Britney and Carson: Mother and Father to Our Demise
Leave it to MTV to spark the end of modern day civilization. This shouldn’t come as a surprise though – they’ve been working on it for years. What a twist of “irony” it will be for the end of all things to come at the hands of the very thing that started the events in motion. Wait, is that irony? In case you haven’t been TiVo-ing CNN lately (I don’t have time for all that depressing shit, the Phillies are in the World Series!), the fate of the United States hangs in a delicate economic balance, ready to crumble at any moment. Coincidentally (or not), the news that TRL will go on hiatus caused a radical market shift, leaving us scratching our heads, wondering how we are going to throw together the cash for a new MacBook Pro this holiday season given the current economic turmoil. Good thing I gave all my money to Lehman Brothers.
It all started in 2003 when my boy Carson Daly jumped ship. After a plethora (that’s in your SAT prep book), of alternatives to Carson who could never live up to his charm and wit, Total Request Live is a mere shadow of its former self. My concern isn’t that MTV won’t play videos anymore – last time I checked they haven’t in a while – it’s that the end could bring about the Apocalypse. First the banks fell, then TRL. Or was it first TRL, then the banks? This presents the ultimate dilemma, or paradox, if you will: how can the world exist without TRL, despite its cause for our demise?
The answer lies in one of TRL’s first and biggest stars. Where would Britney be without TRL? Probably happily married in Mississippi with 10 kids, NOT to K-Fed, but a nice upstanding McCain-Palin supporter (probably a plumber); not a bad place to be when western civilization falls. The best place to be that I can think of, will be alone in a shack, without electricity, in the deep south, clutching a Sarah Palin photo when God comes knocking at your door. So maybe we’ll be alright without a daily dose of pop-star laced Soma. Maybe if we go cold turkey starting on November 16, 2008, we will be spared for our past atrocities (I think I voted for “Freak on a Leash” 10,000 times in one week over a 56k dial-up modem). And if the world turns out alright, at least TRL can come out of retirement in a few years to capture the hearts and minds of the next post-Apocalyptic generation.
Tags: 56k Modem, Britney, Western Civilization
Lifting Fog 
October 18, 2008 at 3:01 pm |
You have to know that in 2033, whatever TV has become by then will be showing TRL’s Greatest Moments 25th-anniversary(-of-its-demise) retrospective. How far we will have come. Philo Farnsworth must be staring down from his cloud, wistfully, disbelieving that he’s missing THIS magical moment in the life of his child, too, just like all the others.
October 21, 2008 at 5:32 pm |
The fact that I gleaned some education from your post, JES, fills me with love for the blogosphere. So it was Philo Farnsworth, and not Desi Arnaz, who invented the first completely electronic television (in addition to a small nuclear fusion device known as a fusor). Go Philo! An important guy… and in many ways, a father figure to me. Do you think his cloud gets “Dancing with the Stars”?
October 22, 2008 at 10:33 am |
“Philo Farnsworth” is a pretty amazing moniker, no? If I ever tried naming a protagonist in a story “Philo Farnsworth,” even without the quotation marks, editors would LOL. What a jerk, they’d say, and toss the MS into the Tried Too Hard dustbin.
Dunno about DwtS and Philo’s cloud. But I bet Desi’s gets it.