Thursday, August 17, 2000

 

10:50 p.m. The convention is over for the TV viewers and the candidate of the people has been limoed away to yet another $1000-a-ticket exclusive engagement. Meanwhile, a streetful of protesters without a central theme are marching on the men's downtown jail.

Passions play.

They play especially well on TV. There's lots of crying on Big Brother, but the people remain one-dimensional opportunistic strangers under stress. They were told not to bring clothing with stripes. They did as they were told. Appearance is so important.

Al didn't wear brown tonight. I wonder if Brittany's hair dye supply will last her tenure? I saw Diane Keaton in the audience, and she looked merely glum. Whatever happened to wacky? We expect wacky. We're used to wacky. We want wacky. That's the contract.

Tomorrow our broken TV comes back from the shop and maybe I'll begin to see the bigger picture. Right now, everybody seems so small, so Gloria Swanson small. Maybe real life doesn't really belong on TV. Maybe you have to wait until the afterlife to become bigger than life.

Did I mention that our just-fixed Sony is -- what? Eighty feet across? And the dominant color isn't orange? And there's no weird coffee circle mark in the middle of the screen? And there's not a wiggle and a ghost and not even a little bit of snow?

I'm always amazed at how we get used to things so quickly. That's the secret lure of Survivor, by the way. Every week we're reminded of our huge range of everyday goodies, all those foods and comforts that are making us soft even as we long for more of them.

When you watch Survivor, you remember what it was like to taste a slice of pizza after a long diet, or how it felt to climb into your own soft bed after a long, dusty journey. I noticed how hungry Richard seemed to be for fruit at his breakfast on the yacht. I wonder how they all feel about rice these days. I wonder if they had salt.

Real life, TV life, and the life of the mind. I know it's all in my mind. I know I'm being manipulated and fed the images I have been programmed to expect. The press takes video footage of Tipper taking still photos and an anarchist literally spits right on the camera lens. I watch it trickle down. Did he practice?

By the time November rolls around, how much will have been real? I can predict that we'll be walking through sundown streets to the local school gymnasium and the volunteer team of really old citizens will look very carefully for our names in a big ledger before handing us the voting booklet. Then it will finally feel real.

I have often changed my vote at the very last minute, and I've often regretted my actions. I still think the Republicans will win this time, although I probably won't be voting for them. I also have a feeling that Nader is going to start looking better and better -- especially now that we're getting a bigger, clearer picture.