paris hilton's new bff.

The best part of flying these days is the free teevee. I love teevee and I have no patience for the holier than thou attitude of those who claim to live without it. You may not own one, but you are influenced by it.

To me, it is another medium, a medium that demands funds and more people involved in creating it, and thus is more prone to shit art than say, a painting. So a viewer has to be more careful.

And so, here I am, writing from 40 000 feet while I watch something stunning on my personal television: Paris Hilton’s new BFF.

Wow.

This is unquestionably a waste of technology and media, however it is rather fun to watch absolute stupidity. I have only see it once before and the concept is a little alarming. A woman, whose only contribution to society is being very wealthy, decides to seek out a new friend. Paris has nothing to offer us other than someone to mock. Her joke on us is that she just doesn’t care.

The new friend has to be chosen from a bunch of college age girls and one gay boy. The gay boy wasn’t able to complete the challenge of dancing for shirtless frat boys on a stripper pole. Instead, he cried in the least masculine way possible, and by that I mean chewing on his scarf. (Yeah, I know, a scarf in the heat of a Las Vegas summer. And he's not even Québecois). None of the girls had an issue with stripping to their bikinis and seemed most concerned with letting the camera know that they are not actual strippers, but are bikini dancers. At that point, does it matter? Ladies, you are whoring your bodies at the word of a spoiled brat that you worship while cameras role. You have no dignity. Strippers actually have oodles more integrity than that.

All these small minded people are seriously competing for a vacuous friendship. At least, that is what it seems. I want to believe that some of these girls, maybe even the obviously stereotypical gay boy, are actually mocking the whole affair. Paris wants to find a for real friend as she has been burnt before, supposedly, so has decided that reality teevee is the venue to find someone ‘real’.

Oh, something happened. The gay boy didn’t get eliminated because he agreed to get his precious hair wet and swim out to Paris. If he is acting, he is marvelous. If he is for real, I am so sorry to the gay community for having to put up with yet another cliché prominently displayed in the media for every homophobe to mock and laugh at.

Watching this, I feel very guilty for giving this show any audience at all. I’m not sure why anyone would compete for anyone’s friendship. And it's on the much music station, whose audience is supposed to be 12 to 25. Good life lesson.

I also feel quite happy that if this shit has made it past many producers and various levels of editing and so forth, anything I make can be of at least slightly more important than Paris Hilton’s quest for the perfect friend.

the fine art of watching teevee.

I remember the day my dad brought home the family’s first colour teevee. It came in a big cardboard box, which to a kid is reason enough to make a day special. No matter if the box contains something as boring as a fridge – a ready made fort has just arrived at the door and there is no need to borrow the hammer and saw. A pair of blunt nose scissors will do.

He brought it home and together, though mostly I just watched, we set it up. We turned it on and the magic box burst to life with the sounds of a Circus, and elephants and tigers paraded before my little 4 year old eyes. I was sold on teevee straight away; flip a switch and instantly it’s story time, not with mere words, but with actual moving pictures. To this day I regard it as a strange and wonderful miracle. Ask anyone how teevee works and you’ll be lucky if someone can tell you more than ‘you turn it on’. I tried to figure it out once and finally just decided to call it magic and leave it at that.

Television has taken quite a beating as a medium. The hipster and neo-hippy crowd seem to have a hatred for my favorite magic box. Look at your facebook friend profile. I’ll bet there is at least one friend who has listed under favorite television program ‘television rots your brain’ or ‘kill your television’ or simply ‘I hate tv’.

Maybe you are one of those people... too cool for teevee, too self-important to admit to watching cartoons as an adult, too snobby to enjoy what the rest of the masses consume.

I suggest that if you are such a person, you get off of your high and mighty steed. You may claim not to have watched television in 20 years, but I’ll bet that if I throw out an obscure Simpson’s reference, you’ll catch it and give me 4 more before you realize what you’ve just admitted to. Just like masturbation, we all watch teevee. Some of us just lie about it.

I spent 2 years in camera and computer school. It was a demanding course, but mostly fun. The best part was having professional video cameras to play with. We all had our shot at making various video-films. Some were good, most were terrible. We were all learning after all, and using a handicam to record a piano recital isn’t at all the same sort of thing.

One of my fellow students was very vocal about how much she hated teevee. She was a bit like a boring parrot, as most neo-hippies tend to be. If it wasn’t going on about how the dairy industry is drugging us slowly, then it was about the horrible evils of television. She claimed not to have viewed a television screen in over 7 years. This of course was not at all true, and she could list off movies and Simpson episodes she had seen, most aired within the previous 5 years. Apparently if the television resides in someone else’s home or in a bar, it doesn’t count. DVDs don’t count, because if there are no ads, then it isn’t really television. The internet doesn’t count, because you ‘control’ your use. (Perhaps she didn’t understand how a remote CONTROL works).

‘Well, stupid,’ I remember thinking ‘what are you doing here in a media technology program?’

I can’t remember her convoluted explanation. I can’t remember any of her video projects either.

Here’s the thing. The ads on teevee pay for the shows we watch. Your cable bill doesn’t really come close to covering the costs of say Lost.

It is the way you watch that is important, just as the way you listen to the radio or read a book will ultimately determine the usefulness of the information you have consumed. Television cannot be blamed for stupid people believing that wearing loads of after shave will get you laid or that an SUV is an essential part of city living. If you aren’t questioning what you see, hear and smell then you really aren’t paying enough attention, are you? The problem may not be the flickering box in front of you, but perhaps you should check for a pulse and a brain wave.

I get the distinct impression that the anti-tv folk just don’t trust their own self-control. Can you honestly not ignore a commercial message? Are you so easily controlled from afar? If so, heed this message: KNOCK OFF THE SNOBBERY, I’M NOT IMPRESSED.