Reality Schmality

My family must be on hiatus.

While we wait for my brother's response to my sister's letter, which is bound to be as bizarre and entertaining as Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-banging outburst at the UN General Assembly, there is a lull in the entertainment portion of my life.

Against general principle, I turn on the TV to search for some entertainment. (Glee calls to me. Otherwise if it is not football season, the TV is just another thing I have to remember to dust.)

I remember the day we got a color television. (I am that old.) My Dad could not wait for us to see the difference in our afternoon cartoons. We tuned into Kimba the White Lion - which was, oddly, mostly green and white. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058817/)

On our 7-channel TV.

My TV has 800+ channels. I am really not sure how many exactly. It is right around the 800 mark that my hand cramps and I stop scrolling.

And what do we need 800 channels for? There is such a drought of worthwhile material, what could we possibly need that much air time for?

I nostalgically long for the long boooooooooop signifying the moment a station would go off the air following the national anthem (and would wake me up so the parents I was babysitting for would not catch me snoozing while Junior went snooping.)

I don't recall when it happened exactly, but it seems as though, like some opportunistic parasite, Reality TV has encroached on Written TV's territory, and like some flesh-eating virus, has taken over the whole thing.

Why is it considered entertainment to watch people's dreams dashed, and to be able to laugh at the comically bad but embarrassingly sincere American Idol contestants in the audition phase?

Dancing with the Stars? Dancing with the Hasbeens?

So you've had a multiple birth. Lots of people have. And you have your hands full with the 6 or 8 or 10 kids in your care. This would be the time to concentrate on figuring out how on Earth you are going to give them the best you have to give as a parent - emotionally, physically, educationally, nutritionally, etc - Not trot them out like some circus act.

Celebrity Rehab? Did we get the releases signed by trading a signature for a doobie? When did someone facing their demons become funny?

And who wants to watch anyone lose weight? (Or paint dry, or grass grow...) I would happily watch myself shed a few, but some fatty who clearly has emotional or medical problems? What fun is that?

And now, just as I am turning into Judgy Wudgy was a Bear and climbing onto my soap box, it occurs to me that perhaps I am guilty of the same sins.