Other worlds

I don't watch American Idol. I couldn't care less about American Idol. However, at dinner last night, I learned that many folks are very much into American Idol, including two of H's kids. Last night, it seemed, three finalists were going to be reduced to two, and they were obsessed with the common idea that a certain young lady singer definitely should be in the finals.

Curious, I watched the show to see what the excitement was about. Not much, but that's not surprising to me. There's no accounting for taste. At any rate, the certain young lady singer was the very one eliminated, so the son called his sister so they could lament together about the injustice of it all and the bad taste of Americans, since sixty million watchers of the show called it with their votes. Sixty million! The son, a mature and sophisticated artist in his forties, volunteered that his vote was equal to the vote of a twelve year old giggling girl who voted for the other lady because she was cuter. Hmm. Doesn't this tell him something about the show?

I also have other sane acquaintances who are really into watching "reality shows." I am so out of touch with pop culture it's extraordinary. I'm eager for summer to begin so I can start my ambitious reading project of reading Chapman's translations of Homer, followed by Kazantzakis' sequel.

I do have lightweight entertainment I watch on the tube. However, whenever I get interested in a show, like Six Degrees last year, or the academic drama starring Richard Dreyfus some years back, it gets cancelled. And so it goes.