8 have done away with aged contestants, they luckily kept an old casting standby: the religious devotee who has a problem with homosexuals. In the first episode, Kail proclaimed that she wouldn’t want any of her three children telling her they were choosing to lead a gay lifestyle. This week, she won the Head of Household competition and formed an alliance with the three young bucks, Mike, Nick and Zach. How crushed is she going to be when she discovers, as I did from the CBS website, that Mike’s favorite drink is Bacardi and Diet Coke? I don’t think Mike is gay, but that is certainly one gay lifestyle-friendly drink.
 
Kail may be a fierce entrepreneur outside of the house, but she didn’t figure out she should throw the first HOH competition. Sure, you get a cushy private room with pictures of your kids, who you haven’t seen for close to 30 hours, but then you have to get dirty and nominate two people for eviction. The three late-arriving HouseGuests — the dad, the ex and the rival — were safe this week, so Kail wussed out and nominated based on the first competition performances. Booo! Hisss! I expect better, more shallow reasons for nominations. It looks like I’ll have to wait for Jessica to win HOH. See, she doesn’t like girls who use curling irons on their hair. That’s the kind of logic I look for on BIG BROTHER.
 
The food competition involved the HouseGuests dividing into two teams and getting as close to nude as network standards allow. Then, they had to douse themselves with liquid butter and slough it off their bodies into a giant container of popcorn. Whichever team collected the most butter got to eat regular food for the week, while the losing team was restricted to something called “BIG BROTHER slop.” I don’t know what BIG BROTHER slop is exactly, but Jessica cleared it all up by saying, “It is very … oat-y.”

I’m just glad to see butter back on the screen as a viable prop. Not since LAST TANGO IN PARIS, when Marlon Brando told Maria Schneider to, “Get the butter,” has it been used so provocatively.
 
Thankfully, neither Joe nor Dustin was nominated, so we get at least one more week of these two discussing gonorrhea — who got it from whom, who tested negative, who really got from whom. If the producers had any guts, they would take these two, lock them in their own BIG BROTHER house and let them discuss gonorrhea until the end of time. And, in what may have been the marketing genius move of the century, Vagisil loaded up on ads for their new screening kit all through the commercial breaks for this episode. It’s like if you hear the word “gonorrhea” enough, you’ll want to be tested; as if you could catch it just from the onomatopoeia of the word. Unfortunately, the kit is not a test for such diseases (I checked the website). They suggest seeing a physician. I suggest Joe and Dustin mention the clap as often as possible.
 
Finally, we had a character-defining moment with HouseGuest Jen. The big board that holds everyone’s nomination keys was unveiled. Each key has a picture of the HouseGuest it belongs to. Jen didn’t like her picture. Jen really didn’t like her picture. Jen tacked a potholder over her picture. Jen cried for a long time about this. Not Jen-tly either. She felt the producers were not being Jen-erous to her. I don’t know if she will bounce back from this tra-Jen-dy. I’m hoping Kail keeps her in her prayers.