Whoever opined that “television is a vast wasteland” never watched an episode of Pimp My Ride or the equally thought-provoking Lingerie Football. If you ask me, the quality of television has never been better.
The proud tradition of erudite TV programming is nothing new. The birth of excellence in television can be traced back to September 14, 1965, when the much critically heralded classic sitcom My Mother the Car first aired. Fans and critics marveled over the course of 4 months at the antics of a middle-aged man (Jerry Van Dyke) whose deceased mother comes back to life in the form of an antique car. Some jaded media scholars believe television reached its nadir with the introduction in 1991 of the pioneering Jerry Springer Show, where dysfunctional families with 4th grade educations discover on live TV that Shatiqua’s recently paroled boyfriend has been sleeping with her sister, Jazmine and their mother. But if you ask me, that was the start of TV’s true golden age.
Over the decades, Americans’ television tastes have become increasingly demanding. How else to explain such highbrow entertainment as Jersey Shore, My big Fat Obnoxious Greek Fiancé, Teen Mom, The Real Housewives of Orange County, or my own personal favorite, Dog the Bounty Hunter. The Brits can have their BBC series Masterpiece Theatre. I’ll take our American-made COPS any day. Did you see the last week’s season premier episode where this 46-year old crack-addicted, welfare fraud mother tries to offer sexual favors from her 19-year old daughter to an undercover cop in return for crack? You can learn so much about the frail human condition from COPS. We are all just one sex-with-my-teenage-daughter-in-return-for-a-hit-of-crack-cocaine away from a long, lonely stay in the Graybar Hotel. Just one tiny mistake away.
Life is pretty stressful at times. When I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, I like to find a comfortable couch, close my eyes and listen to a relaxing sound. And no sounds are more soothing to me than the rhythmic sound of ocean waves crashing into the shore or the gentle gurgling of a babbling brook or the soothing hum of 35,000 rabid South African soccer fanatics at the FIFA World Cup, blowing their lungs out with their plastic 4 dollar and 95 cent vuvuzelas. If you still haven’t heard of a vuvuzela (pronounced “Voo-Voo-ZAY-Lah), it can mean only one thing: You’re an American.
Surely by now you must have seen and heard a vuvuzela. Click here to listen to its soothing sound. Now, wasn’t that relaxing? Now just imagine that soothing humming sound TIMES 35 THOUSAND …. for an hour and a half….. non-stop…. without commercial interruption. Originally used to summon distant African tribal villagers to attend community gatherings, the vuvuzela has become synonymous with the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, with its distinctive nonstop, deafening, monotone buzzing sound. The vuvuzela may come in 275 different colors, but they all come in just one note: B flat.
Welcome back to the thrilling conclusion of my true, unedited story about my fleeting friendship with an Internet Scammer named Mr. Chris. If you missed the last week’s Part I, you can get caught up here. If you were with us last week, you know that it all started when I received the following unusual email in my SPAM mail folder.
From: kelvin chris
To: (this field was left blank)
Subject: Order Urgent
Hello. Am Mr. Kelvin Chris and will like to place an order regarding some bleachers from your company to Latvia. What is their price ranges, also your terms of payment as well. hope you answer to my request ASAP. Thank you very much and waiting for your prompt responds. God Bless You.
Best Regards Mr. Chris
______________________________
I would now like to let you in on a little secret – come in close…. closer… Psst: I don’t actually sell bleachers. It’s a humor blog. View from the Bleachers is a metaphor.
But Mr. Chris wanted to engage me in a bit of Internet commerce with terms most favorable to him. So I could not help but have a little fun by playing along. I never thought he would actually respond back to me after my ridiculously satirical reply. But he did. Oh yes.
Recently, I made a new friend across Cyberspace: a very nice man named Mr. Chris. Well, at least I thought he was a friend. For a week, it looked like we were going to become best buddies. But sadly this story of fleeting friendship has a heart-breaking ending.
You see, Mr. Chris is a documented Internet Scammer – listed on web sites for trying to con people out of their money by offering to overpay with a bad check or stolen credit card, and asking the victim to send back a check in return for the overpayment. Your classic Internet scam.
What made me suspicious, you might ask? Well, I think it was his first email which I stumbled onto in my SPAM mail folder which lacked any name in the “to” field. His email asked aboutpricing for BLEACHERS.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently signed into law a controversial immigration reform bill that has stirred up strong emotions from Republicans and Democrats alike. Underpinning much of the debate is the concern by many that this new law will unleash a tidal wave of abuse as racist rogue cops and INS agents target Hispanics – reminiscent of the roundup of Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. There are protests from some unusual corners: Several prominent Hispanic Major League baseball players are asking other players to boycott next summer’s All Star Game (slated to be played in Phoenix) or at least pledge not swing at anything outside of the strike zone.
(* Translations for the TI– “Twitter-impaired”: OMG: “Oh My God”; GR8: “Great”; Twttr: “Twitter”; IC: “I see”; LOC: “Library of Congress”; Itz: “It’s”; 4: “for”; Deets: “Details”; TTYL: “Talk To You Later”; RLWNM: “Random Letters With No Meaning”)
In a critically important and bold act of government intervention, it was announced last week that the US Library of Congress (henceforth LOC) will soon be digitally archiving the entire collection of public tweets dating all the way back to Twitter’s inception in March 2006. How many tweets will that be? Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, many of which are vaguely intelligible, with the total to date numbering in the billions. It would take the average person reading 16 hours a day over six thousand years to read all the tweets posted to date or a long weekend to read all the ones having any remote historical significance.
Whoever opined that “television is a vast wasteland” never watched an episode of Pimp My Ride or the equally thought-provoking Lingerie Football. If you ask me, the quality of television has never been better.
Over the decades, Americans’ television tastes have become increasingly demanding. How else to explain such highbrow entertainment as Jersey Shore, My big Fat Obnoxious Greek Fiancé, Teen Mom, The Real Housewives of Orange County, or my own personal favorite, Dog the Bounty Hunter. The Brits can have their BBC series Masterpiece Theatre. I’ll take our American-made COPS any day. Did you see the last week’s season premier episode where this 46-year old crack-addicted, welfare fraud mother tries to offer sexual favors from her 19-year old daughter to an undercover cop in return for crack? You can learn so much about the frail human condition from COPS. We are all just one sex-with-my-teenage-daughter-in-return-for-a-hit-of-crack-cocaine away from a long, lonely stay in the Graybar Hotel. Just one tiny mistake away.
