Salvation for Sale

The complete PTL Club tapes are going up for auction. The estimated value is $8 million.

Whether you consider this horrifying depends on how you feel about Jim and Tammy-Faye Bakker, the spectacular fall of their evangelical empire, and heavy make-up.

The show ran from 1974 to 1987, capturing over 15,000 hours of pathos and greed in the name of the Lord. The Bakkers sing and preach, raise money, build churches, campgrounds and theme parks. Later, everything is consumed in the smoke and flames of a sex scandal, fraud conviction and prison sentence for Jim while Tammy-Faye tries and fails to keep a smile painted on her face. Seen in its entirety, PTL may be the longest-running reality -- or surreality -- show in television history.

You know some network, somewhere, is going to get those tapes. After that, it's just a matter of time before they hit the airwaves -- what a charming, inaccurate phrase -- once again.

Just a word of advice to the winning bidder: Find a good editor, one with a lot of time on his hands and a sharp eye for both the absurd and the tragic.

"Verminators"

If, like me, you recoil at the sight of any life form smaller than a kitten, but enjoy watching them infest other people's homes from the safety of your own, Verminators is your show.

The series follows the day-to-day pest-killing adventures of a exterminating company located in Los Angeles. In the last episode I saw, the company's field crew tackled an all-out roach infestation in a lower-middle class apartment complex, a horde of rats in a slightly better apartment complex, and a bevy of black widow spiders who'd decided to nest in the horse barns of a well-to-do family's estate.

The lesson here? No one, regardless of socio-economic status, is safe from critters.

In addition to getting a good look at other people's bug-infested homes, the Verminators also pass on helpful tips and tricks for spotting them in yours. Rats and mice will leave smudge marks on corners and walls, for example. Termites are more likely to destroy moist wood. Regular house cleaning will keep spiders at bay.

All good things to know if you're more interested in keeping vermin out of your house than figuring out ways to get rid of it once it's already made itself at home.

New episodes of Verminators air Monday nights at 10:00PM ET on the Discovery channel; older episodes appear throughout the week.