unsheathes . . . hehehe

i've never been a huge fan of tv. as a child, my parents kept us from this filth that is programming, a virtual babysitter, a corrupter of young minds. for me, the corruption started with a catchphrase at 8 am every morning that some of you may remember - "HEY YOU GUYS!!!!". For some reason, parents believed that just because the programming showed up on PBS, it had to be good for you. No commercials + me giving them money to stay afloat = quality programming. Hell, they even said it was quality programming on the pseudo-commercials where we got to read a 50 page list of companies that gave grants to keep this quality programming alive. it must be good for me.

That was pretty much where my TV watching ended. I remember occasional sunday evenings of Jamie Sommers battling robots with no faces and i remember it just terrifying me. i used to have horrible nightmares about that, which is probably the reason for my sci-fi and horror fascination, here, later in life. Friday nights were always a good time to sit down in front of the TV and hear Waylon sing that catchy song and secretly dream about riding side by side in the General Lee next to Daisy's purdy white jeep. How many of us considered growing up to be a mechanic, cause Cooter was really a pretty cool guy? Then came the badasses from Miami Vice. I got completely caught up in that show. I bought MV stationary, and the soundtrack (cause Glen Frey, Chaka Kahn and Phil Collins never sounded better) and even owned some pastel shirts. God, why was TV so shitty to us? What did we ever do but give our undying attention? This was probably the reason my parents put all of their kids on TV limitations. Summers were horrible, because we had to read an hour for every hour of watching TV. I'm sure some of you had to endure some similar form of torture, but now that i look back, i'm thankful for that.

So, i'm not sure whether TV has gotten better or worse since then. They've run out of plotlines to use (geez, do we really need another Law and Order show?), CG can pretty much create anything these days and we've all become immune to the shit that they pass off for programming. Now don't get me wrong, there are a couple of good shows worth watching and some of them may not really be considered good, so much as guilty pleasures. We all have them even if we won't admit to it. *cough* OC *cough*

what really upsets me is i've been proud of myself for not getting caught up all this crap on the 350 channels that i'm paying $97 a month for. Inevitably, i end up watching something on the Discovery channel or some show about snipers on the History channel that i've seen umpteen million times, but i dig it and it beats Ricky Lake.

so, my rambling here leads to the fact that it's summer again and there ain't shit on tv and even though, FOX is trying to lull us back into another coma with Paris "you can buy my video for $19.95" Hilton, i won't give into it. it's a cold day in texas when the Sopranos finish a season, because we know we'll probably have a few kids before the next season airs. luckily, we've got 6 feet under to appease us until the fall season begins again, but that's just one channel out of the other 98,000.

my point here is that it pisses me off that they subject us to crap like this. i may be a moron, but i'm not a fucking moron.

just give us 'the fall guy' on dvd and leave me the hell alone.