Although there are few things as reassuring as routine, occasionally breaking out of that routine can be enlightening. Or weirdly entertaining, or even liberating. So this afternoon I found myself on an elliptical machine at the gym a full three hours later than usual which meant that I was exposed to a whole new world of bad TV; as opposed to the bad TV to which I’ve already grown accustomed.
Anyway, it seems that a part of that world is someone named Bonnie Hunt who has a talk show (who knew?) which, this very afternoon, featured an overly-enthusiastic audience engaged in a karaoke competition. Normally my default reaction would have been something predictably smug like muttering “really?” while rolling my eyes, but in this case I was transfixed by a young couple that got up and sang
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. They shook. They shimmied. They gave themselves to this performance as though it was a life-defining moment, which it may well have been. Ultimately though, not only was the performance cringe-worthy in both a meta and specific-to-them kind of way, but my heart also went out to this young woman who... wait for it... has no idea that she’s married to a gay guy.
Or maybe she does. Or maybe he isn’t actually gay, but just super-thrilled in an especially fabulous way to be in front of an audience singing an Elton John song. Who knows? More to the point, I guess, is that this couple clearly broke out of their routine for an afternoon and had a great time. So go on, turn off the machine and go do something different for a change. Just like I’m doing right...
P.S. - Oh yeah, and as always, Calvin has something trenchant to add:
