GUTS
No, I don't think I do.
written by Justin on September 13, 2025

As a kid I was pretty adamant in my insistence on staying inside and watching television. By the age of ten I'd given up any lingering delusions of athletic prowess and instead resigned myself to a life of heavy drinking interrupted by fleeting success as an Internet humorist. My parents, rest their souls, tried their hand at dissuading me from pursuing an active interest in sloth and lethargy, but to no avail. My old man even went so far as to chain me to a dog run and leave me outside for days on end. "No son of mine is going to wear his gym shorts to school underneath his pants because he's too much of a pansy to change in front of the real men," he'd bellow while making me dodge empty whiskey bottles. "Now go and sign up for a sport before I beat the queer out of you with a girly magazine wrapped around the end of a crowbar."

I was steadfast in my resolve though. It was 1992 after all, and the prospect of facing tipped over refrigerators, abandoned wells and any other number of a child's most voracious natural predators didn't seem too enticing. No, I was content with staying inside. Besides, why run around and risk breaking a sweat like a sucker when TV was more than happy to provide any number of programming options choc-full of idiots willing to put themselves at great physical risk for my entertainment?

Fortunately for me, someone at Nickelodeon must've felt the same way I did, as the years spanning 1989-1995 saw an influx of shows poised to showcase exactly that. Amidst kids going wild and sacred ruins being desecrated, one show stood above the rest. Filmed within the Extreme Arena, Nickelodeon GUTS was the first program of it's kind targeted towards children to combine conventional sporting events with extreme activities, and it completely revolutionized the way kids looked at physical fitness . Sorry Johnny, but from now on if you're going to throw that football around with the fellas you're going to have to do it fastened to a bungee cord suspended over a vat of boiling chipotle sauce. Or, barring that, lukewarm picante.

Mike O'Malley was the show's host, and it was his job to jump around and scream like a spastic retard while a bunch of inept kids flailed around attached to a bungee cord or floundered about in a kayak until a spotter pulled them to the edge of the pool. He was a devout follower of the journalistic style known as "screaming as many words as loud and fast as possible," which often times made it difficult to discern between which sort of anti-depressant he was hopped up on. The man was a charismatic vacuum and for those of you who don't believe me, I've gone so far as to provide auditory proof. Good one, Mike. Unless the Aggro-Crag comes equipped with a wheelchair ramp, I don't think those kids stand much of a chance.

Despite the intense hatred for him, I was still psyched. Even as a kid I knew in my heart that after GUTS was cancelled, O'Malley would accept roles in less and less prominent series and movies until finally being relegated to that void of Hollywood obscurity reserved for the likes of Larry from "Perfect Strangers" and "the other guy from WHAM" I'm not at fault though. We live in a nation full of people who love seeing those in positions of wealth or power get what's coming to them. I'm convinced that we don't idolize our celebrities so much as we tolerate them until their inevitable public crash and burn, at which point we ravage the body and pick apart the carcass like a pack of wild dogs.

Is there something wrong with deriving a perverse sense of self-satisfaction from the fact that, say, Phil Moore could be dead right now and apart from nobody knowing, fewer would care? How many people are going to remember Phil Moore? And of those people, how many aren't going to be jaded Internet personalities whose only means of validation comes from berating those who've achieved even some form of marginal success? I'm not saying the man doesn't deserve anything thrown his way. Consider it atonement for every time he'd ad-lib lyrics to the Nick Arcade theme song whenever a contestant would land on a Video Challenge. I mean, I can only assume that's what he was doing. It's kind of hard to hear the TV while screaming at the top of your lungs because some ten year old shithead picked Bonk's Adventure even though Sonic the fucking Hedgehog was on display right next to it. I'm sorry, but when you choose the mascot for the 16-bit console equivalant to the Libertarian party over blast processing I'm going to find taking you seriously to be more than a bit difficult.

