As I have stated before here on The Knob, I am a new father. This means big changes all around. Everybody knows the biggies (at least the less desirable ones) - diapers, feedings, not going out as much, less money in the bank, and sleepless nights. The sleepless nights may be my least favorite, which is saying a lot since I would rather stare at a diaper full of poop than miss a minute of sleep. What comes along with the late night feedings is what makes it the worst of all the changes, late night TV. The info-mercials are bad, but that’s no surprise, and at least some of the time the product is interesting and the overly zealous host is worth a laugh. ESPN shows lame reruns of lame college football games, not prime SEC or Big 12 battles, but games like North Sun Valley Tech vs. Jackson Southern Auto School. HBO isn’t much better really, instead of going the skin-a-max route that it’s premium cable rival travels, it goes the bargain DVD bin route. I didn’t realize Eric Roberts, Mario Van Peebles, Dick Butkus, C. Thomas Howell, and the red-headed guy with the beard from Thirty Something were such prolific stars of the silver screen. The titles of these flicks make them almost worthy of my middle-of-the-night viewing time. The worst, most egregious offender of such late night boob-tube crimes is MTV. With its rerun marathons of the pseudo-reality soap The Hills, the network that killed the radio star has made a generation of teens (and new parents, I suppose) dumber. By tricking the public with pretty faces, crazy parties, fake boobs and faker teeth, people like LC, Brody, and Audrina are almost household names. You may ask why I watch, and why I know their names if I hate it so. Good questions, questions for which I have a simple answer…the music. It’s catchy. The issue here, aside from the many obvious ones, is that “catchy” rarely equals good and even more rarely equals soulful. There is a time and place for guilty pleasure, even though I wish there wasn’t most of the time. The music that opens the show, transitions one scene to the next, or brings it back from commercial breaks is that deadly combo of poppy, soaring, slick and melodramatic. By definition, it’s catchy, but at the end of the episode, you have a hard time remembering any of the sound clips, and that is by design because it’s background music, not the main attraction, and I have, sadly enough, been suckered in by it during my sleepiest, most vulnerable state. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Dawson’s Creek, and The O.C. have at least have tried to weave pop and indie rock into the fabric of the story lines in attempts to convey emotions, thoughts and actions that augment the action of the scene. No such “compliment” can be made to Hills, and I am sure they are fine with that. At the end of the late night feeding, it’s time for me to go back to bed. After watching such drivel, however, I am left to look for my brain, as it often seems absent from my skull in the nocturnal turmoil that is the post-Hills late-night. Shows of this ilk would do good to incorporate tunes like the ones below to convey love gone bad, hurt and scorn, and even good times…..
Solomon Burke – Aint Got You
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