Open Spigot

Our television forefathers would be in awe of the convoluted, multi-year storylines that run through our contemporary tv programs. Compared to the plastic, immutable characters of the early era, today’s characters are four dimensional beings who happen to live their very interesting lives on screen.

It became painfully obvious during the recent writers strike that tv people need thousands of writers working behind the scenes to orchestrate who they fall for next, who they slice open on the operating table, what kind of murderer they will wipe off the face of the earth this week. Perhaps our lives would also be equally fascinating if we had a cadre of ‘life writers’, but I digress.

As the strike wore on, production stopped and the networks were faced with running the shows they had, then switching to re-runs or the glorious excrement that is reality tv.

And then something very interesting happened. It was as if all the living, breathing people in tv land slowed, then sat down. They lay their hands on their lap and contemplatively watched the real world move past them. Then they hollowed out, they froze. They became still, impotent mannequins, stuck without a story to give them life-force.

And yet, their loss became our gain. In the real world, all of a sudden, people were no longer tied to the ongoing story in tv land. They were free of it and had more time, more brain space, more real life force.

And now they are waking up, regaining color, trickling back. Are you taking them back in?

(Today’s post comes from a guest author, and a dear friend.)

It is with great fear and trepidation that I invite you to my 30th Birthday Debacle.  We will be holding a mourning BBQ on the evening leading up to my inauguration into the ranks of those faded stars and regretful souls that call themselves the middle-aged. 

We will sacrifice the flesh of young, healthy fish and fowl so that we might understand the inevitability of our own deaths. 

We will listen to music more suitable for people half our age.  We will dance as if we weren’t teetering towards convalescence.

We will drink as if our bodies are still capable of processing these toxins and mellifluents* as they were in our prime. 

We will sing dirges to forgotten dreams, wasted degrees and misplaced passions.  We may watch movies with Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp from when they weren’t the leathery, pock-marked husks they have become.

Since the calamity of my XXXth birthday isn’t actually until Sunday, you will be expected to sit or stand at a respectful distance over the course of the XXX-eve BBQ and try not to mention arthritis or impotence in my presence. 

When the grandfather clock I have been hiding under my bed strikes midnight, all will assemble in the viewing chamber and silently observe as my failing body is draped in fine linens, and a team of young street urchins will ceremonially taunt me and pull at my beard before feeding my withering body into the cremation chamber.

Then I will pop out of a closet in a leopard-print leotard and all will dutifully cheer and we will rock the warehouse until the cops come shut us down.

Who’s coming?

*mellifluents: this newly minted masterpiece is based on the adjective ‘mellifluent’: flowing sweetly or smoothly