Friday Night Lights

Hong Kong is in Paris. So I'm at home watching prime-time television on a Friday night. I don't own cable. Only a digital converter box, subsidized by the federal government. In fact, wasn't this program an initiative of the W. Bush administration? That might explain why my converter box sucks ass. I call it, "government cheese".

When I do watch regular TV, I mostly watch programs on NBC, FOX or KCET/PBS. Occasionally the CW during Top Model cycles. Tonight I'm watching ABC which, in my opinion, sucks ass also. It is Disney, after all. Yet I'm riveted by tonight's line-up. First I watched WIFE SWAP. Dude, for those of you who watch WIFE SWAP... how trippy. As you can glean from the title, the wives swap homes and families. The twist, however, is in the rules. During the first half of the show, the wife/mother has to live by the family's rules. In the second half, the family must live by the wife/mother's rules. I know it doesn't sound ingenious, but watching WIFE SWAP emoted very strong feelings in me. I felt uncomfortable the entire time, yet couldn't stop watching. It kind of felt like watching a gang bang.

Next I watched WHAT WOULD YOU DO? hosted by John Quinones. Man, I would love his job. I love that Candid Camera shit. I'm all about that, yo. The concept is what I personally call "human/social experiments" or simply "social science"... with a hidden video camera near-by. Yes, caught on tape. But not to humiliate people, I find that rude. It's about furthering the understanding of our culture and communities through the study of social psychology, and coupled with practical, real-world application in a natural but somewhat controlled setting so to evoke an uninhibited response. If you can't tell, I'm totally serious.

Tonight's show was excellent. It's like WHAT WOULD YOU DO if an attractive drunk woman asks you to breathe into her breathalyzer so her car would start? WHAT WOULD YOU if you witness a soccer coach overwork and berate a dehydrated and soon-to-collapse wimpy red-headed student in the park? WHAT WOULD YOU DO if you're in a pharmacy and overhear a fragile old lady say she's unable to pay for her diabetes medicine? WHAT WOULD YOU DO if you see a restaurant manager sexually harass a waitress? What if the waitress dressed like a slut? Yeah, they changed up the circumstances too. I LOVE that shit.

I was really tempted to get this from Target