{"id":4586,"date":"2019-01-07T07:10:52","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T06:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4586"},"modified":"2019-02-04T11:51:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T10:51:11","slug":"things-i-learned-from-tv-in-11-days-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4586","title":{"rendered":"Things I Learned from TV in 11 Days in America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Michael Who? (photo courtesy of Businessinsider.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My goals this holiday break were simple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve had a terribly busy four months. I have added two jobs\nto my life, editor\/proofreader for a translation company and writer for a\nliterary humor website. This, on top of teaching, research, writing a novel,\nand blogging, has made me one swamped dude throughout the autumn and winter. So\nwhen late December finally reared its white-topped head, I stood in my window\nbellowing \u201ctake me, take me, take me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a chance that was misinterpreted by my downstairs\nneighbor, who now looks at me with a look at once disturbed and hopeful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My rules for home were to be almost completely free of responsibility.\nI told the translation company I wasn\u2019t available until January and I told my university\nthat I wouldn\u2019t have my computer. I didn\u2019t look at my university email once. I vowed\nto do only my blog and otherwise not to do any serious writing. I allowed\nmyself only to make notes and jot in a journal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I wore comfy pajama pants for most of the break. I worked a\nfoot groove into my new Christmas slippers. I sat in a rocking chair, in\npreparation for old age. I drove a car a few times, but really under duress and\nsubsequent protest. I knew I was taking my responsibility-free two weeks a tad too\nseriously when a friend asked me to meet her downtown and I was so insulted\nthat I almost defriended her on Facebook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I did was watch movies and television. And I remembered\nhow much there is to learn just from watching television and movies. For\ninstance, to sell something on daytime television you need only be Joe Namath\nor have a British accent. I learned that there is something of a midday Bermuda\nTriangle where movies and shows that nobody watches still exist. Car 54 Where are You? Ned and Stacy. Tron. A\nChristmas Story 2. <\/em>They exist there in something like the Misfit island in\nRudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, forgotten, but unable to be gone for some\nhorrific reason.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the evening, I was forced to watch movies and TV I\u2019d otherwise\navoid. In Prague I can stream or download whatever I want, but in the U.S. I\nwas limited to a preset schedule of viewing options. It was all so 1998. But I\nwas unwilling to leave my rocking chair, so I found movies in between football\ngames and I watched and I observed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned that there is nothing more unreal than the big\nAmerican family in a Christmas movie. And just to be clear, I\u2019m not talking\nabout Hallmark movies. I mean Hollywood. In these movies, the family parentals\nhave a huge, pleasantly lived-in house in the country. The parents are obnoxiously\nunderstanding. The siblings represent a scope of personality tropes: the funny\nwacky one who never quite fit in but was OK with that, the bitchy sister, the sensible\nolder sibling, the bratty kid sister, the alternative lifestyle having Bohemian,\nwho is either gay, single, or pot smoking, or is dating a gay black pot-smoker.\nThese families interact in a way that is just so unreal that it\u2019s almost an\ninsult to people with families.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality of the world\u2019s occupations are vastly misrepresented\ntoo. Writers in movies live in apartments only affordable in real life by lawyers.\nA modest $13,000 a month two bedroom walk up with twenty windows, wooden floors,\nand within walking distance to a quaint caf\u00e9. The writers are always, always,\ndown-to-earth everypeople void of habits that are perceived as genuinely\nnegative (they might have a sink full of dishes, but they\u2019re never caught\npicking their nose.) They don\u2019t have to find someone to sell their work to, someone\nalways approaches them to buy their work. Lawyers in movies always eat hotdogs\nfrom street vendors, just to show us that they remember their roots. Doctors\nhave eschewed, or by the end of the movie will eschew, the world of financial gain\nassociated with being a physician in lieu of community medical care. A secretary\u2019s\nentire job consists of chasing a person halfway into an office shouting \u201cHey,\nyou can\u2019t go in there!\u201d before the boss begrudgingly waves them off. Teachers\nhit the deepest, most philosophical point of a classroom discussion roughly\nnineteen seconds before the bell rings. And a good rich person knows the names\nof all the lowly people who work in his neighborhood.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We move on to relationships. The best friend in a movie is a\nslightly chubby woman who\u2019s happy with her lonely lifestyle and her great\ncareer. Or he it is a slightly chubby man who\u2019s a loving family man and therefore\nit doesn\u2019t matter that he\u2019s not as hot as our hero. They both have a great sense\nof humor. Diane Keaton would make a great mother. John Mahoney a great dad. And\nany of the Wilson brothers a great brother. A great deal of women will either\nfall into or out of love with Greg Kinnear. Hugh Grant has played the same character,\nthe wealthy yet awkward, super handsome yet somehow charmingly unsure of\nhimself guy, that he is actually bored with it. You can see it on his face. In\nthe movie. And 60% of the things Indiana Jones said to women would end him up\nan outcast on social media in today\u2019s world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh sure, there was more. Lots more. Though I never saw Michael Strahan on the show with Kelly Ripa, there’s no way Ryan Seacrest holds a candle to him. That man cannot tell a story. All paid (and most unpaid, I guess) football coaches are completely miserable assholes. The people selling hair during the daytime are so good that I grabbed my phone a few times before remembering that I didn\u2019t need their product. Same goes for the electrolysis people. All of the World War II movies made before 1961 were ridiculous. And nobody on this planet is enjoying his life more than Shaquille O\u2019Neal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s amazing what you can learn if you just stop thinking\nfor a while and start noticing stuff. There\u2019s probably a lesson in there\nsomewhere, but sadly I have to get back to work now.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Who? (photo courtesy of Businessinsider.com) My goals this holiday break were simple. Do Nothing I\u2019ve had a terribly busy four months. I have added two jobs to my life, editor\/proofreader for a translation company and writer for a literary humor website. This, on top of teaching, research, writing a novel, and blogging, has made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/ryan-and-kelly.png?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1bY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4586"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4591,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4586\/revisions\/4591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}