With age comes crankdom…

I am getting old.  I first realized this when I turned thirty, and I suddenly started feeling aches and pains after activities that never bothered me before.  Now, eight years later, I always seems to have some strange unexplained ache or pain.  More troubling than the physical, however, is the mental anguish which it seems everything causes me these days.

I can’t watch TV anymore, especially reality TV and the commercials.  It seems as foreign to me as it would an aborigine.  I don’t understand how giving a bunch of obnoxious twenty-somethings a lush pad and carte blanche is reality or why I would want to take a closer look into the life of a Jersey-shore denizen.  I don’t understand why low class has become something worthy of promoting.

The commercials are a whole other story.  I feel like I am constantly under attack by fast food, alcohol, cell phones, and pharmaceuticals.  Yes, while sitting down for a meal might be nice, it is better to get a sausage wrapped in a pancake so you can eat it on the go and not miss a beat.  Why would you want a measly 1/4 pound of beef when you could get a 1/3 of a pound of beef raised inhumanely and pumped full of antibiotics.  Why would you want to eat something regular when you could eat something “bigger and newer, now packed with more X.”  Why would you actually want to sit down with your annoying family and feed them something prepared with love and care when you could all just eat a hot pocket and go on your merry way… and they wonder why kids shoot up their schools these days.

Booze is just as bad.  I am really supposed to believe Miller Lite is now Chateneuf de Pape because they put grooves in the bottle.  There is a little captain in me?  He is telling me that Captain Morgan’s is crap rum.  A hot girl will fall in my lap if I “cue the Cuervo?” Please.  I will still be the same overweight guy, just drunker, talking to a similar guy at the bar about whether “dead ball era” statistics in baseball are valid… it is practically like Spanish fly.

Cell phones ads are another thing that freak me out.  DROID ads have this strange noir Blade Runner motif where the users are turned into cyborgs and become a model of efficiency; if this is the future no thank you.  The Iphone gives you an App for everything except common sense; it gives you the tools to you live your entire life without actually living it.  The importance placed on having the right piece of technology to have a purposeful life is frightening to me.

Don’t even get me started on the pharma ads.  Since when, with your vast medical expertise, would you be so presumptuous as to go to a doctor and suggest which medication you should ingest based on something you saw on TV.  This is the most base form of advertising I have ever seen.  While I may need Lipitor, it really should be my doctor’s suggestion, not mine.

Also, are there any men in America that can get an erection anymore?  Judging on the advertising that continually mars my sports viewing, one would assume there isn’t.  Not only that, but why do I need to know about it?  If you know you have the problem, you probably don’t need the advice of the television.  If a space alien ever intercepted our TV transmissions they would be convinced we are a nation that is obese, drunk, addicted to baubles, and incapable of procreating… and sadly they might not be that far off.

I am also sick of language being appropriated and devalued.  The word that bothers me more than most is hero.  If you are playing a fake guitar in your room in your tightey-whiteys you are not a hero.  Hell, if you are playing guitar on stage at the Garden, you are not a hero.  Anyone that throws, catches, or shoots any kind of ball or puck is not a hero.  They may be a great player.  They may be a great guy.  They may raise the hopes of a city.  But they are not heroes.  For me being a hero means giving up something of great value, usually your life, to help those in need.  It is about sacrifice.  As much as I like Derek Jeter, his life is not about sacrifice.  When I think of the cops and firemen that rushed into the WTC during 9/11 and the young men and women that come home in boxes daily from overseas I have a really tough time tossing around the world hero lightly.

Another word is celebrity.  What exactly am I celebrating with Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? The glorification of profligacy and stupidity?  Why are we celebrating people who’s greatest accomplishment is a fake tan or a homemade porno?  Why do we take our cues from entertainers these days, instead of philosophers, authors, scientists, intellectuals,inventors, etc.?  We have truly become a “confederacy of dunces.”

Of course, this could all be in my head.  It could be senility.  Old people get confused easily sometimes. But there might be some kernels of truth in this as well… or maybe I am just auditioning for Andy Rooney’s job…

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