Pale Ails

I spend a lot (most… all…) of my daytime kicking around the house looking for things to do. And over the course of the last few days, I’ve gathered a few observations.

First of all, daytime TV is crap. It doesn’t matter that most of the time I’m not watching it (I can remember only one time in recent weeks when I’ve sat on the couch at all); I like to have the TV on during the daytime to keep me company as I roam about doing other things. I can’t even tell you what’s on most of the time, but by 11 a.m., I’ve pretty much turned to HGTV and left the room. Occasionally I look for something interesting, but there’s never anything else on. Debbie Travis and Candice Olsen are, I’m sure, in my living room multiple times every weekday. Every once in a while, though, something makes me look up and take a gander at the screen. Usually, it’s the commercials that start me thinking.

For example, here’s a question: drive 3,000 miles away from Middle Tennessee and what do you get? Answer: really horrible commercials featuring Wynonna Judd and someone called Cowboy Troy hawking a new season of “Nashville Star.” And endless commercials for the Opry. During the Opry commercials, the camera pans down the lights of the “Batman” building, so that, from San Diego, I see it multiple times a day. Never mind that odds are that no one outside of Tennessee recognizes the Bell South “Batman” building for the Nashville icon that it is, it’s prominently featured.

Then there are the really stupid commercials that make me talk back to the TV. For example, one for iSold It. Have you seen this? A chick on screen tells us that, if we are like her, we don’t have time to sell our junk on eBay, but we can easily drop our stuff off at iSold It and let them do the work for us. I’d be with her on that point if it weren’t for the testimonial aspect of her pitch in which she tells us that this is why she started the company. Right there, she loses me. Does she really want me to believe that she didn’t have time to upload a few digital snapshots of her unused guitar but she had time to START A COMPANY? No, no, no, no, no.

Other commercials draw me so far into the personal life of the seller that I forget all about the product. For example, when the inventor of the Hoveround comes on screen, I can’t get past the fact that his name is Tom Kruse. He might have a very exciting transportation product for those with limited mobility, but all I can think about is how many times a day people must hang up on him when he calls. How does this man book a hotel room? “No, no, no… it’s Kruse. With a K! Really. Please, I’m not kidding. Can I get a reservation or not?”

Odd bits of news filter through, too. Like this bit: Dana Reeve, Christopher Reeve’s widow, died yesterday of lung cancer. The media made a point to tell us she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life, because we are to assume that if you die of lung cancer, you were a smoker. It’s sad when the vices one did not have must be enumerated in death. “Jane Doe, who never smoked crack, died of heart degeneration.” It’s just wrong. Isn’t it more important to note that after Christopher’s 2004 death, Dana’s death this week leaves her 13-year-old son orphaned? No one mentioned that on the news.

Now, of course, as I’m not really watching TV most of the time that it’s on, daytime TV has not supplied me with all of the observations I’ve gathered this week, so before I sign off, let me share one other with you: India Pale Ale is horrible! Yuck, yuck, ptooey! My Boy Gets Girl character drinks the stuff when her date brings it to her, and, as we were inching ever nearer to having an audience without having that particular bottled prop, I bought a 6-pack today and did my professional duty to empty a bottle for stage use.

Don’t ever let me do that again.

I now have to go shave my tongue. Until tomorrow, talk amongst yourselves.