Anyway, O'Malley seemed poised to ascend to his position amidst the pantheon of washed up celebrity stature. He'd all but disappeared from the public eye, save a few failed sitcoms, had put on a grotesque amount of weight after assumedly trading his needle for a bottle and was already being spoken about in that same ironic tone a bunch of fourteen year olds with no actual frame of reference reserve for Thundercats. Unfortunately, the braintrust at CBS thought he'd be just perfect to play the role of "wacky fat guy of minimal intelligence" in their new sitcom entitled "Wacky Fat Guy of Minimal Intelligence Causes Strife for His Neurotic Skinny In-Laws." Five years later and "Yes, Dear" is in fucking syndication. So here we are, fourteen years after his first TV stint, and Mike O'Malley is still on television. I'm declaring shenanigans against God if I'm not commanding my own army of zombies from an auspiciously skull-shaped island fortress by the time I'm twenty-five.

The premise of the show was simple; A bunch of kids would compete in a series of events, trying to earn first place points and eventually be rewarded with a coveted piece of the dreaded Aggro-Crag. Since most of you have probably been skimming the article for pictures in lieu of reading, I'm going to stick with a brief summary of a few of my favorite events. Of course, a concept such as favoritism is open to subjective interpretation, but I'd like to go on record and state that if you disagree with any of my opinions you're a fucking scumbag and I'm going to sock you in the mouth with a pie full of ebola-tipped glass shards.

1. An accurate base running simulation featuring such true to life baseball stalwarts as a cargo net, fireman's pole, tightrope and maze of elastic bands.


2. A lap around a track designed to replicate life in downtown Los Angeles circa 1992. Amidst the distractions were earthquakes, packets of smog and swarms of violent minorities.


3. Several events in which the goal was to jump from a platrorm wearing a bungee harness and hit some sort of target, my favorite of which being the Nerf archery competition. I once tried recreating this event in my backyard using a partially stripped piece of extension cord as my bungee line, the top of the slide as my launch platform and a Nerf crossbow as, well, a Nerf crossbow. My parents would later tell me that the dentist said I'd be lucky to one day chew solid food again. That was the worst birthday ever.

None of that had any bearing on the outcome though, as after twenty minutes or so of grueling pulse-pounding competition, the scoring structure left quantification and all bets were off. As a means of determining a winner, players already exhausted from literal seconds of physical activity were expected to scale the forty foot beast known only as the Aggro-Crag. Well, until later seasons when it Digivolved into the Mega-Crag, and later the Mega Aggro-Crag. Impeding the ascent to the top were various natural disasters like two-ton boulders (green pieces of styrafoam), nuclear fallout (glitter), treacherous earthquakes (minor structural instability) and blinding snowstorms (more glitter). Reaching the summit first was enough to award you an intangible number of points, effectively rendering the other four events useless. It was in this way that the day's champion was decided and would be presented with their very own glowing piece of the radical rock for which to cherish and treasure until the end of time. Or, more realistically, the end of the day when the trophy would be confiscated by security and replaced instead by a pair of British Knights Dimacells. The day I found out they took back the piece of the Aggro-Crag was worse than the days I found out that Santa, the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns and the Pope weren't real combined.

Towards the end of the series' run, the format underwent a slight change. G.U.T.S. went global, and presented America another avenue with which we could prove our superiority in fields such as "throwing things through other things," and "getting from one place to another at a brisk pace." Despite marginal popularity, the show was cancelled abruptly in the summer of 1995 after a steroid scandal involving the East German competetors rained endless scrutiny and speculation down upon the Extreme Arena until Nickelodeon was forced to pull the killswitch. At present time, repeats can be caught on the Nickelodeon Games and Sports network, sandwiched between re-runs of Double Dare, Family Double Dare, Super Sloppy Double Dare, Double Dare 2000, The Contenders and other such family friendly programming.

Well, that about does it. I hope you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane. As for me? Well, let's just say I've held staunchly to my principles. I've yet to leave the house, and as we speak medics and EMTs are working around the clock to detach the couch fibers which have fused themselves with my skin in the most unholy of unions. I figure by the time they're done, the demolition crew will have torn down enough wall for the forklift to manuver into my living room, at which point I'll finally get to experience nature's sweet embrace.