Irritants on the Tube
Pet peeves. Everybody has them. You have yours and I have mine. It’s just human nature. My worst peeves are triggered by the television and the lack of knowledge displayed by the writer, director or producer. The actors are forgiven. They are generally not an intelligent sort.
Commercials are the worst; scenes of various everyday events being depicted with incorrect props, filming locales or clothing. It's unimaginable to me that someone on the crew working behind the camera doesn’t know the reality and cry foul; perhaps they’re just trying to stay employed.
Example: It’s a bright hot sunny day and the professional carpenter is building a deck. He’s talking about his aching muscles, but feels comfort in the fact that ABC brand of anti-inflammatory caplets are waiting at home. He's wearing a thick heavy long sleeve flannel shirt with sweat beads on his forehead. He removes a nail from his pouch and gets back to work. He has a rubber mallet, places the nail against the wood and ‘tap tap tap tap’ making zero progress. Wrong! Are we not supposed to notice these things?
Wait, there’s plenty more. The leaves are piled high in the yard. The husband delivers a glass of iced tea to his adoring wife. Together they stand, discussing social security and their retirement IRA. They giggle with one another reflecting on prior sound financial planning and then resume their weekend chore and they're using hard rakes – for dirt or gravel or cement – not leaves. Arrgghh! Drives me nuts.
Somebody behind the lights and booms and audio equipment has to know the truth.
A trio of housewives are walking in the park pushing baby strollers and discussing their issues with irritable bowel syndrome. The best remedy they decide is the newest OTC probiotic and the relief it offers, scientifically formulated for women. Soon after, we see them in the local cantina eating nachos and doing shots of tequila. What? Is that good for your colons and where the hell did the children go?
Two guys, old high school pals, standing next to a mountain lake surrounded by tall lodge pole pines, snow caps on the rocky peaks in the background. They congratulate each other on their friendship and good fortune. They wager over who will be the first to catch the biggest bass swimming in the cool waters. Wrong again! And even if there were big bass in the crystal clear liquid, they’re holding light weight rods with open face reels, attached to 4 lb. line and lures designed for sailfish. None of it makes any sense.
These same two fellas – trying to sell us deodorant or testosterone enhancement pills, decide to go deer hunting with shotguns – possibly maybe, or pheasant hunting with rifles. No! If we could see their feet, I bet one of them would be wearing flip flops or tire tread sandals. It's very uncomfortable to watch.
One more and I’ll try to let it go. A farmer and his son, wife or brother, stands next to their section of livelihood. They praise their choice of seed corn for its genetics, yield and resistance to several types of weeds. As the commercial fades to black, we see them pulling away from the machine shed, ready to plant this year’s crop. Behind the tractor, they have a wheat drill, or a brush hog, or a box scraper. “Any implement will do,” the director yells. “Nobody really cares.” Uh, yes, some do.
