TV Sux
First let me say that I have never seen the show in the ad above, nor have I ever seen Everyone (Loathes) Raymond. While I do own a TV set, I only use it for watching movies since it isn’t hooked up to anything that could provide any kind of basic reception. So though I’m sure I’m missing out on plenty of good PBS ‘n’ stuff, overall I’m grateful to be spared the latest incarnation of whatever the networks are trying to pass off as their “wickedly funny, irreverent interpretations of family life.” Despite my cloistered snobbery, however, yesterday I had an insanely annoying dream that somehow managed to embody everything I hate about shows like these into one excruciating little package.
In my dream, I was visiting a gorgeous outdoor ampitheater made entirely of dark wood. I was checking it out because LCF’s band had been booked to play there and I was managing them or something, so I was surveying the scene with him while a stand-up comedian dude was on stage, playing to a packed house of very suburban-looking people. To the best of my recollection, his routine went something like this:
“I never realized how few things I actually know how to do correctly until I got married. Now that I’m married, I go to the kitchen to make a turkey sandwich, and my wife will be all over me about how the bread I’m using is all wrong for that kind of meat and I shouldn’t use that knife for spreading mayo, and by the way, I shouldn’t be eating mayo, and I should have gotten the turkey sliced thinner at the deli, and oh-by-the-way my shirt is totally the wrong color for me. There are secret rules to how to do everything, and women somehow know them, but they choose not to spring these on us until we marry them. Honestly, men are just monkeys. Am I right guys? Just a bunch of dumb monkeys…”
The people at the long wooden tables watching this stale, hackneyed act were just shrieking with laughter. I excused myself, sat down in the back, and put my head down, waiting for it to be over. Then I woke up angry. Because I hate humor like this. HATE IT. And it is everywhere, as evidenced by the above ad for this show that I saw later that night.
News flash: women are not strange alien creatures from planet nag. We, like men, all have our own peculiar ways of living our lives. If you happen to marry someone whose household habits don’t jive with yours, alls I can say is maybe you should have given it a trial run first. I don’t buy the whole “men are dumb apes” shit any more than I give creedence to the idea that all women become put-upon, micro-managing harpies the instant they wed. But then again, I’m not married, so maybe I just don’t get it.