The dog days are here. I can tell, because I want to scratch myself in odd places, and I circle the sofa before collapsing on it for a wasted hour or two watching bad television.
August is the best month for bad television. You can see the junk that you missed during the rest of the year, and your mind is in precisely the right kind of condition for it.
Why is that so?
A number of reasons – it’s the time when you begin to accept the fact that the yard work you’d promised yourself to do since April won’t be done, the winter clothes at the bottom of the basement stairs to be put away have contributed to the well-being of the resident moths, and anything that does survive does not have to be unpacked…just dragged back upstairs for the long stretch of darkness and cold here in Minnesota, holes and all. You can write letters to yourself in the dust on any table in the house, the kitchen looks like a Crime Scene Investigation team has just ransacked the place, and Labor Day is fewer than three weeks away.
Much better with a cold beer on the sofa, and you can learn stuff. The other night on public tv I learned about the Spartans, and Queer Eye For the Straight Guy has me thinking “neatness really does count.” Baseball is always good for a nap or two during the nine innings, but then I’ve known that for years.
But the Big News for this August is that I have both discovered and named a new television phenomenon which I call “The Philips Effect,” names after Stone Philips, of NBC’s Dateline program. Every time the camera opens on Philips, he does this quirky little up and down nod, like a little kid….looks like his chin is just falling down the last three stairs.
It conveys a sense of involvement, commitment, agreement with whatever random thought might be firing up your neural synapses – did I leave the stereo on, what was the name of that woman I met at last night’s art opening, boy, how about that navel lint.
The Philips Effect became particularly noticeable during the early stages of the present conflict in the Middle East when correspondence waited to hear and to comprehend the questions being thrown at them from Washington or New York. Now it’s leaked to local news anchors, weather and sports people.
By golly, you can sit right in front of the tv in your underwear and have a handsome or pretty television person agreeing with you and encouraging you to agree with them by nodding a lot at you.
Another tv discovery in their constant drive to replace content with style. Maybe Robert Siegel and Bob Edwards do it in front of their microphones at NPR, but I doubt it, what with their relentless interest in content.
The Philips Effect…another reason to watch television. Yeah, right.
August is the best month for bad television. You can see the junk that you missed during the rest of the year, and your mind is in precisely the right kind of condition for it.
Why is that so?
A number of reasons – it’s the time when you begin to accept the fact that the yard work you’d promised yourself to do since April won’t be done, the winter clothes at the bottom of the basement stairs to be put away have contributed to the well-being of the resident moths, and anything that does survive does not have to be unpacked…just dragged back upstairs for the long stretch of darkness and cold here in Minnesota, holes and all. You can write letters to yourself in the dust on any table in the house, the kitchen looks like a Crime Scene Investigation team has just ransacked the place, and Labor Day is fewer than three weeks away.
Much better with a cold beer on the sofa, and you can learn stuff. The other night on public tv I learned about the Spartans, and Queer Eye For the Straight Guy has me thinking “neatness really does count.” Baseball is always good for a nap or two during the nine innings, but then I’ve known that for years.
But the Big News for this August is that I have both discovered and named a new television phenomenon which I call “The Philips Effect,” names after Stone Philips, of NBC’s Dateline program. Every time the camera opens on Philips, he does this quirky little up and down nod, like a little kid….looks like his chin is just falling down the last three stairs.
It conveys a sense of involvement, commitment, agreement with whatever random thought might be firing up your neural synapses – did I leave the stereo on, what was the name of that woman I met at last night’s art opening, boy, how about that navel lint.
The Philips Effect became particularly noticeable during the early stages of the present conflict in the Middle East when correspondence waited to hear and to comprehend the questions being thrown at them from Washington or New York. Now it’s leaked to local news anchors, weather and sports people.
By golly, you can sit right in front of the tv in your underwear and have a handsome or pretty television person agreeing with you and encouraging you to agree with them by nodding a lot at you.
Another tv discovery in their constant drive to replace content with style. Maybe Robert Siegel and Bob Edwards do it in front of their microphones at NPR, but I doubt it, what with their relentless interest in content.
The Philips Effect…another reason to watch television. Yeah, right.
