Last Night a TV Saved My Life

I spent last night in a hotel as a sort of "test drive" for a review I'll be writing up. The place was nice, but I'll spare you the details - you'll be able to get them, eventually, by reading the review, if you should so desire.

Instead, I'd rather talk about something else I (re)discovered is interesting: television.

Ok, I know it's pathetic. Staying in the hotel was nice. Their heating works, which is automatically a step up from my own home. There was a full bathtub there, yet another plus. And? Really freaking quiet there. I sort of missed The Crier and his nightly screaming, for a brief moment, but my sleep really approved of the lack of interruptions. My sleep was whispering in my ear all night, "See what I mean? This is how to do it... you've been getting it wrong all these years, don't you see?"

And then I woke up to a beautiful snowfall in Paris. The room was warm and cozy and bright, and I saw huge, comforting snowflakes falling from behind the pale yellow curtains of my hotel room.

I tried to sit and just appreciate the happiness of warm, friendly luxury. I mean, there I was, all bundled up in my nice room with a fresh cup of tea. Cozy and calm, that's how everything felt.

But I couldn't resist. The TV called.

So I'll admit it. I got my CNN fix (Bush in Germany, More Bush in Germany, and Oh My God! Do You Know What? President Bush Meets with Chancellor Shroeder!). What's wrong with that?

Oh, and last night I might have watched "Boyz in the Hood" on some cable channel. It was dubbed, which, granted, it's a film that doesn't really work so well in French. But I watched the whole thing and marvelled at how much spandex people wore in the early 90's. Those women were bold as hell, man. And they weren't exactly lean, either. And their spandex was in less-than-flattering shades like bright green and red. Oh, and you know what else I had forgotten about from back in the day? Those dresses that actually had shorts as the skirt part. No, not skorts. But the full-on dress version of the skort. Seriously. What a wild fashion concept. It looked hideous even on a cute girl with a nice body. What were people thinking?

I also watched a really bad reality show about a woman who comes into houses and observes parents for a few days before telling them everything they're doing wrong and correcting all their problems by teaching them how to parent properly.* I'm not totally sure how that managed to keep my attention for a whole hour, but I'm not going to dwell on it. I have, however, learned that children need limits, that nutrition is important, and that parents need to remember to have fun with their children. As you can tell, the show was highly informative and taught me many important lessons that I couldn't have learnt any other way. My favorite part was when The Nanny (aka Kathy or Cathy, I don't know) lectured the dad about how bad television is for children, and how it is not a substitute for bedtime stories or Quality Parent Time. How it's not an informative means of communication, either. The irony of having a television personality lecturing a dad about how television is bad was not lost on me, but it went right over the head of the good man with the grave face who just wanted to learn how to treat his kids right, no matter what Kathy or Cathy said.

I cannot believe I could just spend a whole paragraph on that show. Surprisingly, I've thought about it a lot since seeing it. I'm not exactly proud of that.

What I am happy to say is: a good night's sleep is a great thing. Television is the ultimate vixen, luring me so sweetly yet treating me so wrong. It's great that I don't have it at home. Can you think of all the wasted hours I would have on my hands - juggling BOTH distractions of television and internet? I don't know how you people do it.

Anyway, this post is going nowhere. It's 3.00 am and I'm on vacation, so I'm not even worried about only getting two hours of sleep. Life is so beautiful sometimes...

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*I love this run-on sentence. I refuse to change it.