almost okay

I've tried to watch the news lately. Really, I have. It just isn't something that works for me.

I was sitting at The Bar for Happy Hour the other day and they had CNN or MSNBC (one of those 24-7 news channels, I'm not sure which) on one of the televisions that hangs above either end of the bar, muted with the closed-caption on. The evil display was close to where I sat, and even though I'd played a bunch of my favorite songs on their unbelievably good jukebox, the stories I saw kept my Happy Hour from being very happy, I'm afraid. In a matter of minutes I witnessed video of some idiot letting a toddler smoke cocaine, a story about a seven-year-old who chased an armed robber out of a convenience store (again, all captured on tape) and another story about a twelve-year-old girl who'd had liposuction, a tummy tuck and gastric bypass surgery because she couldn't lose weight. I didn't see any footage of the surgery, but they did show some before and after photos of the girl and an interview with her stupid fucking mother. There were other stories going on as well... those poor trapped miners, the heat wave in the Midwest, Barry Bonds tying Hank Aaron's record... you've watched yourself, I'm sure. You know what I'm talking about.

Above and beyond the bothersome nature of the news and the frightening idea that nearly every fucking thing anymore is caught on video tape, was the fact that the stories were repeated in half-hour segments, and I saw each one three times during my stay... Bonds swung the same swing over and over with the same result, the fat twelve-year-old thrice walked across the living room smirking, and that poor little kid with his face cubed out smoked a cocaine-loaded cigarette again and again and again.

I thought I would vomit from watching and it made me want to dig both of my eyes right out of my head.

I know, I know. I should have turned away, stared at my stupid reflection in the mirror or watched the girls work. I tried to. I really tried to. But the moving images and the words scrolling across the screen were so seductive that I just couldn't do it for very long at a time. Showing on the TV at the other end of the bar was one of those '50 Best Baseball Catches Ever' shows, and I even tried watching that from a distance, but they showed each catch multiple times as well. Spectacular though they are, when a player jumps above the fence and grabs a ball headed out of the park, it pretty much looks the same no matter who's doing it. I don't really need to see it six times. If they'd really wanted to, they could have shown all fifty catches in about four minutes. But that's not much of a show, I guess.

Then last night on good old PBS, after Barry Bonds actually broke the home run record, I saw another tired debate between Bob Costas and William Rhoden over whether or not Bonds' 'alleged' use of steroids has tainted his accomplishments. In a nutshell, Costas said 'yes', Rhoden said 'no'. Of course, Bonds doesn't think so. Neither does George W. Bush. The concise Costas, glib as ever, stared without smiling into the camera, while Rhoden, a columnist for the N.Y. Times, stammered and shifted uneasily in his seat. I made it to the end of the debate, but just barely.

What do I think, you ask? I think it's a sad intrusion of privacy that I've witnessed an innocent toddler smoke cocaine, captured for all time by an unthinking adult with a camera in his phone. And I think that there must be some way to get a twelve-year-old to lose weight besides carving up her body.

And since you're asking, Hammerin' Hank was one of my favorite players as a kid, and I think it stinks that Bonds has broken his record, steroids or no steroids. But right now, there's a large painful pimple or ingrown hair on the back of my left leg right where ass cheek meets thigh, and it rubs against the edge of the chair whenever I sit down. Come to think of it, it was rubbing against the bar stool the other day. It's sore as hell still, and I'm more concerned about that.