Ants vs. Grasshoppers

This is the most beautiful song I know.

---- 10/10 It still is, but it's not here anymore. It was "New Grass" by Talk Talk. ----

All right, this time around I got to watch the Martha Stewart Apprentice or whatever it's actually called. I was supposed to go to a band practice, but I bailed because I'd been at work for 11.5 hours, having gotten up at four in the morning, working to meet a couple of really big deadlines that mysteriously materialized an inch in front of my nose, and needed some rest. So instead I purposely sat myself down in front of the Great Equalizer at 8:58, excited at the prospect of getting agitated.

It seems that the Apprentices are the only TV shows I watch. Besides The Price Is Right, of course. Somehow a bunch of people not listening to each other is way more entertaining than anything else that could be broadcast, even though (because?) it's the most annoying thing there is in the squishier but less scrutinized actual world.

And why do I find it extra hilarious that the reason these celebrity everypeople can't get along is that they all work in some creative field or other? Why do I spend the whole hour rooting for the boring and practical corporate schmoes to kick their complementary pastel asses? It's not just the fact that one of the creatives is a complete sociopath, even though that does add to the entertainment value. Is it because the prize for which they're all competing, to work with Martha Stewart, is to me more of an anti-prize, so that I am actually rooting for the drones to get what I would consider their comeuppance?

I don't think so. Because that wouldn't explain the pleasure I take in seeing the designers and writers humiliated by their defeat. I think that my initial impulse to identify with the right-brainies is confounded by the very fact of their voluntary participation in such a disgusting spectacle. They are like me, and yet not at all like me. And that makes them much worse, much less sympathetic, than the characters whose lives have been devoted to the values of the corporate world. Because this is something you would expect of those people anyway. They are already damned, so let them have their little sugarplums of fame and fortune to pacify their empty souls on the long downward voyage.

But not my beloved artists! I demand more from them. They have been given a chance to achieve greatness, and if they decide instead to spend their energy fighting dirty on television for a tinsel-covered bag of dog poop like some kind of immaculately dressed Mexican wrestlers... well, I can at the very least get a good chortle out of their antics over a bowl of popcorn.

Speaking of which, Trump's on in a bit, and Johanna's here to watch it with us. Later.

- Andrew