Banality TV

Last week, just before I was about to hit the hay, I stumbled across a TV show about Shredding.

Not shredding like snowboarders ripping down a 15,000 foot high mountain and carving up 3 feet of freshly fallen snow. That might seem somewhat interesting.

This was a show about shredding.

As in every year I cart out my decade old files of bills and receipts and feed them into a machine with the delusion this will somehow protect me from identity theft. Though, to be honest if someone were foolish enough to want my identity, they'd be more than welcome to have it.

This was shredding on a larger scale.

I believe the name of the show is Mega-Shredders.

The machine in question, the Mega Shredder 9000, is the size of a tractor trailer. And what goes into the machine is a little weightier than my electricity bill from August 2006, when we ran all the ceiling fans and had to turn on the extra refrigerator in the garage to store the potato salad for my daughter's 9th birthday.

But essentially it's the same thing.

It's a TV show about two burly guys tossing furniture, discarded lawn tools and 5000 old porn VHS tapes left over from the 1990's, into the giant make-dust-out-of-stuff machine.

This is what passes for entertainment these days.

Of course the twaddle doesn't stop there. There are TV shows about pawning crap, fishing for tuna, building tree houses and demented people who like to eat pillow stuffing or lick cats.

The other night I caught myself watching a show about a young couple who wanted to buy a house in the bayou.

In the end, I found myself upset that they didn't pick the $95,000 double-wide on stilts sitting above the murky waters of Lake Cataouatche.

Makes me glad that I stayed in advertising and never ventured too deep into the abyss that is television.

It's also got to break the heart of writers, many of whom are friends, who slaved over well-crafted pitches and multi-page treatments that never saw the light of day.

Network Exec: "Yeah, we're not going to green light your idea, we're moving forward with a show about organic composting."