Pick a Little, Talk a Little

Sometimes, I fall asleep reading. By "sometimes," I mean every night, and by "reading," I mean watching TV.

This can be a good thing sometimes. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I woke up to a weird crashing sound. I looked at the TV, and an airplane was slamming into a building. Because I woke up when I did, I was able to see the second plane crash live, after about 10 times of seeing the footage of the first plane.

Other times, though, I wake up to random things like Tales From the Crypt reruns and infomercials about miracle products that will clear up my acne AND make my whites their whitest.

For some reason, my TV likes to wake me up to channel 4. I don't know why this is, but it does. I can be watching something on Sci-Fi, and I wake up to ABC. That's usually fine, because Good Morning, America is definitely not the worst way to start my day. If I sleep in a little, I am awakened by Live with Regis and Kelly. Regis drives me insane. He stresses me out. He's so high-energy that I feel like I'm babysitting my 2 year-old nephew when I watch him. I do love Kelly Ripa, though. Just between you and me, I've had a crush on her for years. If she wasn't already married to a soap star, and didn't have as many children as J.S. Bach, I would have pursued her in New York along with Mary Poppins. But alas, I will love her from afar. For the time being.

If I sleep in a little later, I am awakened by contention, and the cheese-grater-on-eardrums quality of Joy Behar's voice.
I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to create a show in which 4-5 opinionated women go at it for an hour, but if I ever meet that man, I'm going to hurt him. On second thought, if I remember right from old parodies on SNL, Barbra Walters created the show herself, and in doing so, I would like to hope that she has ensured her spot at the right hand of Satan in the fires of Hell.

I don't know if you've ever seen The View or not. If you have, I'm sorry. If you haven't, DON'T. Yesterday morning, I slept in due to a Dark Knight-induced hangover, and I woke up to see a segment about plastic surgery. It was slightly informative (I'm pretty sure I now know more about reconstructing female anatomy than you ever will), but for the most part, it was embarrassing. The women sit there and fight and yell at each other, and they feel that the best way to get their opinions across are to be louder than the previous opinion. I kid you not, as they go to commercial break, the level of speech is at least 40 dB higher than it was when the segment started. They had guests on the show (recipients of procedures and doctors who give the procedure) and none of them could get a word in edgewise.

The View is like a car accident, and I can't help but watch at least one segment when it wakes me up (although that might have something to do with the fact that my feelings for Elisabeth Hasselbeck mirror my feelings for Kelly Ripa, but to a lesser extent.) It's like watching The Jerry Springer Show with upper-class people and no midgets. And as fun as it is to watch it jump the tracks, my favorite part of the show is the fact that it inspired this:
Good Things Utah. The Mormon housewife edition of The View, which happens to air right before The View and actually wakes me up more often than The View. (Don't judge me for sleeping in until 10 AM as much as I can - you would, too if you kept my schedule!)

I am even more annoyed by these women than the Rosie O'Donnell/Joy Behar combination of last year. And here's the sucky part- I've actually DVR'd two, count them TWO episodes of this lately to ensure I saw them. The first, was when Corinne was on the show a few weeks ago promoting summer programs for children at Thanksgiving Point. She was teaching the women how to make "peanut butter play-dough" and "ice cream in a bag." She did a good job of holding her own with the women, who would ask a question, and then instead of waiting for an answer, would launch off on some tangent. Or, my favorite part, was when one of the women started eating some of the play-dough, bit off a huge chunk, and proceeded to choke on it. On live TV. How fun would that have been if she didn't get it dislodged when she did?!

The next time I DVR'd it was to see some people from Sundance's A Midsummer Night's Dream on it. (For those of you who haven't kept up with my blog or who don't talk to me on a regular basis, I did the music for the show, and I know most of the cast and crew.) The Amazonian women (at least, they looked Amazonian next to John Graham) drove me up the wall. The one put Chelsey on the spot by demanding that she give one of her short monologues, and they completely ignored Mark & Mark. It's publicity, though, and it will hopefully put butts in the ampitheatre.

Sometimes, I hate my TV. Why on earth does it insist on channel 4? And why is channel 4 one of the only networks that will give free publicity to theatre? (Actually, I think it was channel 2 that I was on for Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding and embarrassed myself with a poor Joey Tribbiani impression.)

Oh, well. At least it provided a fun topic for me to blog about while taking a break from recording Charlie Brown today. And I'm sure Barbra Walters is laughing at me from her perch in Hell.