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thick pop cultural veins
Tuesday, May 7 2002In the evening, Anna came over to challenge us to a game of Scrabble, ultimately trouncing us both decisively. Near the end of our game, we kept being distracted by an episode of the Osbournes, the reality show focused on the present life of rock and roll legend & roadkill Ozzy Osbourne. Since the Osbournes is an MTV program, there were plenty of long commercial segments giving us ample time to finish our Scrabble game. Though Gretchen and I both love (or at least like) the Osbournes, we don't remember to watch it because it's on MTV, which is a mostly unwatchable channel for us. Anna, on the other hand, seems to actively mine MTV's thick pop cultural veins. She even watches the Real World, which was mildly interesting tonight because this was the episode coinciding with the tragic events of September 11th - sort of a Real World meets the Real World, if you will. For those who like reality teevee precisely because it is so entertainingly stupid (a description applying to all of us tonight), this particular episode of the Real World was just the ticket. The best part came even before the tragedy even "happened," when Gretchen (using her vapid LA girl voice) gave voice to the sort of sophomoric sentiments we'd soon be hearing.Omigod! Like, I don't know, but, like, it's really such a bad thing for people to be so totally mean and like do something like that. I mean, like, it's such a tragedy. In the process of watching so much reality teevee, we saw more than our usual daily intake of commercials. There was an actor in one of these whom Anna actually knew, and I just assumed she knew him because he was some random guy she knew. But no, she knew him because he's a fellow dwarf, and (being active in the "little people" community) she knows scads of dwarves. From my angle at the Scrabble table, I couldn't see the television very well and could only see the actor's weird facial hair. Still trying to figure out which actor she was referring to, I said, "Oh, you mean the weird-looking one?" I wasn't referring to his stature at all, just to the only thing I could see about him, his facial hair, which had clearly been altered to accentuate his unusual appearance. Anna didn't respond directly, and I only realized that she might have considered this a faux pas later, after Gretchen said something seemingly-forced about his facial hair (in what was probably an attempt to smooth over what I'd just said). It was just one of those little things that happens when you're hanging out and there is a potential to offend those present.
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