#17

ONE MORE SHOW!

I lost myself to a TV show, in December. It happens to all of us.  For me it was show called Welcome To Plathville. It grabbed hold of me, shook me violently, held my head still (A Clockwork Orange style; my eyes peeled open) and I was unable to look away. It was a fever dream. To watch 5 years of a family deteriorating on celluloid in such a short space of time is unnatural, and yet here I am, alive to tell the tale. My DNA changed irreparably, Welcome To Plathville is the TV equivalent of a tick chomping down on me in exchange for Lyme’s Disease. I cast my mind back to Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where Yolanda Hadid was incapacitated by Lyme’s Disease (or as it transpired, exploded silicone from an ancient boob job). The show paralysed me enough to allow me to burn through it.  It went from the wreckage of the Plath family to a different type of wreckage. The depraved fear inducing reality when a show is over. The unexpected moment when that little box doesn’t appear in the bottom right corner saying, “Play next episode”. A cold wind slamming the front door of life open again saying, ‘there is nothing left here, go outside.’ – You’re left screaming ‘ONE MORE SHOW’ like the Portlandia sketch as they burned through Battlestar Galactica.

So here I am again trying my darndest to engage in life again.  I read three books, stopped looking at my phone in bed, and bought a new notebook. If that’s not engaging in life again, well, I don’t know what is. But constantly I think about the Plath family. Kim, with her new lover Ken. I think of Lydia singing to Jesus in her prayer cupboard. Moriah, and how she affords to stay alive, living in that loft. I think of Ethan and the biblical destruction of such a happy inquisitive boy into the husk of a man by a vindictive controlling wife, Olivia. I wonder what Barry is up to, working out probably, and what he does for work, even. He’s always in his office, but who knows what he does. The dubious source of their money. I found out you can rent the old farm house for $165 a night but apparently they don’t have carbon monoxide alarms, and I wonder why. So much to think about and not enough hours in a day.

I currently find myself reading Middlemarch, my 4^th book of 2024. I keep thinking I could live stream reading it aloud to keep dogs’ company, or something like that. Could I make money doing that? Sound off in the absolute comments my dude. What’s incredible about it, in the first 56 pages anyway, is that it’s kind of true that every story has already been told. It’s so much like Real Housewives, in that it’s full of small meaningless scandals. I love a story about two sisters who are totally different. When reading I imagine Dorothea and Celia as Kyle and Kim Richards. It makes me desperately want a show of something like Real Housewives of the 18^th Century. Wait, is that how I make my millions? Nobody steal that idea!

Above is a picture of the classic novel Middlemarch, by George Eliot. In this rendition Kim and Kyle Richards, from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, are superimposed as the characters Dorothea and Celia. It is some of my best work, and I hope you think so too.

If you think someone would enjoy this little slice of life, send it on! I have left Twitter so here is the only place my unbridaled thoughts leak into the internet. If you wish to stop my thoughts from causing more harm, feel free to do nothing.