Who's Your Daddy?

just when things were going so well . . . a dark cloud looms in the distance, slowly making it's way toward me. yes, the year 2004 ended on a pleasant note and i was looking forward to what 2005 would bring my way. i don't have time to share with you the rather involved details today, gentle reader. it's mostly computer stuff at work anyway. i'll bore you with that story another time. suffice it to say, things were not good on the information superhighway at work. it was equivalent to a 20 car pile up on a regular highway everyday for a week.

when things go south like this, as they invariably will, i turn to television. i'm not talking about my usual stuff--hbo, pbs, c-span, or comedy central. when i'm really down, only network tv will do. after a few minutes of flipping through the channels, i'm sure to find someone having a much worse time of it than i on a reality show or non-reality show as they really should be called. seeing people publicly humiliating themselves on national television makes me forget my troubles and brings me great pleasure. regardless of what i'm going through, at least i haven't been reduced to eating goat eyeballs or maggots on fear factor. better yet, how about being placed on a giant scale with a group of circumferentially challenged people to see how much weight they've lost over the past week. and if shows like these are not funny enough, along comes "who's your daddy?" it was sort of like the bachelorette, only the woman is trying to pick the daddy she never met from a group of strange men instead of picking a husband.

but when i pressed the mute button while watching the show and called people to tell them to tune in---a task made very difficult by the fact i was laughing so hysterically that i could barely speak---i thought that one could definitely mistake this show for the bachorlette if they had the volume off. but in this this case, the relatively attractive woman who appeared to have had lots of plastic surgery was in her late 30s or early 40s, being courted by a group of men in their 50s or 60s. the setup of the show seemed the same. they dressed up very smartly, shared drinks and hors d'oeuvres while talking intimately to each other. she observed them on camera in private without their knowledge making comments about which things she admired in each. the real daddy sent her secret emails describing how much he thought of her over the years. and she, disturbingly enough, wanted to see all of her potential daddies dance before her. my only surprise at this point was that there was no grinding going on. how well a daddy dances, of course, is probably more important than anything else. and really good dancing makes up for the fact that he walked out on her so many years before. at this point, my laughing was so hard i was in physical pain and my troubles were forgotten, if only temporarily.

the troubles for daddy and daughter, i suspect, were only just beginning. sure . . . sure, i know what you're thinking. they raked in the cash and they'll keep raking it in with a book deal and the talk show circuit to promote it. maybe they'll even end up with their own sitcom called "daddy's little girl" showing how life has changed for them so much and how funny it is. but it will go stale, they'll blow all their money, and the public will turn on them as the losers who went on television revealing the sordid details of their lives. at which point, they may turn to the subject of this article of the week for help with their careers. keep reading below to find out why.

see you next time,

greg
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what followed at this point was an article from the WSJ. if you have an account, you can view it at:
The Road to Stardom in Britain is often Paved with Failure
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110496190225017902,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one