Kicking the TV Habit

If Election Day were every month, I could totally kick the TV habit. What I mean is, my apprehension at turning on the tube of boobs and being inundated by a tsunami of fairly puerile political ads is so great that I will not watch TV until after the election; I won't watch until about 72 hours after the election. And do not political ads really remind you of some type of nasty footballers after practice snapping towels at each other in the locker room? I'll grab a few Everybody Loves Raymond and Cedric the Entertainer when he's on, but nothing else. When Cable TV began, there were no commercials. It was assumed that the cable fee was the revenue for the cable company. Revenues have increased and the programming is pretty awful. The economic theory is that quality should get better. So much for theory. The theory is get all you can. Then die. The commercials are everywhere and they are stupid. There are even commercials in movie theaters. The ones I've seen are for Stella Artois beer and these are so good they are frequently better than the film I've gone to view. I went to see The Aristocrats with a friend and walked out after 15 minutes. This was considered ...what? I mean, what was that film considered to be so that some reviewers said that people should actually debase themselves by viewing it? I heard yesterday from a friend in Toronto that he saw a commercial on a Buffalo, New York channel that showed a toilet bowl with excrement, said excrement being the focus of the advertisement, the product being -naturally enough-toilet bowl cleaner. Why? I asked. I mean, if I were to be in the market for bowl cleaner, one assumes that I already had a pretty good bird's eye view of the state of the porcelain, so to speak. I do not, repeat: DO NOT, require digital representations, thank you. After this, my friend waxed eloquent on the history of the representation of toilets in the cinema, he being an entity who views Reality at 24 frames per second. The first depiction of a toilet in modern cinema occurs in Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. It is in the scenes of Janet Leigh in the motel. Before this, the Hayes code forbade such sights. Then I said that even though Hitch had broken the fetters of the code which had held us back from the brave new world of copro-propinquity, still Hitch had to shoot a toilet which was sparkling. It looked as if Mr. Sparkle himself had scoured it. Send dirt to land of ghosts. And the motel was a cheap motel. There is no way such a toilet exists or existed in a motel of that caliber. I have had the unfortunate experience to view porcelain which was cleaned with steel wool, or so it appeared. Then we drifted into TV again. He doesn't like CSI. Neither do I. I mean, I like the lab stuff. I do not like the Abu Ghraib touches, the Falluja-esque scenes, the H.P. Ashcroftian moments of eldritch sex. Switching to present day cinema, I told him that I had seen The Queen. She-who-must-be-obeyed had compiled a list of films to be viewed; Marie Antoinette was on the list as well as a number of others. I do not really subscribe to the list...not even the newletter. I mean, I do not really remember the films on the list...except, of course, around birthday time and anniversary time, at which times one should really scour the lists as well as any archives available. Otherwise, when we go to the movies, my opinion is not recorded. (I have had some bad moments - cinematically speaking- over the past few years. I have developed a rash and a phobia caused by films with Morgan Freeman doing voice over or playing a sort-of-as-it-were Greek chorus sidelines character who does commentary and voice over - the film with Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood and boxing comes to mind.) So I was told to direct the car to the sole movie house in the area which shows films other than Spiderman and was told were we going to see The Queen. Of course, I think we will see that Marie Antoinette period piece and my visual cortical taste buds are primed for Louis XVI, Versailles, and aristocratic romps in the hay or arbor or pergola or what-not. Imagine my surprise at seeing Queen Elizabeth in the opening scenes. For the next - oh - 20 seconds I have to wonder how we are setting the scene for Marie Antoinette. The connection between the ill-starred Austrian princess and the House of Windsor is not...shall we say...obvious. Since my wife is sitting next to me and not reacting to the opening scenes with consternation, I have to assume we are in the right theater and watching the correct film. It is a very good film, too, by the way.