Damn Hippies

For the most part I don't watch reality TV. And by "reality TV" I mean shows like Wife Swap, American Idol, Super Nanny - you know, that sort of TV. The reason I don't like them is because to me there is nothing real about them. They are formatted to create conflict and drama, two things I hate in my everyday life. They are also heavily edited to make it look more dramatic than it probably was and just provide fuel that deepen stereotypes.

The kind of reality shows I do enjoy, however, are the documentary-style ones that you find on the Discovery or Science networks. You tell me that we're going to be hunting down the last secrets of the the attack on Pearl Harbor and you can pretty much tell where I'm going to be for the next hour. I would always get sucked in when Survivor Man was on and I still end up spending an hour of my life watch Deep Sea Detective when I know damn well at the end of the hour they're just going to declare that, "We think this is what happened, but we'll never know for sure." (sidebar: that is always how that show ends. They never definitively figure it out).

My newest discovery is a show on Animal Planet called Whale Wars. Basically, it tells the story of the Sea Shepherds - a boat full of environmentalists who go from Australia to Antarctica and try to disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet. Now, you would think I would be fully behind the Sea Shepherds; afterall, who roots for people killing whales? But, I'm conflicted due to my deep hatred of hippies. See, this is what drives me crazy about hippies - they have a good idea, but don't really think about the best way to act out that plan. Sure they could try and get tougher legislation passed, actually prove that the Japanese are whaling illegally or even educate the public on the atrocities of whaling... but instead let's just take 30 people, only 3 of which will have any training, put them on a boat (you just know that boat smells like patchouli and the radio only plays Phish), go through some of the harshest seas on the planet and try to get close enough to bigger whaling boats that we can throw stink bombs at them. Good call, hippies.

On an episode I saw the other day the first mate ignored the charts, cause you know, what has technology ever done for us? He then proceeded to get the ship surrounded by ice (oh and by the way, this ship isn't meant to be around any kind of ice, let alone giant icebergs) and the boat damn near sank. Meanwhile these guys just kept talking about their clients, the whales. Someone needs to tell them if they sink the whales won't be coming to help.

-Tweet of the week goes to Bill Simmons, who had this to say regarding the 4th of July: "The 4th of July is like one super-slow home run trot around the bases as the English stare us down from the mound."