Does Carla Beaurline need plastic surgery for that thin skin?

My goal isn't to bash the would-be celebrities of the Twin Cities, but I'm not going to kiss their ass, either.

If I think somebody is deserving of praise, I'll give it to him or her. If I can't stand somebody who is trying to be a celebrity, and causes me nausea in the process, I'm less apt to spend time writing about how horrible of a human being he or she must be. (I know, I know. I couldn't resist ripping on the Pohlad geniuses for their painful attempt to run a radio station.)

Just because I don't worship the ground Alix Kendall or Paul Lambert walk on doesn't mean I find them loathsome.

I wrote about prissy little Carla Beaurline not so long ago. I wrote about her because I'm amazed, simply amazed, that Beaurline and her band of misfits are running commercials month after month on a glorified cable access channel. (I haven't stumbled across Mike Woodley lately. Should I be searching for an obit?)

I didn't kiss Beaurline's skinny little ass, but I called it like I see it. I'm not impressed by her broadcasting skills. From her crappy banter with the late Mark DeJoy to her school girl voice, I find her to be somewhere outside my list of favorite broadcasters, local or otherwise. I don't hate her, I don't find her painful to listen to, and I don't have perverted thoughts when I see her on the TV screen. (As one of my readers noted in his comment, he gets tingly in the pants when viewing her picture. More power to ya, buddy.)

I noted in a follow up that there was a funny item in the local gossip maven's article about some sort of pettiness between Beaurline and one of her former cohorts at the local shopping channel. You'd think you had been reading a storyline out of "Beverly Hills 90210."

So I posted two columns mentioning the seemingly hard working Beaurline, who loves to glorify vacuum salesmen, and decided to follow her Twitter feed, just to see what kinds of things she writes about now and again. (I use Twitter primarily for access to the brilliance of the local scene, not because I expect to build up a huge Twitter following. But I do tweet links to my blog when I pen something new via @jeffdubayhatesu.)

Beaurline's Twitter feed is so precious that she has it protected. She has to bless you with access to her brilliance. And she did just that for me, for a short time. But she must have read this blog, decided that if somebody isn't going to kiss her ass, she's going to block that person from following her. Yep, she's that vapid.

Not a big deal. Access to her mindless promotion of the suckers who line up to be profiled on her crappy 30-minute commercial isn't high on my wish list. It's kind of funny, really. She wants so desperately to be treated like she's something special, but the suggestion that she's not God's gift to broadcasting is all it takes to set her pouty ass off.

This woman is a joke. Google her for five minutes.

I'm not going to suggest that anyone who competes in any sort of "beauty pageant" is worthless, but Beaurline's early claims to fame include an effort to be pedestalized as some sort of sacred bimbo. She was a north metro beauty queen about 100 years ago. And clearly she'd rather play Barbie Doll and smile for the camera, telling you how wonderful a car dealership is, than do something that has any real value in this world. She flamed out as a celebrity huckster on the local shopping channel and now she's trying to pretend she's still important to the world by boring us to tears with 30-minute commercials for local businesses.

You gotta have thicker skin if you want to make it in this world, honey.

There's a reason your career has been relegated to Ch. 6 for the past 13-14 years.

I want to be a TV personality!

There is a group of people in the Twin Cities that I find fascinating, and that's because the fact I know who they are defies all logic.

In the Twin Cities we have this odd channel called Metro Cable Network Channel 6, or something like that. They like MCN6, so I'll go with that.

I'm far from an expert on the channel, and its history, but why let that stop me from telling a good story. The station is part of cable networks across the Twin Cities, allegedly in seven counties, and conveniently it shows up on channel 6 in each cable system. Unlike the public access channels on your local cable system, this is not public access, exactly. Perhaps they do provide free access to groups and organizations, but as I understood it many years ago, the producers of the show pay to have it broadcast on Ch. 6.

Some of the stuff they air doesn't seem to be the type of programming that anybody would pay to have televised, (I'm thinking of certain religious programs I have run across), but some of it is clearly commercial.

And that's where three Twin Cities media darlings have found their niche, and managed to capture my attention.

Capture is a bit strong, but let's meet them.

Mike Woodley is a longtime lurker on the Ch. 6 airwaves. He has hosted a variety of shows. The one I remember most distinctly dates back more than 10 years. Along with a guy whose claim to fame was being a scab member of Toto (his career with Toto lasted about a year, and it was after Toto had its big hits in the 1980s) and a guy whose goofiness deserves an entire novel, Woodley and company tried to produce a monthly show about the local music scene. The scab from Toto, who died a few years ago, lived in the west metro, evidently, along with the goofball who has long wanted to make a living as a singer-songwriter. The three of them produced segments about the area's music scene, and did it for at least a few months. I remember the goofball stopped appearing in the show not long after the premiere episode. Whether this ran three months or 33, I can't tell you.

