It’s bad enough that the WB cancelled Angel, which was a halfway decent show, but did my wife have to fall in love with all those crappy “We’ll redecorate your house in 2 days and $1,000” shows?
Tonight it has been nothing but “Clean Sweep”, “Trading Places”, and other assundry chick-shows. The friggin shows are everywhere (what the hell happened to TLC anyway? Can’t they do better than this? Why not re-run Connections ad-naseuem like they did in the good ol’ days?) and they are getting more ridiculous as time goes by. What’s next: “Mystery Car Detailing”? “The Joys of Carpet Shampooing”? “Wipe my Baby’s Bum”?
There’s an answer to this. It lives on The Discovery Channel and is called Monster House.
See, they do the home renovation stuff, so your wife’ll get her redecorating fix, but they do insane things like put a giant football helmet on the house or a giant tiki head in the living room.
While I completely agree with this rule, I hear that they have earphones for TVs now. And I might just get some for my husband, as he likes to watch TV while I’m asleep in the next room. Rule #1 in the Bodoni household: Don’t wake Lynn. I’m crankier than any baby with colic, and I have more power to make everyone else miserable, too. But Bill is slightly deaf and getting deafer, and doesn’t realize that he’s turned the TV up so loud.
The answer to this, at least in this town is to call Comcast (if your service is through those bastards), and tell them that you want to reduce your cable service to the absolute minimum.
They’ll take a while to do it, really. I think it was 6 months from the time I told them to until they actually did it, but I was getting billed correctly and I’d confirmed with them at least twice that I really did want them to do this. But once they do it, it’s amazing (and yes, I used to be a Trading Spaces watcher…now I can’t believe I was that into it). No TLC, no redecorating shows…none of it.
Of course I also don’t get the weather channel, but I guess that’s what weather.com is for.
I teach an Adult Ed evening class for the local Community College-the topic: residential repair and remodeling. For years I’ve dreamed of putting a show together where I’d work with everyday Janes and Joes, on projects such as replacing a kitchen faucet, putting in new windows, or adding electrical receptacles. Nothing scripted, it would be shown as it happens, along with the anticipated problems and awshits. No lovely shop with $20K worth of woodworking tools. Talk about reality TV-I just haven’t figured out how to get it off the ground.
Saw Clean Sweep this weekend for the first time. What got me was that the head people explaining what they were doing were explaining it to their own staff. The home owners were off somewhere else. The head carpenter was explaining crown molding to his two carpenter helpers. They’re carpenters! They know what the fuck crown molding is!!
Can’t your wife trade off with you on the shows? Mr. Kalhoun and I are opposite ends of the spectrum on a lot of programs. So he gets to watch the big Daytona race, and then I get to watch transsexuals get their surgery. Then maybe we’ll find something we’re both interested in. Then we rotate custody of the remote again.
You actually do have a right to watch some programs you want to watch. Grow a pair, Girly-man!
Been done, it’s called “Help Around the House”. The host is a guy named Henry Harrison, pretty cool show. The guy reminds me of somebody’s grandfather, he’s always really patient with the homeowners.
Actually, I worded the OP pretty badly. It’s not my wife that I’m complaining about, it’s the asinine shows. Usually she has excellent tastes that are sympatico with mine, except for this fling with these dumb programs. I have never seen a more boring and sleep-inducing premise than these things, and after watching a few, I have the idea that a few of them cheat on their own rules… especially “While You Were Out.”
