Thursday, May 31, 2007

Stupid. S-T-O-O-P-I-D Stupid.

We watched the National Spelling Bee finals tonight, where tiny people with giant brains collectively work to make us feel dumb as posts.

We did this to ourselves with the Geography Bee last year, and the same result happened.

I became eerily unsettled that there is way too much that I don't know.

What killed me was that during the commercial breaks, we saw previews for a show that caters to mediocrity, idiocy, and talentlessness. It's the Bingo Show. I have no idea what the real title is, but essentially "The Bingo Show" sums it up. One person plays bingo in front of a studio audience, who are also playing, and home viewers who, you guessed it, can play along too. This takes about as much talent as the show where you just keep pickin' metal briefcases, hopin' for the best.

What has television come to? Granted, we don't watch much anymore so all I'm judging it on is what we witnessed tonight. It's never on as "background noise," as we'd much rather listen to our favorite music. When Zozo was born we made a decision to relegate television to the back burner, and there it's pretty much stayed. Plus, I'm of the firm opinion that there will never be a finer show than The West Wing, which we already own in its entirety on DVD, hence no need to ever hunt for another show. And when I need my girly fix, I pop in Sex and The City and feast on Manolos and Choos.

After Zozo went down tonight, and while waiting for me to finish washing my face, M turned on the television just for kicks. That's how he found the Bee. It was good, wholesome, quality entertainment that was topped off when the boy who won admitted at the end that even though he won he still doesn't really care for spelling bees, much preferring math and music. I get that kind of entertainment. It was intriguing, compelling, competitive and educational. At the end there it got downright hilarious.

But I can't wrap my noodle around the whole bingo-on-television thing. They've done it up right, from what we can tell, complete with an unknown but attractive emcee (and his Aussie accent), flashing lights, hyper people who think they're really gonna win a million dollars and all their troubles will be solved, and the biggest bingo balls in the world. And don't forget the unknown supermodel-like woman who picks the balls out of the cage and announces the numbers. As if that wasn't enough, there is some creepy little Asian dude who, after every ball is called, asks the audience if there are any bingos, and upon receiving a negative, states, "There are no bingos. Game still on!"

I guess that's the great thing about American television. You can take your pick: child geniuses (is that the plural of genius? Hell, I don't know. I was out of my grade school spelling bee with "cheese." I kid you not. In my nervousness all I could picture was the Cheez Whiz can in our fridge. Guess how it came out.) or bingo on crack. Take your pick. Either way I feel like a dumbass watching it.

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