Woodley has been a regular on Ch. 6 seemingly ever since, although there was about a five-year period where I wasn't connected to a cable system, so I can't vouch for his entire career.

I haven't seen much of him in recent months, but in the past few years he's been as busy as ever, hosting some lame show about local businesses and organizations, and calling his show something like the "Here and There Show." It seems like every time I run across him on Ch. 6 he's interviewing the folks at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, talking about how incredible their productions are. I'm pretty sure the folks at CDT actually invented the concepts of both the restaurant and live theater. How they had the foresight to put them together into one business is mind boggling.

Woodley use to work in legitimate broadcasting, allegedly, and may still, primarily in the sports arena. I've never heard or seen him on a commercial network, but perhaps it's true.

Another staple of Ch. 6 is the lovely Carla Beaurline.

Every month Beaurline produces a 30-minute program about businesses in the Twin Cities. No car dealership or vacuum cleaner retailer is too petty for Beaurline to glorify during "Around Town." Her intro segments are often at the site of some local event or fabulous vacation destination. And sometimes she has a co-host to banter with during these segments. She seems particularly fond of pandering to the Minnesota State Fair.

While she doesn't have a regular co-host, she use to. A dude named Mark DeJoy use to host the show with her. When I first noticed this sexy Ch. 6 minx many years ago she had DeJoy as her sidekick. The banter between these two was horrendous. The transitions were forced and the topics were often idiotic. It was brutal. Years later I rediscovered Beaurline and she was flying solo. I have no idea why.

I did learn, thanks to Google, that DeJoy died at the ripe young age of 49 last year. He was working in some other form of local broadcasting, it appears, and according to the obituary he managed to work in community broadcasting (I presume) for three decades.

Beaurline has never impressed me with her broadcasting skills, but month after month she seems to have a handful of businesses who want her to talk about them. Her charm must be irresistible. I'm sure she could charm the pants off of me.

I'm pretty sure I passed her on the freeway once. I passed something that looked like a mini van, with a license plate that said something like "ARNDTWN." And a blonde angel was driving it.

If you've ever seen her show more than once, you'll remember the painful theme song "Everybody Goes There" by local act Dazy Head Mazy. It's bad.

As smitten as I am with Carla Jean, (which DeJoy liked to call her on the show), you can't help but be seduced by the queen of Twin Cities shilling: Tawnja.

Formerly known as Tawnja Zahradka, Tawnja Peterson has been hawking local businesses for two decades. She's been busy celebrating her anniversary as of late on Ch. 6.

Tawnja, (pronouced Tanya, because she's just that precocious,) is one hell of a success story. She has been telling us about great places to shop, eat, fix our teeth and receive financial advice since 1995. Sometimes using recycled bits from many years ago, Tawnja slaps together 30 minutes of commercials and presents it as some sort of TV show. I think she use to have a name for her show, but now she simply wants her air time to be known as Tawnja TV, more or less.

Not only has she been a fixture on Ch. 6 for two decades, she has managed to weasel her show onto the broadcast airwaves in the past. I know she's had her show broadcast on at least one independent station, and I think she's managed to accomplish that feat on more than one frequency.

Unlike Beaurline, whose voice can be a bit grating, Tawnja has a sultry delivery, and she's not afraid to sex it up. The still image of her, knees slightly bent and hemline pulled up above those knees, never fails to amuse me.

I saw her live, in the flesh, a few years ago. Somehow she was recruited to help emcee a community event. I guess Jason DeRusha wasn't available that night. Lord knows he wouldn't turn down an invitation. I just hope they bought Tawnja a glass of wine, and pronounced her name correctly.

So what does this fascinating trio have in common? They all produce TV shows that exist purely for promoting local businesses. They produce 30-minutes programs that are nothing more than a bunch of commercials.

Each huckster has a different way of presenting it, but at the end of the day it's nothing more than programs comprised of long commercials. These shows aren't news magazines. The programs aren't in search of unique businesses that are quirky or interesting. There's nothing fascinating about a 40-year-old vacuum retailer, and if you held a fire up to her skinny little ass I'm sure Beaurline would admit that.

There's no doubt these shows exist because the advertisers pay for Woodley, Beaurline and Zahradka/Peterson to gab about them, and the shills must make a buck or two, otherwise they wouldn't be tirelessly hawking them year after year.

It's really quite impressive. Tawnja seems to think her show is a "television magazine," but a magazine has content that isn't paid for. But nice spin.

I'm dumbfounded by the fact these shows exist. Ch. 6 loves to promote how many homes it reaches across the metro, but the viewership can't be that high, although I'm guessing I'm not the only person who gawks at these shows periodically and scratches her/his head. Somehow Woodley, Beaurline and Zahradka/Peterson have convinced numerous businesses to buy what they're selling, and it has kept their smiling faces on the local airwaves for years. Color me impressed.