Boring Things

Just a quick list of boring things, starting with -- but not limited to -- sports on TV.

The Olympics -- Winter, summer, spring, or fall, it doesn't matter at all.

The Tour de France -- Why not watch your neighbor mow his lawn?

Professional basketball -- Ten tall guys running up and down a bowling alley elbowing each other.

Professional football, American style -- A European once said it best: "They all stand up, they all fall down."

Professional football, European style (a.k.a. soccer) -- An exciting game ends in a 0-0 tie.

Major league baseball -- Two-hundred ten minutes of non-stop boredom on TV. Two-hundred ten minutes of non-stop canned music at the ballpark.

Announcers, commentators, and analysts for all of the above -- Never have so many people had to say so little of substance for so much money.

"Classical" music and visual art created after 1900 -- Indecipherable nonsense into which pseudo-intellectuals and the nouveaux riches try, and fail, to pour meaning.

Ditto jazz created after 1940.

Most French movies, except for the actresses.

Any musical written after 1950, especially if it was written by Stephen Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Broadway-style singing, most of which derives from the "can belto" school of vocalism.

Andrea Bocelli, Charlotte Church, and all other over-amplified vocalists who mangle great arias.

Any novel written before 1900 and any "experimental" novel written anytime, anywhere, by anyone, starting with James Joyce. (For goodness sake, please provide a beginning, a middle, and an end. If I want to solve a puzzle I'll buy a Rubik's cube.)

The front section of the daily paper -- It's already been on cable news and the internet, so why kill a lot of trees to repeat stale news and views?

Ditto the sports section.

"Comic" strips that try to be realistic about families and personal relationships -- Hey, we get enough of that at home.

Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly and their ilk -- It pays (handsomely) to be rude, but I don't have to watch it.

Daytime TV, "reality" shows, and situation comedies -- Take up reading before your brain rots -- really. Those things must cause Alzheimer's disease.

Any "news story" that's more than a day old -- TV still isn't safe for Laci Peterson's parents. And, yes, I got the gist of the Abu Ghraib business the first time, thank you.

To quote Porky Pig -- who was truly boring in contrast to such contemporaries as Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Bugs Bunny, and Tom & Jerry -- B-b-b-b-b...that's all, folks!