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I Refuse to Watch TV, On the Grounds That I May Inbooberate Myself

Look, I want to be the cool guy. I’d like to be hip, and fly, and ‘in the know’. Certainly, it would be nice to be called ‘the man’, or ‘Fly Dog’, or ‘that supafunky dude with the way-huge penis’. Sadly, some things are simply not meant to be.

(What? I’m not particularly ‘supafunky‘. ‘Supa’? Sure. ‘Funky’? Um, yeah, I guess, depending on what I had for lunch. Hey, what the hell did you think I meant?)

Anyway, I try to stay in touch with what the kiddies are doing, and saying, and inhaling, and listening to, and… wait, did I just say ‘inhaling’? Eh, whatever. I inhale lots of weird shit around here; I’m probably up to date on that front. There’s no telling what’s been up my nose. Slutty frigging nostrils. I got no control over the damned things.

But most of all, I do my best to keep track of what the cool kids are watching. But you know what? Apparently, my best sucks ass. I can’t watch this stuff. The OC? Please. Those people are way too pretty to be in my living room. Average Joe? Ugh. The ‘average’ guy is rich, smart, slim, and makes me look like a gap-toothed gargoyle. What’s fricking ‘average’ about that? Not interested.

I even tried to keep up with the new sitcoms, but I don’t think it’s working out. I just got done with Arrested Development. Now there’s a show I should like, right? The cast is cool, the critics love it, it’s all ‘thinky’ and different and shit — it’s even got guest stars like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Henry Winkler and Amy Poehler. You can’t go wrong with that, right?

Apparently, you can. Or I can, anyway. Maybe it’s that I’m old enough to remember Soap, and how much this show reminds me of it. And how much I hated Soap, with a sneering, horrified passion.

(See? Even then, I wasn’t cool. Everybody was watching that frigging show, too. I don’t think I’m ever gonna get it.)

Maybe it’s something else — the constant voiceovers, or the cockeyed plot twists,

or the fact that there are never, ever any naked women whatsoever. I don’t know. All I know is that I can now say that I’ve watched the show once. And I can say that I have no desire to watch it ever again. So here I am, left behind by all the cool kids. Again.

And that’s all right, I guess. I’ll stick with my Simpsons, and my Family Guy reruns, and the occasional Futurama. I’ll kick it old school when Monty Python comes on PBS, and keep it real with South Park on Wednesday nights.

(Which I also just watched, by the way. Cool episode, but what the hell was up with the ending? Maybe I zoned out or something, but I’m awfully confused. This smells like one of those ‘To Be Continued’ bags of bullshit.)

Frankly, I think my lineup is way cooler than anything being babbled in network primetime these days. ‘Must-see TV’, my animation-loving ass. I’ve seen better plot devices in my damned microwave than in some of these hackneyed fool-assed sitcoms. Seriously, you want drama, intrigue, and adventure? Slap some tinfoil on a nice ripe orange, and nuke that puppy for thirty seconds or so. Anything can happen! Sparks! Explosions! Flying pulpy goodness! Think you’ll get all that on American Idol? I don’t think so, skippy. Thanks for playing.

So maybe I don’t need to be cool, after all. Which is good, because I wouldn’t know where the hell to start. Soon, I’ll give up all semblance of effort, strap on my ‘fat pants’ and a sweatshirt, and start watching Becker. And then Everybody Loves Raymond. And finally, Diagnosis: Murder, Matlock, and Murder, She Wrote.

Come to think of it, isn’t it sort of weird that the only shows the old farts seem to dig center around death? You know, given that many of them have an appendage or two in the grave already? You’d think they’d get off on the stuff with fast cars, boobly women, and dogs dressed up in tutus and lipstick. But no. Weird.

Ah, well. That’s just more for the rest of us. Ferraris and Cuthberts and gussied-up poodles all ’round! Huzzah!

(Yeah, so I watch 24. Hey, I’m not that out of the loop yet. And that’s the supafunky truth. Word.)