Tuesday Night TV

I didn't make it home last night. The meteorologists were calling for three to six inches plus of snow and I wasn't willing to risk life and limb to get home or, worse yet, be unable to make it out to work today. Fortunately, the provost makes provisions for things like these and, after a brief telephone call, I had a free room booked at the college's alumni center, a mere two-minute drive away from my office.

After spending a few hours working on a tutorial for one of my classes, I went to the local student hang-out spot to eat a light dinner. Got in to my room and spent a little while talking to Pebbles on the cellphone (God bless Sprint's free night and weekend plan!). After a while, we mutually decided to end the conversation and watch television. She was tired, I could tell in her voice. The poor thing, she'd been up for most of Sunday and yesterday working on her dissertation. A messy task indeed, lots and lots of horrible facts and figures that must be carefully processed by the astute statistical package known as SPSS to yield earth-shattering results such as "your students aren't dumb, they're just a lazy lot!". Oh well, such is the life of a young academic.

Spent a little while watching Fear Factor, the Reality TV Star edition, where they had a few celebrities from various reality-based programmes, such as The Apprentice, American Idol, and Survivor. A fickle lot they were and it helped to re-iterate in my mind how bad, or to borrow a phrase from Simon, "bloody awful", American television has become! After spending the better portion of an hour watching these "newbie" celebrities do things like get bitten by snakes while trying to unscrew a pair of bolts inside of a glass cage, dip their heads into a nice slimy pile of worms, then pick up said pile of worms with their mouths and unload them into a blender filled with water, for the purpose of making a smoothie out of poor creatures (mmm, yummmy, worm protein health drink!) I was forced to ask myself the amazingly profound question: "Why the f*ck am I watching this?"

So, I flip a few channels, and end up on VH1...just in time to glean the fact that Jessica Simpson is ditzier than Paris Hilton, Ellen DeGeneres is gayer than Rosie O'Donnell, Lindsay Lohan is more (contemporary) Britney Spears-er than Hillary Duff, and Angelina Jolie is weirder than Colin Farrell. Ok, so I once more question my motive: "Why the "f*ck am I watching this?"

And so it went on all throughout the night...the last thing I remember before falling into a heat-induced coma is watching segments of some "relatively" recent Van Damme movie called In Hell and musing at the fact that Jean-Claude is definately beginning to look weird...wasn't he a sex symbol once?

Comments

Scratchie said…
I only need to ask myself that question once Ad and then I turn the crap off. Reality TV has some scary evil demonic twist to it that seems to hold its viewers.
Jdid said…
when it comes to the reality tv I stick to the amazing race. I cant deal with the fear factor, survivor types where folk eat all dat nastiness or put themselves in so much danger.

tv really getting silly actually
Abeni said…
Reality tv is really silly.One day I must rant about it.Imagine blending rats on Fear Factor! Not for any money am I drinking that.
Mad Bull said…
Poor little doggie! Sorry to hear you couldn't find anything... Do you have a laptop? All you needed to do was find the local Blockbusters then!
Anonymous said…
Reality TV sucks...I don't watch it. There is nutten to gain from it but upset stomach.

You'd have been better off just going to sleep.

Anyhow, good to hear from you. Was beginning to wonder if they had cut you off from the net.

Re the heap of snow...another reason why I still live in Ja. We only have hurricanes to contend with! ;-) Dr. D.
Campfyah said…
As much as we all agree that reality sucks (Amazing Race is the only decent one out there) it seems that the masses in America actually like such crap hence the ratings. I watched one episode of American Idol for the very first time on Monday simply because a lady was at the house and wanted to see it.

Dawg, on nights like those CNN, BBC, and all the Discovery chanels are your best friend.
Desiree said…
I don't watch a heck of a lot of tv, but sometimes I like to fall on into it... the simplicity of it. I do get myself attached to some of them reality shows, I'll admit. But, it's simply cheap entertainment (well, too, the ones I watch are like social experiments... Big Brother, Survivor).
Melody said…
To me, American Idol is da bomb. Ah luv music, an' de show's got some great singers.
Yamfoot said…
the first question that popped into my mind was....

....did you have a change of clothes on you? did you wash your undies and put them on the radiator to dry?