2002-06-13 - 9:45 a.m.
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Belmo VS. TV
"I want you to stick your head out the window and just scream "GODDAMNIT I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!" - The guy who plays Howard Beale in "Network", the longest dullest movie to ever change my mind on the world.
I don't know if it's this moment in my life, where everything is all crazylike and I'm constantly looking for something else and finding nothing, or if the combination of Mass Media and Society with Utopias in Literature causes a reaction in your mind not too much unlike baking soda and vinegar, but goddamn is my head spinning.
These two classes, back to back, have messed my headspace up indefinitely. I can't think the same way now after having seen Network in the context it was shown. I mean, shit, I could have sit down and been bored to hell by that movie, munching on popcorn and basically ignoring most of the messages it was trying to tell me, but when I know there's a reason I'm watching it and I have to delve deeper than I want to, it always horrifies me when I find something true.
I don't like reality. As a matter of fact, TV works well for me based on the fact that I KNOW it's fake as shit. Even the "real life situations" have been edited and shown to you with almost a warning that it's not going to be bad.
Here's an example.
"High Speed Chases of the Highway Patrol"
You know the stupid fuck in the 100+ mph chase is never ever ever going to get away. You know this. So, when he does shocking things like run over old ladies and hit cars and run stop signs and all that other "I don't want a Po-po beat down" manuvers, you know it's going to end up with his face on a car hood and his hands bolted together behind his back. So, there's nothing really shocking about it.
But what if...he got away?
What if, just once, maybe once in the ENTIRE SEASON, on one night of it where they don't tell you when or who does it, you sit there, expecting any minute for the wheel to blow off or some vigilante motorist to come swooping in and KRAKOW! he's toast, what if just ONCE he gets away, and the announcer goes "and unfortunately for the Highway Patrol, this one got away."
YOU'D GO APESHIT!
Someone beat the police. Someone fucked them up so hardcore that 10 cops in 10 cars couldn't take down a beatup hotwired Mazda. Wow. It's something NEW. Something that doesn't happen! Something like cursing on the air, like in Network.
A truly ironic comment to make now is the fact that South Park showed it's "Shit" episode, where they say shit 162 times (although there's one part where a TV executive says shit like 30 times so fast, you would have thought he was having a seizure and it doesn't really count in my book.) Of course, this brings about a big monster, that is killed in the end last minute by Kyle.
Happy ending yet again.
But in reality, me and TV are at war together. It's been a hostile war, because TV doesn't realize I'm fighting. I almost feel like destroying it, but then I remember that video games need a TV and, although I may smash the shit out of my controller, repeatedly, I still am not angry at video games. At least SOMEONE'S trying to entertain me so that I ignore that this world sucks dick and swallows smiling.
I'm disturbed by the fact that people aren't even paying attention to what they're talking about any more on TV. They say things and don't care how it can be interpreted. One such instance is the "Taste the Blast" Gushers slogan. It took me about 3 seconds to link "taste the blast" to a blowjob joke and I was reading a magazine when I heard it. If I was paying attention, they wouldn't have gotten the "T" in blast out before I would have been on the floor laughing my ass off.
I mean, shit, they named thier candy "Gushers". There's a whole section of porn dedicated to gushing orgasms in women. That's two strikes on them now. And taste the blast......?
I am tired of douche ads, tampon ads, condom ads, diarrhea ads, the Dell guy, the "for everyone else, there's Master Card" ads, Spiderman ads...
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This is not a knock on Spiderman. I fucking loved that movie, despite it's inaccuracies and whatever the fuck people get pissed off about. IT'S JUST A MOVIE DESIGNED TO ENTERTAIN YOU! I don't care if Mary Jane wasn't his first girlfriend or whatever the motherfuck people thought bad about that movie. I left that theater with a fucking 10 foot wide grin on my face because I paid 8 bucks that I felt I spent wisely. The thing that bothers me about Spiderman ads is that it broke all sorts of records for the box office. It rallied like fucking crazy and made a bunch of people a SHIT LOAD of money. Everyone I know has either seen it or is desperately trying to find the time to see it, unless they're not inclined in the least to see it ever, despite ads. On this information alone, THERE IS NO FUCKING USE OF PUTTING 15 SPIDERMAN ADS IN ONE COMMERCIAL BREAK! STOP PLAYING THAT GOD AWFUL HERO SONG! NICKELBACK SUCKS AND THE GUY FROM NICKELBACK SUCKS! YOU WANT TO BE A HERO? SHUT THE MOTHERFUCK UP! THE SONG IS TERRIBLE AND DULL AND YOUR LYRICS MAKE ME HIDE FORKS AND KNIVES FROM MYSELF TO AVOID CATASTROPHE! The point of advertising is to make people want to go get what you're pimping. Stop pimping the ho everyone's hit already and is tired of.
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...The Batman Onstar ads (knowing too well that even IF they put out a new movie, both people that saw it would hate it), the Truth about Smoking ad campaigns and finally the tampon ads.
I know what you're saying. I already said tampons. But for something that creates this scene:
Tampon Ad: We won't promise your period won't show up in your "hot d.ate" but we promise it won't show up somewhere else (your jeans)
Belmo:*profuse vomitting that lasts for hours and causes internal bleeding, much like the bleeding that tampons attack, only less menstrual*
...then you get TWO middle fingers.
That's why we got two of them.
So the next time that Kelly Osbourne comes on the air in her "Papa Don't Preach" video and reminds me what God does to show us hates us, I'm going to turn off my TV, stick my head out the window....pull it back in and probably watch somemore TV.
Because, shit, it's hot outside and reality is usually boring as all hell.
Wasn't that all just a big catastrofuck.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
