why does television have to suck so badly?

i'm sitting here, on a lazy sunday afternoon, and my husband is flicking through the channels on our cable box.  a little background information: we have at&t u-verse (which i hate with a passion...fuck you, at&t) with a dvr and approximately 200 channels.  i'll spell it, just to be sure that you're following me: two HUNDRED channels.  now, granted, some of those channels are in spanish, which don't do either of any good since we both speak french, some of them are "app" channels (not really sure what they do...), and some of them are home shopping channels.  so...let's give each category 10 channels apiece; which leave one hundred seventy-odd channels left.  and, for the life of me, i can never find anything to watch.

that seems like it would be an impossibility: with that many channels, there HAS to be something to watch, right? wrong.  i can't tell you how often i make my rounds and find nothing, nothing, and more nothing.  i watch a total of 2 shows with any sort of regularity: "the office", with which i am madly in love, and "family guy", a show i reference in my daily life with a regularity that makes people, including my family, want to beat me about the head and shoulders with a large, blunt object.  other than that, i really don't watch a whole lot of tv...mostly because there's nothing on.

now my husband...he's not so picky.  he watches baseball (but no other sport, so once baseball season is over, he mopes over the sports channels like newly-single serial monogamist might mope over romantic movies), loves the uber-manly spike channel, and the discovery channel.  namely, he watches "man vs. food" on the discovery channel.  that's a show that makes me wonder: who in the world decided that what the people wanted was a show about a chubby guy who makes his way around the u.s. eating as much as he can and hoping that he doesn't keel over from a heart attack every 20 minutes?  seriously.  every episode, i can't help but wait with bated breath for him to grab his chest or choke to death on the absurdly grotesque portions he consumes.

why?  why would someone put something like that on tv?  why would they put up "the o.c.", or "the hills", or "real housewives of new jersey"?  i want to meet the people who watch these shows, because their bad taste is the reason that most of the shows that are currently on tv SUCK.  i want to shake them for ruining a perfectly good sunday afternoon.  jerks.

i would like to send my boss back for a full refund

i have dealt with my share of crazy bosses.  i have worked in the restaurant industry for shmumblemumblemumble years and at this point i've handled just about everything.  like at the hereford house.  my first general manager was a tiny little man with the most advanced case of napoleonic syndrome i've ever seen.  i mean, the man had a bookie from jersey following him around.  this bookie would come into the restaurant randomly (like, mondays at 1 pm, thursdays in the middle of dinner...anytime at all) and ask for my tiny general manager in a voice that would make most new yorkers cry.  my next general manager was passive aggressive, angry, and i'm pretty sure he was hiding multiple personalities inside his over-sized suit coats.  w.  o.  w.  and then there's the last one.  he made my soul sicken and die.  no.  seriously.

so...basically, the moral of the story is that i can pretty much handle whatever is thrown my way in terms of upper management.  so for me to say that my new boss is a fucking crazy person really means something.  really.  he's co-owner of the new restaurant at which i'm working and i've never met a person less suited to working in a restaurant than him.  in all honesty, i don't know a field in which he could work and actually maintain his position.  he's antisocial when it comes to the servers, but nine times out of ten, if i can't find him, it's because he's talking to a table and has been there for the last 20 minutes.  like last night.  he cut the entire floor around 6 pm, then complained when no one came to him to ask for help when it was obvious that the rest of us were floundering.  the man couldn't understand that we couldn't ask him for help because we couldn't find him.  and we couldn't find him because he was flirting with the clientele.  the old.  clientele.  the old women who come over after playing tennis at the national then come in afterward to make themselves feel better about getting winded while running after a little green ball by drinking margaritas and talking about botox.  no.  seriously.

so my boss is nuts.  leaves work for hours on end because he wants to go to lunch, or "has errands to run."  and the other co-owners?  they just shake their heads.  i can hear them "tsk tsk-ing" in their heads.  you would think that someone who has such little regard for the restaurant in which they have a stake would be reprimanded, or at least told that he really can't just do whatever it is he wants to do whenever it is he wants to do it.  you'd think.  but it's obvious that he does this stuff, and he does it often.  which makes me wonder...why don't the other co-owners actually make him accountable for his actions?  why do they let him get away with it?  everyone else has to be accountable...why not him?

i sometimes wonder why people choose the career paths that they do.  i know, i know...i'm still working on that one.  but at least i know what i want to do.  and i know that i'm good at it.  but some people...i think they maybe just pick something because it's available and easy and it's something that they think, "well, why not?  it's not like i can fuck it up too bad..."  believe me.  you can.

had a wine tasting today...

i love wine.

the end.

my first post

i've been listening to a song recently, a rap song, actually (is that right?  are raps actually songs?  i mean, they're usually set to some kind of music...but does that make it a song?  or is it just poetry, albeit rather angry poetry, set to music...beat-poet style?  i doubt that any rapper would appreciate that connection...oops.) called "live your life" by t.i. and rhianna.  it samples from the "numa numa song" (you know...the one that poor white boy made famous on youtube by dancing like a fool in front of a webcam), which is maybe why i like it.  it's not a brilliant song, but i like the premise.  "live your life."

sometimes i miss the things i used to have.  i know everyone feels that way, or i'm sure that most do, but i wonder if the things that i remember are remembered the same by the people i shared them with.  for example: i remember one night in bloomington, a friend of mine invited me to his friend's band's gig.  they played dave matthew's "two step" and i remember dancing and laughing.  i remember the way the beer tasted (warm and fuzzy) and the way the band sounded (loud and bright) and the way i felt (wild, like i could do anything).  sometimes i wonder if he remembers it the way i do, or even if he remembers it at all.  it wasn't an important night, or even all that special.  but i remember it.

i remember my freedom, too.  i think i miss that more than anything else.  staying up all night with friends, going where i wanted, doing what i felt like.  i miss living on 2nd street with annie, and the house on bryan.  i miss the feeling that we would take over the world.  i miss knowing that we were unstoppable, that there was nothing we couldn't do.  and i miss the bliss of ignorance of myself.  i mean, i knew who i was, what i wanted, who i wanted to be.  but sometimes i wish i could go back and remember what it was like to not have to watch every mood, every urge to go shopping, every patch of super-productivity.  every depression.

and again, i wonder if the annies and cass and jess and everyone else remembers these things the way i do.  i wonder if annie remembers smoking hookah until the early hours, or that summer where our days were backwards: we went to bed after our summer school class and woke up after dark.  i wonder if she misses them the way i do.  and i wonder if ross remembers hanging out in the dorm lounge with the rest of us crazies, or how every single girl (except for alyss) had a crush on him.  i wonder if anne remembers her poor beta fish (all named after characters from "the neverending story") who kept committing fish-i-cide, and how we all dressed up as batman villainesses for halloween.  and the halloween she went as a troll.  and if cass remembers our midnight trips to kroger and our love for homemade popcorn.  if jess and cass remember our hungover breakfasts at the runcible spoon.

at the time, i resented bloomington.  it was too small for me, not the kind of city i craved.  but looking back, there was nowhere else i'd rather have been.  no one else i'd have wanted to be with.  and i know that i can be a bad friend, terrible at phone calls and keeping in touch, but i love them all.  and i miss them.  i miss you.  you are all the best parts of myself.