Dodo Eggs

There is a story about a man named Isaac Newton and a falling apple.  An incidental occurrence altered his and eventually our understanding of how the universe functions.  For him and us, the most important lessons can be complete accidents.

For instance, I remember the first time I realized that what comes across the television screen has nothing to do with real life.  It involved the first rule of Hollywood, “Don’t put an ugly woman on TV.  Color television was made for attractive women only.”  (By extension, we have rule number 1b.  Any ugly male characters have an inexplicable ability to find attractive women who fall in love with them.”)

So where am I going with this…

Thanks to television I grew up believing that prostitutes were beautiful women in short, tight skirts standing along street corners waiting for men.  Call girls in courtroom dramas always looked pretty good.  Oh yea, and they were usually nice people too.

Then I saw a genuine prostitute on a news broadcast and I was shaken.  She was rail thin and haggard looking.  A face-lift would have gone a long way to making her look normal.  The woman’s image frightens me to this VERY DAY.  (Please, purge my seared brain tissue!  Pluck out my mind’s eye!)

This was my learning moment.  Our culture’s entertainment subscribes to precious little believability.  Anything with too much realism in it is tagged with a scarlet D for documentary.

Thusly, a healthy skepticism of movies, music, and television is a lesson every soft-brained 7th grader should learn.  Too bad their hung up taking social norms from gangsta rap.  Rap and its videos lack a certain, um, basis in reality. 

Beat from a synthesizer…

“My name is Freshy T and I’m here to say,
self-destruction is the way to play. 
Holding your gun sideways is really cool.
The cops say, ‘Good, you can’t shoot straight fool.’ 
Calling your girl hoe is very romantic. 
Using no articles is very gramantic.
I out.”

• Crafting Your Own Comedy
• Friends “With Benefits”
• Loving the Drama – LAB
• Staff Memo – Sexual Harassment
• Rodeo Rundown