Monday, April 2, 2007

Wednesday's Child... Ruining Dinner Since 1981

If only someone out there could create some kind of strange cultural staple, that no one wanted or even asked for in the first place, something that's just kind of stuck in our collective face like a tablespoon of Triaminic. Oh wait, that already happened. And we've been enduring it for close to thirty years. Alright, the other six days of the week may have their own hold ups and shortcomings, but there is simply no other event over the course of the week that I dread more than Wednesday's Child.

Why, you might ask? What an astute, timely question to ask. You might say it's the gimmick of it all. And I'm not just talking about the way it does for local news what Katie Couric has done for the national news and period all over it. I'm talking about the blatant, unabashed, shameless way it appeals to the barely important events. If you ask me if it's more important that we learn about the graffiti that was removed from the Elm Street stop sign or little Taylor who now has an elated new barren adopted mother, I'm asking for street coordinates, motherfucker. You mean to tell me you have to fill a 30-minute time slot to give all the relevant news of the day and you spend 10 of those minutes at an adoption agency showing slowly-developing Pernicious shooting a basketball and running in circles in a backyard? What the fuck is going on?

Hey look! Despite not having parents their entire lives, these three children can still feed goats and play with sticks even when on camera! Do you want to adopt them now? Hmm. Well, once the spoonful of Spaghetti O's drop from my lifeless lips like Teri Schiavo's last-ditch forced feeding, I think I'm ready to vomit. Look. I don't want to adopt anyone. You know what? If I was interested in adopting someone, I'd probably have done something more proactive than picking up the remote. In fact, I think I speak for the majority of the local audience when I say that my life is complete enough as is, thanks. Now, is it the 6:30 block where they switch to animals that need homes?


Pick me or I'll ruin dinner for you.

Instead of recognize this demographical fact, however, it seems every network affiliate across the entire country decided years ago that each and every Wednesday evening should be the platform for the most awkward children's pageant of all time. So when I sit down to eat my evening meal, I get to look forward to watching a ten minute segment with an idiotic twerp throwing a baseball to himself while an overjoyed, undersexed social worker pours her heart all over the television screen recounting the three hour court proceedings that gave this boy the infertile parents he never dreamed he could have.

Hey, here's an idea. Let's set up a barren people TV network so that all the unhappy, childproof couples can tune in throughout the day for an endless stream of foster children parading around, begging for their companionship. They can even wear sashes indicating what drug their parents did in front of them, you know, to harken back to the child pageant tradition of Wednesday's Child. Gotta keep tradition.

The bottom line is, people watch the news for depressing life updates on the world. Not to buy a child. I wouldn't turn on Cinemax at 2am to watch Shrek 3 so who thinks I want little Tara's daughter credentials to replace my fix of vengeful men who lit their girlfriends' Brooklyn apartments on fire on the evening news?

At least I can eat.

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