Me: "He pulled a what?"
Friend: "You know, ___. The chick who did ____."
Me: "Who now?"
One of the perks that comes along with not watching television or listening to the radio - aside from the occasional movie or pre-recorded episode of Battlestar or Whitest Kids U' Know and an occasional minute or two of Q101 when I'm in the car at home - is that I miss out completely on so much of the bullshit that permeates our culture.
I don't know who's getting married, getting divorced, having kids with, or adopting kids in Hollywood. I don't know who Angelina Jolie is currently boning, I don't know the sex or the hair color of the fifteenth child she's picking up, and I don't give a damn about any of it.
I can hardly turn on the TV at all. When I'm at home the parents often have your basic primetime TV on, a "news journal" like 20/20 or Nightline later on in the night. Back when I was younger, I enjoyed watching programs like these, I found them refreshingly intelligent compared to most of the primetime drek that seems to never get any better. However, after a few years of being off TV, I can't stand more than maybe five minutes of these shows.
Now, I'm not saying the internet is the savior of all of this. 99% of the internet is bullshit. Well, 80% porn, 19% bullshit. Even "news" sites like CNN are largely stuffed with meaningless crap. Let's see if I can get to that point floating out there in the ether.
The meaning of the term "news journal" has been completely thrown out the window. It is now like "gripping" or "compelling" is to movies, or "non-linear" and "innovative" is to games - pure jargon, buzzwords, bullshit. I turn on 20/20, and I get a story about that one Baldwin nobody gives a shit about, the drug addict one, and how he's pulling through (though he dresses in a horribly sloppy fashion and has hair that automatically designates him a "douchebag" considering his age). That's all well and good, but it starts to bug me when we go along on one of his trips to help out other people. It's great that he's trying to help others, but when I'm watching a kid get an intervention with his family... and a celebrity "talking straight" to him and referring to the kid as "brother" every two sentences... and with a whole camera crew in the room and boom mikes hovering above these people's heads... you know, I'm sorry, maybe I'm just jaded or too critical, but I can't be moved by crap like this. It's tacky, staged, and exists for no reason other than to try to "get to" the audience (or more precisely to get to the money resting in the wallet under their left ass-check). We then get to the part of the show where that John Schlockingkins bitches about something he hates, and interviews somebody in a horribly offensive borderline Stephen Colbert way, and it's at that point I get up and go play Peggle in the study.
I come back later on for Nightline. The last time I really focused on it a few years back it was one of the last respectable news journal TV shows around. Right at fade in it starts to lose me - that jackass who did the Michael Jackson interview is the anchor. When the hell did this happen? We then went into one story of a celebrity's life or raising money for kids or something, and then a behind-the-scenes of some movie being filmed, and finally a puff piece for a band. We didn't even get ONE real news story.
I haven't forgotten about the local news, either, I just don't even bother trying with that anymore. We get half the show about people dying and incidents of violence, because violence is what gets ratings. We then get some meaningless entertainment news, some horribly stinted sports reporting (you will note that the Cubs are always mentioned first, regardless of anything else going on), and finally some "lol we like happy stuff too" bit to end it off.
Actually, I don't have a point at all, really. TV sucks, and I'm happy to report that I have no fucking idea who Timbaland is.
TV: 0, Pete: 1... Peggle: 3
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