I for one, welcome our new media overlords

Newton Minnow famously stated that when tv is bad "nothing is worse" and most of what we watch is a "vast wasteland." When cable tv arrived, pundits always touted that "now we have 700 channels, and nothing to watch." Well, today I realized the true, sublime beauty of cable; AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE ROSE PARADE.

See, I grew up with a tv that only received the Big Three networks. Oh, PBS might have come in on some UHF channel (ha, do people even know about those anymore?), but you were generally stuck with ABC, CBS, and NBC. So you would wake up only to discover a truly Orwellian conspiracy; everyone broadcasting the Rose Parade. For hours upon hours. Endless footage of floats with stars past their prime waving to crowds in Pasadena. I truly hated the Rose Parade. Mind numbingly boring. As a kid, nothing could be more boring. I dreamt of a float catching on fire and setting off a chain reaction of burning floats. I hoped it would be like the crash of the HIndenburg, all over in 90 seconds or so. And so I suffered for years.

Yet this morning, as I watched the same three outdated media dinosaurs broadcasting the Parade, I gleefully changed to a different channel and breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that my kids won't grow up traumatized by repeated overexposure to inane floats. Their giggles and laughter at Barney left me content that I had fulfilled my parental obligations by making their lives just a bit better than what I lived through.

love,

Cj