Television is a mindless timesuck…. but a truly lovely mindsuck.

As I write this, the Monsieur and I are watching VH1’s Top 100 One Hit Wonders of All Time. We’ve watched this show many times. We usually start watching somewhere in the sixties and can echo the comments the other will utter with the next song. But after the 96th (or 69th?) time of watching the same show, we’re still not tired. It’s, in fact, quite the dee-lite. Aïe.

Yesterday as we slothfully watched several episodes of the Dukes of Hazzard back to back, we realized that it had, in fact, been our anniversary present to each other. Yes: for our first wedding anniversary, we opted to gift each other with the Robin-Hoodian opus of Bo and Luke Duke and their trusty General Lee. We had thought we’d get each other something classy, like personalized stationary or a portrait (for our paper anniversary, that is!). Instead, it seems we’ve created our own yee-hawing, car-crashing, hoodwinking tradition. Frankly, I think it’s a pretty good tradition: who didn’t love the show growing up in the late 70s and early 80s? And seriously, who didn’t want to own an orange 1979 Dodge Charger with soldered-shut doors, and go around shooting a bow and arrow and and leading police cars in wild goose chases through the backwoods of… ahem…… the backlots of Studio City (I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t filmed much in Georgia, except for the first five episodes. Not that you could tell it was really Georgia, except that they keep on reminding you).

And anyway, we’ve realized that the Dukes of Hazzard is not just a caricature of good and evil: really, although it is a bit cartoony at times, there are some mildly poignant themes such as Sheriff Roscoe’s resorting to being a crooked, bought up lawman after the county voted to nix his pension money. Also in the list is the whole lawful/lawlessness of The Boys and their moonshinin’ past –not to mention their illicit ways to stick it to Roscoe and Boss Hogg.

I overanalyze, and I do apologize. But I must say that watching these episodes with older eyes is great. Not only do you get the initial thrill of reviving some of the better parts of your otherwise kind of forgettable childhood, but you also get all the double entendres and off-color jokes that eluded you when you were little. So yes. YEEEEE-HAAAAAAAW!!!!!

Now if I only could get me a balladeer to narrate my life on a day-to-day basis. It would be even cooler than that “kuh-chink” sound from Law & Order.

22 May This entry was published on May 22, 2005 at 12:45 am and is filed under Weblogs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.