Television Nonsense

I'm currently watching the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS and it's every bit as self-indulgent for those involved as you can imagine.

Right now they are paying tribute to Bruce Springsteen for singing three songs with different words over the course of 30 years. Sting is singing a song about children dancing in the sky...or something. I'm not sure because his beard is leaving too big of a carbon footprint for me to hear the words clearly. People like Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman are dancing in the audience and that is every bit as nightmare-inducing to my eyes as you are imagining it could be.

Melissa Ethridge sang a tribute to him a minute ago, which was fitting seeing as how her whole career was based on ripping him off. Oh what's that you say? She also sounded a lot like Bob Seger? Well yes, but what is Bob Seger but a poor man's Bruce Springsteen? And that's pretty sad because Bruce Springsteen is really just a poor man's Bob Dylan, who was just a poor man's Jack Kerouac. Which really puts us in a bind because Kerouac was a raging alcoholic who never made that much money. Wow, I'm depressed now. Imagine how Miss Ethridge feels...

Anyway, before the Springsteen tribute was one for Mel Brooks and then one for some opera singer. Yawn.

I'm going to make a pretty obvious statement here: Television is downright awful. Even what passes for "news" is just plain lame. Fox News, which praises itself on being fair and balanced, apparently thinks part of being fair includes giving air time to Charlie Sheen's attempt to impersonate Ike Turner (for the younger crowd, that is a domestic violence reference which, in my opinion, is pretty darn funny. So just insert some cool, hip, new guy who beats his wife in place of Ike to make the joke work if you don't know who that is).

Honestly, aside from South Park -- a poorly drawn cartoon -- I don't think there is a single weekly-airing show geared toward adults. Even the Discovery Chanel is running shows like "Ghost Lab." Really? Ghost lab. Yes I can see that being very educational and thought provoking, what with all the lab work involved...with...ghosts...

I could go on about entertainment these days, but I think that the sinus infection from which I'm currently suffering is substantially more interesting at the moment. Maybe I'll continue this another time. Then TV will be better. I just know it.