On the way to the supermarket this morning, T and I were listening to the morning radio… She likes to listen to one of the local train-wrecks. I don’t… but part of me does. Part of me, the voyeuristic, reality TV show, sit down and watch hours of my life fly by watching other’s ruin theirs for money part of me actually enjoys listening to this particular show… Still, I only do it when T and I are in the car and she insists that we listen… though, if I’m driving her to work, I will keep it there, most of the time and drive around the city slack-jawed listening to the stuff people will talk about on the radio. I am, I confess, the worst kind of person: the pretend-to-be-highbrow-all-the-while-secretly-in-love- with-all-the-bad-crap-of-low-brow-(even, uber-plucked and penciled in brows with the little miniature eiffel towers painted on the nails of manicurists) America.
They were re-running a call from a girl who wanted to know if the guy who was sleeping with his step-sister, both of whom they’d interviewed the previous week, was still with her, despite the public humilliation they’d received from the hosts of the show and the listening public. (Yeah, I told you this was bad radio… but it gets worse.)
She missed the follow-up call to the guy (who, btw, has moved in with his step-sister. And, really, if this were the 19th century and she were 18 and he 45, it would be perfectly normal… so, in a way, with a nice cozy fire, hot-buttered rum, and Jane Austin, it’s all in the family… and it’s a good thing). She, like T and the rest of our fair city too busy to hate, listens to the show during her morning commute. A commute she hadn’t made in a week because of dereliction. (How I do thank the Lord for bikes and 15 minute rides to work through the haze of diesel (and other) exhaust... Lung-cancer, here I come, honey… so please pucker up!)
Though she normally doesn’t go in to work everyday (she never disclosed her job), she had called in sick all week long despondant over American Idol. That Taylor Hicks beat out what’s his face… had her questioning whether or not she wanted to continue being an American and a fully-functioning member of this society. That we, America, cannot pick talent when it’s shaken it’s booty in our face and sung cover songs till we want to throttle it had her so depressed she missed not only work but her prurient commute show.
But I am too hard on her. I sat in the car for 2 minutes letting the story end before entering the store to make the weekly grocery purchase.
You had what NPR calls a “driveway moment,” and all you can do is worry over whether the subject was good enough? Come on! Live the experience at hand!
by greg—Jun 3, 06:50 AM
Oh yay, I made a headline.
I remember days like that, delivering pizzas and listening to the radio in my car, sometimes even tuning in to Rush Limbaugh during the lunch shift. It was alot like deliberately probing a very sore tooth with your tongue. Why do we feel the need to do things like this? I remember thinking, “God, I’ve got to get the hell out of this country!” But now that I’ve been out for close to three years, with not so much as a visit, after a thorough saturation in the land of witty, self-satisfied left-of-center BBC programming, independent used book stores and fair-trade coffee on every corner, etc…sometimes I just really want to sit on a couch, eat some cheetos, drink a 40, and watch someone hit their baby-daddy over the head with a chair because he’s sleeping with her sister. But that might just be nostalgia…
by JH—Jun 3, 07:13 AM
FYI, while you’ve been gone Springer’s back in politics. Meanwhile, Maury has cornered the market on sister-lovers, paternity tests, and “Is she a woman… or a MAN?” shows.
by greg—Jun 3, 07:32 AM
Good to know things haven’t changed too much.
by JH—Jun 4, 06:40 AM