Did Something Last Night...

that I'm not particularly proud of. I...I...watched an entire movie on THE LIFETIME CHANNEL!!! Cue scary music and that slicing sound when the crazy dude went off on the chick in the shower scene in Psycho. I can't believe I'm admitting this to anyone let alone blogging about it. Jesus it was just like eating something really fattening but that isn't all that great but you just keep eating it anyway because its brainless and repetitive.

I won't go so far as to divulge the name of the "movie", but since it was on Lifetime you can probably get pretty close just by guessing any title about surviving abusive spouses or surviving abusive parents or surviving abusive drug dealers/pimps. But that last one is only if the protagonist is a teenage girl. What someone SHOULD make is a movie about Lifetime Channel's abusive movies!

So anyway, I sat there on my couch and before I realized what had happened I was actually watching this thing and, well, kind of, wondering how it was going to turn out. In spite of myself. I get the same vaguely shame-filled feeling whenever I watch Ghost Hunters. Holy crap, the "hunters", eerily lighted by a greenish night-vision glow (as if ghosts will only EVER appear in total darkness..what do you mean, ghosts don't exist? philistine!) 'DID YOU SEE THAT??? IT WAS JUST OVER THERE A SPLIT SECOND AGO!!' The camera lamely swings in the direction of the "sighting" which of course is no longer visible but I continue watching all the same. And feel ridiculous yet weirdly powerless to stop. Sheesh.

So I figure that by watching an entire "movie" on the Lifetime Channel I have irrevocably taken that step firmly into post-menopausal middle age. How depressing. I thought I had insulated myself what with the repeated viewings of Family Guy, The Simpsons and South Park. Hey motherfuckers, I watch GLEE for crying out loud! And yet none of those youthful choices kept me safe when the channel changer brought me to the Lifetime Channel and left me there, foundering amongst all the bad dialogue and scenery-chewingly dreadful "acting", the bombastic music and the over-wrought camera work. At the end I felt like one, big bottle of something from Mary Kay. YUCK!!

All the purveyors of the 900 channel reality that is modern television offer parents the option to block what they deem to be inappropriate viewing for their children. Let me say, here and now, that said purveyors would do well to offer we baby boomers who like to think of ourselves as endlessly youthful and hip, (case in point: Old Farts on Facebook) a service that would warn us IN LOUD VOICES WITH LARGE LETTERS that HEY!!! YOU ARE ABOUT TO SWITCH TO A CHANNEL THAT WILL MAKE YOU, HEAVEN FORBID, FEEL YOUR ACTUAL CHRONOLOGIC AGE!!! BEWARE!!! UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPEND THE NEXT 90 MINUTES FEELING TERRIBLE ABOUT YOURSELF MOVE ALONG!!! MOVE ALONG!!!

Hells at least we'd be warned. At least we'd KNOWINGLY commit to bad, soporific old people television. I mean I'm actually scared. What's next: bedtime at 8:30, dinner at 4:00, anything on CBS!? Maybe I'll just hang out on YouTube for awhile, watch some stuff on Hulu, anything to keep me from helplessly turning toward that insidious siren call that I hear even now: Lifetime Channel Presents: The Devil's Teardrop, Bond of Silence or The Client List. Putting down the remote...backing away from the TV...suddenly wondering what's on the Early Bird Special today at Olde Country Buffet. Nooooooooooooooo!