Ross Geller is Such A Whiny Little Bitch.

"...When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year, but I'll be there for you. When the rain starts to pour..."

The screen flickered with the soft menace of mediocrity, each scene stitched together with the soulless precision of corporate anesthesia. I was trapped in a beige purgatory, a hellscape of canned laughter and plotlines recycled from the cultural compost heap. My eyeballs felt like they were being slow-roasted in a crockpot of network-approved despair. I reached for the remote like a dying man grasping for morphine, but it was too late—my brain had already begun leaking out through my ears in a slow, viscous ooze of existential dread. This wasn’t entertainment. This was a government experiment in pacification.

Seriously what happened to sitcoms? I grew up in the late '70's and early '80's. We had Three's Company, WKRP, Welcome Back Kotter, The Jeffersons. Funny and well written. It may be easy to conclude that these shows didn't age well given the current politcially correct climate. I do agree that with today's lens one does cringe. But there were times in between pushing the envelope that it was laugh out loud funny. 

What happened? How did we get to today's sitcoms of just people walking in and out of the same room? 

I blame it on Friends.

I know entertainment is subjective and the show was hugely popular. But I feel it's "safeness" was the beginning of the end. Seinfeld ran side by side with it down the track - throwing sensitivity out a 3rd story window and then running down the stairs to give it one last curb stomp. However Jerry and friends couldn't save us from laugh track mediocrity. 

And alas here we are. Mayonnaise is now deemed spicy and Taco Bell is considered exotic. If you're looking for me I'll be at WKRP in Cincinnati. 

How's that time machine coming along?








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Big Land

Image
If you know me well or have seen my posts then you know that I've always aligned myself with a tropical lifestyle - flip flops, palm trees, golden sandy beaches, umbrella drinks, you get the idea. I even have a palm tree tattoo. If you told me that I would fall in love with Labrador I would have laughed at you.  However I have very recently stood eyes wide open on the banks of the mighty Churchill River in beautiful Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The peace I feel from the serenity of Mother Nature is almost overwhelming. This is therapy you can't get from the best medical insurance. If you ever travel outside your city, province or country you will return a little changed. You will have gained some new perspective. It's like unlocking a level in a video game.  Thank you Big Land for humbling me and chipping away a little more of my stone. Peace and respect to the many spirits that reside here.  (Make no mistake, I'm still a dislocated beach bum and pirate born 200...
Read more

Ozzy. ☝️

Image
Montreal 2016. Black Sabbath's "The End" tour. 20,000 metal heads and I sang the first verse of "War Pigs." Ozzy didn't sing that verse that night, he just let all of us "Children of the Grave" have at it. I have goosebumps thinking about that night. The power of our collective voices. We were a force, pure energy. It was a moment that I will take to my grave. A concert truly is a communal experience. There was no one quite like Ozzy Osbourne. He was known all too well outside of the heavy metal community for wild antics while under the influence. But yet he wrote lyrics like "Maybe it's not too late; to learn how to love and forget how to hate..." He was humbled at the presence of the Queen of England - at his best behaviour. Clearly he was a complex and often misunderstood individual.  In my youth my music was my world. Still is a major part of who I am. There were times when music felt like my only friend. Many times I felt a lyric...
Read more

Eat Tacos, Listen to Reggae. ✌️

I'll never tell people what to do. However, I do feel compelled to offer a perspective that may be relevant or may be duck tit bonkers. I don't know either way but that's for the universe to decide. But here goes. You will not have the "last word" on social media. You will not "win" an argument with a stranger online. You may have a background of decades in a specific discipline and multiple reputable sources to support your claim. Despite that cred in your back pocket, all that is needed by the opponent in the debate is one source. One. The reason for that is they don't want to open up to a new perspective. They just want to be comfortable in their belief system. If one source - no matter how questionable - justifies their opinion, their heels are dug in to that thin strand of information that supports them. That's where their comfort lies. And really can you blame them? We're all looking for some small corner of security these days. So wh...
Read more