Television Last Night

I'm a good sleeper. In fact, I can usually sleep just about anywhere, as long as I'm braced well and somewhat comfortable. Tonight, for some reason (I went to bed too early) I woke up at 1:00 am, well rested, with little to do, since running power tools and making noise is usually frowned upon by most people at that time of the morning. I decided to check the internet.

After about twenty minutes of surfing, I realized the net is a lot like people. It rests, little changes and Drudge doesn't update, so I decided to watch television.

If you haven't watched late night television in awhile ( like me) you might want to go to bed early, get up in the middle of the night and have a gander.

After a few minutes of watching news, I realized it was the exact broadcasts from earlier in the evening. Nothing was changed; not even the commercials. For a moment, It felt like "Groundhog Day", which made me uncomfortable, so I started channel surfing.

Frazier was on and I'd never seen the episode. As I watched, I really couldn't pay close attention to the dialogue because I was so fascinated by the clothes, technology and references from decades in the past. So, I continued with my surfing.

I stopped on an infomercial (that word used to give my spell checker a fit) about an exercise program that turns you into Arnold Schwarzenegger - or his female counterpart - in 60 days. What really caught my attention was the testimonial of a young lady, who lost 30 pounds and was now a new person. She looked slim and trim in her "before" photos. She now looks like she should be a professional athlete, which I guess is good, but this means she will be forced to continue for longer than 60 days. You don't stay in that kind of shape without a tremendous amount of daily exercise. I'm not criticizing exercise, but this is a little extreme; especially when you consider her comment about throwing up the first time she tried the exercises in the program.

I switched channels and found a show that was nothing but an 800 number at the bottom, attractive ladies in lingerie and background dialogue about how they were going to keep me interested all night. Oh yeah? I have the internet. I can get that, and more without spending a tremendous amount of money. As I thought more about this, I started wondering who would fall for this gimmick and realized I really didn't want to know.

After some more surfing, with infomercials, Lucy reruns, black and white movies and real ass of a comedian, I decided I'd had enough, so I went back to bed and eventually fell asleep.

When I was growing up, there were three alphabet network channels, no remote and only test patterns after midnight. Now, it's not much better, although it's more spectacular. I think I'll go to sleep a little later tonight, so I don't wake up and see it all again...like "Ground Hog Day". Some things are enough to deal with, without repeating them again.