Monday, February 16, 2009

Being Out Of Touch: My Anti-Drug

I am sitting with my parents, watching television. After the extreme disappointment of the UConn basketball game, we moved on to TNT and "The Closer." It was an amusing episode, but not the point of this post.

The new show to follow "The Closer" on Monday nights is a crappy modern-day "Mad Men"-type show called "Trust Me." It stars Eric McCormack, formerly Will on "Will and Grace," and Tom Cavanagh, who I know as the annoying brother of J.D. on "Scrubs." In this evening's episode, McCormack's character solicited advice from his daughter, whom he sees as a normal teenager, about how best to appeal to young folks in an ad campaign. Unfortunately, he fails to understand that she is decidedly abnormal in her enjoyment of downloadable books and Leonard Cohen (a girl after my own heart). He ultimately makes a fool of himself in a meeting because of this oversight, and realizes how out-of-touch he is, much to his dismay.

Even though the show is pretty bad, I was amused by the attempted confrontation of coolness. Now, I certainly do not need to be told that I am out-of-touch. I know it, and I embrace it. But I was made to think about the way in which I am out-of-touch. I have always been pretty comfortable in my own skin, but I wondered if part of my strangeness is manufactured from within. Could I be more "normal" if I wanted to? Do I accentuate my weirdness because that is what makes me stand out most? Could I learn to appreciate rap music?

I am inclined to think that the notion that I actually could be less out-there if I tried would be giving myself too much credit, refusing to acknowledge how out-of-touch I truly am, which is, suffice it to say, quite out-of-touch. And I think I'm okay with that.

(Apologies for a bit of blogging-for-the-sake-of-blogging, but I have to feel productive somehow.)

Cheers.