57 Channels (and nothin' on)

On the mend for several weeks... what to do? Finally taking on Don Quixote as I have been planning since 1988? meditating? taking Philosophy of Law online courses?

Nah, I’ll probably just watch some television.

I won’t pretend otherwise, I like TV. A lot. From the mid-seventies Japanese cartoons, wildly popular among the Spanish kids of that time (Mazinger Z, Heidi, Maja the bee…), until today’s Glee and Modern family, my life has been punctuated by a long succession of prime time quiz shows, comedy series and geeky nature documentaries.

My preferences are a little neurotic though. On the one hand I love science documentaries. Things like Life after people or Walking with Cavemen (presented by Alec Baldwin, woof!) I simply can’t get enough of. I love to order Chinese food and watch the two or three-hour specials without interruption. Hadn’t it been for those stupid logarithms and integrals in high school maybe I would have chosen the scientific baccalaureate and would have ended up discovering gigantic sauropod fossils in the Argentinean Pampa or scrutinizing the night sky from Mauna Kea...

But. There’s also the dark VH1-Bravoish side of me. The one that enjoys extremely guilty pleasures such as Rock of Love, Project Runway, Charm School, Top Chef and, of course, the latest of masterpiece of trash tv, Jersey Shore. I am sure that treatises are being written in universities around this country about all that crap, trying to explain why, oh why, we found so irresistibly fascinating the semi scripted romantic affairs of STD ridden big haired ladies or the last minute sewn chiffon ensemble conceived by some screaming queen from Ohio. I really have no explanation. Maybe it’s just that we love to see shameless people doing really stupid things to feel better about our not so remarkable selves. I don’t know. In any case it’s already Wednesday so only one more day till I get my fix of Mike the Situation and Snooki’s adventures in glamorous Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Thank God.