Climbing Jacob's Ladder

Recently I caught a glimpse of a new TV program called "Dancing experts compete against each other using amateurs" or something. It took me all of 2 seconds (looking at the remote control buttons) to change the channel. I guess I'm not alone in wondering where television programming went wrong.

I usually end up perusing the Science, History and Discovery channels for my afternoon entertainment, trying my best to get a nugget of something worth remembering. So much of television programming is like cheap fast food; it appears to be tasty and satisfying, but after a few minutes I realize I am killing myself one bite at a time. If we truly are what we consume, then reality TV consumption is the equivalent of drive-through greasy death.

Do you ever get the feeling that somehow we are missing the real point of life? Most of us myself included spend our whole life chasing the gilded and perfumed proverbial carrot, never quite catching it and sadly never realizing the carrot is counterfeit. It's fool's gold, nothing more than common iron pyrite crystals, an abundant mineral that resembles real and scarce gold ore. We buy into the idea that the copious accumulation of worldly belongings will make us happier and in the process we become like the cocaine addict who works more hours so they can buy more cocaine, so they can work more hours.

It takes an intervention similar to Jacob's dream in the Bible's book of Genesis to jerk us back to reality (if we are fortunate). The misleading American dream of retirement with heavy sacks of Benjamin's and a 55-foot recreational vehicle fill us with delusions of grandeur and hyper-spiritual fulfillment and this motivates us to work more, stay longer and push ever deeper. I'm right there with you, even though I chide myself a bit for allowing it to continue.

"What about Cash Cab? It's quality TV"! Well, it's a little bit better I guess for a reality TV show, but is it? It's educational I reckon, kind of like bite-sized "Jeopardy" or maybe pseudo-instructional, as miniature golf is to 19 holes on a real course. In reality (I know), it's like one single Tater-Tot next to a plateful of stuffed baked potatoes and hardly a meal to be remembered.

I think the real problem with television is the lack of mental stimulation I receive while partaking its wonders. It's voyeurism at best and unlike books, I get the sick feeling I'm ingesting pabulum when my mind is screaming out steak. It is insipid intellectual nourishment akin to feeding a starving man cotton candy. Deep down inside, I think most people are desperate for a change in home entertainment, but like so many sheep, we have been herded and cajoled by Hollywood and commercialism that we sit passively while we are sheared naked and never know otherwise.

In our life-long quest to reach a higher plain we shouldn't settle for such a shallow existence and my finger is pointed at me first. Work, work and more work, finally collapsing on the couch at the end of the day, hungry for a respite from our labor only to watch a steady stream of remarkably goofy untalented people stand before an obnoxious Englishman, a hipster record producer (Yo! Yo dawg!) and a dopey and teary-eyed has-been singer-dancer and imitate actual talent. This is quality entertainment? Is this even entertainment?

I wish this is all there is to it, but sadly, there's more. If I could insert a weeping sniffle here, I would. Queue the loud rock music Maestro, because it's time for a robust series of commercials selling everything from suppositories to automobiles and sometimes both (at least that's how it seems to me). It griefs me to no end (sorry, no pun intended) how Lou Reed's "Walk on the wild side", a song about transvestites, is supposed to make me want to buy an SUV. Aerosmith's "Walk this way" has been beamed into every house in the country and the full lyrics would shock most concerned parents senseless. By the way, this is the theme song at one of the Disney's better rides, something that just made me shake my head in wonder when I visited.

Maybe I need to sojourn to a far country and lay my head on a rock to get a vision of the correct path (which I'm sure would make my God happy). But in the meantime, I guess I'll just tug my boots and Nomex uniform on, go to work and try to pad my 401K a little more.