Monday, August 13, 2007

Dawn

Welcome to my soapbox. Nice and sturdy isn’t it? Let’s bounce up and down a few times. One… two… three…. See, it is a little flexible – the wood’s tensile (got a little give), but not too tensile. I’ve been told it might be teak, but I think it’s a little waterlogged, which might account for all the squishiness.

You’ll have noticed that there’s not much room up here for more than one person at time – but hey, it’s my soapbox, I’m the one who went to all the trouble of digging it out of the trash and everything. So you’ll kindly pardon me – shove – for taking up the most space.

So I’ve failed to acquire a TV. Metaphorically killed the thing, choking it to death by its little metal and rubber cord. And as a result, I have no idea who the bachelor is, who the apprentice is, who wants to be a millionaire, and whether those people will ever get off the island or not (I’m guessing not – it’s a series, isn’t it? You tell me which is more likely - to run out of writers or to run out of ratings first?).

On a daily basis, this non-TVdom doesn’t mean much. I’ve noticed I’m much more sensitive to simulated violence and also really alert to human behavioral cues, such that I’ve recently found myself weeping to Cliffhanger - yup, the Sylvester Stallone movie – you know the part… where the Sly character climbs up that cliff face, with no equipment whatsoever – he’s freeclimbing, freeclimbing, freeclimbing, and he gets to the top, when the neo-Nazi character who happens to be up there at that exact spot stomps on his poor little hard-scrabbling fingers? Apparently, my subconscious was deeply touched by this scene – I mean, he just climbed a whole mountain for godssake. I wept. At the same time, my narrative brain (the part of my brain that thinks in verbal terms) was laughing at what a sucker my subconscious had become.

[There was also a pretty scary response to an after school special about a figure skater who got paralyzed. The emotional import can be summed up in the dialogue “I will skate again! I will! I will!” … but I’m trying to blot that from my mind.]

Having no TV, though, I find my small-talk with people I barely know severely curtailed. I have to do the smile and nod when people start gabbing about CSI – “you know, like, it’s like, CSI!” and careful not to tread on anyone’s toes when I mentally ridicule anyone who’d ever watch a call-in show about people trying to become singers.

Nevertheless – and here’s my overarching theme, rumpumpumpum! – I remain bombarded with stars and the life of stars. Sometimes I catch myself involuntarily thumbing through People at the checkout. After all, I have to read People to understand who’s on the cover, and why they’re sleeping with their nannies.

Since quite a number of the free radicals of my imagination are being herded toward Hollywood, I’ve decided to get up here on my soapbox like so many others and giving my suggestions and critique on popular media and culture. Although this endeavor is nearly as shallow as that which prompted it – there’s a nearly unavoidable hypocrisy here – I’m launching this site as the effluvium that puddles around my feet as a result of living in the shadows of the media glare. The aftermath of partially digested and inedible media bits.

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