The Lives of Others

By Conor | June 24th, 2009 | 3 Comments »

I got an invitation to take a Facebook quiz yesterday that asked “What Chinese City are You?” I remember thinking, what are my options? Because I know Bejing and Shanghai. Am I one of those?

I don’t know if I can take these quizzes anymore, because frankly I don’t need Facebook to tell me What Decade I Am or Which TV Movie Lawyer I am or Who My Celebrity Boyfriend is or How Well I Know TV’s Matthew Perry. Nor do I want anybody to send me a Rhubarb plant and I do not wish to send a Rhubarb plant back to you. I don’t know the person Facebook tells me I should be friends with, and I don’t know most of the people who send me event invitations.

Yet there is something about Facebook that we all love, and I think it is because it gives us a peak into the lives of others without having to actually engage. It’s why Twitter is so popular, I suppose, even though the very idea of signing up for Twitter, at this moment, makes me want to climb a tree and refuse come down, kicking at the fireman who is trying to grab hold of my leg until they have to taser me down. (“OMG – just saw man get tasered out of a tree!! NYC is sooo cray-zeeeeeee!!”)

I do use Facebook, and I can assure you I am the first to click on any news story that contains “Paris Hilton” and “tweets about fall in toilet.” But I also know that I live without those sites, like those folks in Iran.

What I cannot live without, I have to tell you and I am ashamed to admit, is “Daisy of Love.”

Daisy of Love, the VH1 reality TV show about awesomeness, is the reason why I avoided getting a TV for so many years. It is the reason why recovering chocoholics don’t keep boxes of M&Ms in the house. It is the reason why Jenny Craig doesn’t share a parking lot with Arby’s. These are things that the human spirit cannot resist.

Liz and I did finally get a TV not long ago; it was a generous wedding present from my close friends. I took my time picking it up from the store – I didn’t miss it, to be honest. And when I did finally have it installed, this large flat screen on our living room wall, I gave Liz something of a stern lecture on how we would have to really limit the number of hours we watched, because we didn’t want to turn into a couple who watched tons of TV. Liz listened to this, politely if somewhat bemused, and told me that she agreed and that she didn’t like TV very much anyway.

“Ok, good, that’s good,” I said. “Just so we’re clear. We don’t want to be watching garbage all the time, right?”

“This isn’t really going to be a problem for me,” she assured me.

“Ok, great. Because it’s all junk, anyway. Everything on TV – it’s junk.”

And just to hammer home that point, I turned it on and flipped around to find the most ridiculous show I could find. The most ridiculous show I could find was Daisy of Love.

“We should watch this,” I said, putting down the remote and settling into the couch. “It’ll make us never want to watch TV again, mark my words.”

“You can watch it – I think I’m going to read,” Liz said.

“Ok, I’ll see you in a few minutes – I’m just going to check this out. Oh man, wait – wait wait – you gotta see this… She’s not wearing that on a date, is she?”

“I’ll see you in bed, love,” said Liz, and gave me a kiss on the head and went to our bedroom.

The show ended an hour later, and I thought Man, that sure was stupid. But there was another episode right after it, and I just wanted to find out if that episode would be as stupid, and also to find out what would happen when she had a special hot tub date with Big Rig.

Four hours later I went to bed, right after I had made sure to TIVO the new episode coming up on Sunday night. That TIVO just paid for itself, I thought.

I don’t understand why Daisy of Love is so addictive, anymore than I understand why I can’t open a bag of Doritos without turning it upside down above my face and opening my throat until I choke on Cool Ranch dust. Why these things, Lord? Why not make me addicted to steamed broccoli, or scrubbing the bathtub?

It’s too late for me, I know this. But I have a son now. And I can’t help but believe it is a not a coincidence that in 1999, right around the rise of reality TV, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suddenly recommended no TV – that’s no TV at all – for children under the age of two.

The announcement was made in much the same way that they had recommended years earlier that children under the age of three should not smoke cigars, and that infants between six and ten months old should no longer be allowed to operate forklifts, regardless of whether or not they submit to a field sobriety test. I interpreted the AAP proclamation as an acknowledgement of the addictive properties of reality TV, and that parents would do well, if they couldn’t save themselves, to at least spare their children.

Not that Finn doesn’t try to watch. We keep the TV off when we are in the living room with him (thankfully he goes to bed before Daisy of Love comes on). But on occasion, during the weekend, I’ll have him on my lap, feeding him a bottle, and flip on the TV. I’ll look down a few seconds later and find that Finn has owled his head around about 150 degrees and is looking at the plasma screen like it’s the gateway to another dimension. So I turn it off again. It must blow the mind of a four month old baby, seeing something like that.

But I feel sorry for Finn. Why should I be able to watch two hours of The Bachelorette on a Monday night (Daisy of Love turned out to be a gateway drug, damn it all) and Finn be forbidden?

So instead of TV, I hold him in front of the enormous mirror we have in the living room, and I act out little scenes for him. I act out the scene where Daisy tells Six Gauge that he needs to open up to her more, or when she comforts Sinister after he messes up the song he wrote for her. And the best part is that Finn gets to be in all these scenes, and each scene ends with an impromptu song about Finn, about how special he is and how he is far and away the second most handsome man in the mirror.

That’s the way reality TV should be: non-addictive, but just entertaining enough to make a four month old boy smile, giggle a bit, and throw up on his dad.