1.52am

I have a tendency of doing this. Drinking my cup’o antioxidant green tea assuming that I’ll be able to sleep undisturbed by caffeine. So after close to 5 hours of TV –  including SNL, MadTV, 1.4 eps of Sex and The City reruns censored, Chuck, Jeopardy, 10mins of Hero dubbed in Spanish (see Jet Li, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung mouth spanish. It’s surreal man), 5 mins of Blade dubbed in Spanish) – I think I’m pretty caught up on TV media here.

My TV and I…it’s beginning to be a love hate relationship. For a mere 50 bucks off craiglist, I got a pretty rad 20″ tube TV. Not HD mind you, so come Feb 2009 when the States goes HD en mass (coast to coast), I may end up being able to watch nothin’ at all. But before that, I’m guaranteed the ever reliable feed of entertainment and programming. 

I can see why TV is a dying media. From ads to content…there’s a lot of crap out there. There’s this station here in LA where I suppose regular joes like you and your past middle aged neighbor can pay good money to wear skimpy hose and gyrate on the air for a good 30mins. Drop it like it’s hot ‘yo. I guess anything that pays is good for the on-the-decline business.

Or maybe, like Chris Anderson puts it in The Long Tail, it’s an example of the democratization of media. I could possibly argue that it’s the precursor to the whole self-made consumer/producer = “prosumer”. That a 50+ year old lady can and will damn well exercise her creative freedom, declaring independence from TV programming decided by suited execs, by putting on bad make up, see through underwear, and bend n’ snap her goodies on TV because she thinks it be better.

Not to say that all the stuff is bad. I mean Jet Li speaking Spanish is totally mindblowing! Asian people can speak other languages! And wow, the 2008 version of caricature the Asian goofball by Bobby Lee on MadTV…pure racial..i mean radical…genius. Radical. He’s probably gotten a billion Asian Am. Acitivists going with the “is he self-inflicting” or “it’s only controversial because he’s not white” debate. At least he isn’t speaking with an accent..or faking Japanese or Chinese. And I guess it’s better to use Korean whenever the script calls for some Asian language. I mean, why piss off the Chinese and Japanese purists with bad pronunciation. I wonder if Jet Li speaks Korean…?

But seriously folks. I think I’ll love to hang out with Bobby. Y’know, to get into his mind, and see how he sees himself and his characters. If he sees himself in them, where he gets his inspiration from etc etc. From the actor’s perspective. 

It’s 2.23am now. My eyes are getting tired, but I betcha, once I get myself into bed…they’re gonna be wide open.

I might just turn on the Tube again and let it put me to bed. The internet sure can’t do that.

My friend…the TV. 

p/s: reader discretion is advised. Author is known to be increasing sarcastic after midnight.