Twisted Spinster

I’ve been on a CSI/Doctor Who jag, but never mind that — what I can’t understand are the jags everyone else is apparently on: or in other words, what is it with all these Sturm-und-Drang-filled, fire-breathing diva-chef restaurant-setup shows? Is there really an audience for this type of thing? I can’t imagine anything more boring than starting a restaurant (or a clothing store, or any other type of small business, sorry but this subject just bores me, at least as a spectator sport), and I can’t imagine anything more unpleasant than an hour or two of watching an unpleasant man (say, that Ramsey bloke on Ramsey’s Kitchen Disasters or whatever the hell it’s called) berate sullen or sobbing cooks, waiters, and restaurant owners while their misbegotten meals burn on the filthy stove, etc. It’s not funny, it’s not interesting, it’s just nasty, and gives me the squirmy feeling that comes from walking in on your neighbors while they’re in the middle of a degrading domestic argument. There’s another one, also on BBC America, called “Last Restaurant Standing,” and it looks like it will be just as squick-making, only the drill-sergeant chef is an unpleasant Frenchman instead of an unpleasant Brit. There were or probably still are some similar shows on the Food Network, the Fine Living Channel, and so on.

The fact that this sort of “confrontational” television has become so popular puzzles me, but then a lot of things about popular culture puzzle me. My different drummer marches to a different drummer — I am the sort of person who rarely is attracted to a trend. “It’s not for you” is the message I usually get. Here’s another example: a show called “Intervention,” which is on A&E. It’s another “reality” show, only this time no one’s on an island — the loser drug addicts who are the focus of the show have agreed to invite the viewing public into their own homes so we can wallow in their degradation (and that of their sobbing relatives) along with them. I am afraid that I am heartless and cruel, and my only response to the spot of the drug-addicted arthritic woman sprawled on her kitchen floor next to the pet’s water bowl was to laugh. Also to vow never to let someone film me while I am collapsed in a drunken stupor on my kitchen floor next to my cats’ water bowl.

Then there are all the ghost shows. You know — “Paranormal” this and that, cashing in, rather belatedly, on the Blair Witch/Amityville Horror craze. Or so I guess; I can’t understand what else could have caused studio heads to okay hour programs consisting of dull, ordinary people stumbling around in the dark followed by a shaky camera, every once in a while shrieking when their own shadow startles them. The bad lighting, the crappy “real life” clothing everyone wears, the flat, ordinary tones of the “real” people talking about their ghosts — and a set of boring, commonplace ghosts they are, the usual dead kids and evil old women. If you’ve grown up on real horror movies that were done with a care towards atmosphere and style, not to mention contained actors such as Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, then this sort of thing is just sad.

By the way, did you know that rain! Real rain! In Florida is now the reason for breathless, dramatic reports on the news? We’re apparently getting some disturbed weather hereabouts because of a cold front moving in, and you’d think a hurricane was on its way. Oh — there was a tornado in Brevard County earlier today that tore! the! roof! off a condo and dumped it onto another condo. “We’d just had it repaired from Hurricanes Jeanne and Frances” said the rueful (tossed-onto) condo owner. “Oh my God!” sobbed the newswoman, as if she’d just learned a cruise ship full of starving orphans had been swallowed by a giant shark. Of course there is a tornado warning for the whole of Central Florida now. It just finished raining in my location. It was soft, gentle rain. But! That! Could! Change! (Cue ominous music.)