Next stop on my world tour to avoid reading more text from history books: Wandyteeth! For those of you in the Omaha region, if you grab today's paper (that'd be Sunday) and check the announcements section apparently you will see a familiar visage staring back at you. Or radiating back at you, if you will. So that's been done.
Monica really likes investigative journalism shows, which means the Tivo is always full of 20/20 and the many forms of Dateline. One of which is "To Catch a Predator", which we watched yesterday. Now this particular segment has come under great scrutiny for several valid reasons: 1) the status of Perverted Justice as an extremely questionable organization, and their basic use of entrapment as a device for luring "predators" for Dateline's Chris Haansen to interview in awkward fashion, 2) because at least one of the men "caught" later committed suicide out of shame without having been charged with anything, and 3) the general bullshit nature of the news. First of all, from a legal standpoint the whole sting operation is contrived in such a way that the actual arrests of any of the men caught on Dateline should be easily reversed by any lawyer worth his salt. Or at the very least, they can't actually get the felony charges because they necessarily stop the sting well short of the point where anything actually happens. And the interviewer is a total jackass more interested in the fame these segments apparently give him ("Seen me? I'm on a little program called Dateline, you've probably seen me many times.") than in any kind of actual reporting/investigating. Which, we know, is why the kind of people who run Dateline are no different than the local ass who does Fox 5's "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!" segment that answers the tough questions. Tough questions like "Why does the government waste 200 of your hardearned tax dollars on this tree!?" And rather than making me angry at how pedophiles use the internet to track down girls, Dateline's over the top sensationalism and interrogating without remorse actually made me feel sorry for the guys caught. And that's what they should probably be avoiding at all costs. Oh, and they sell DVDs of this stuff, too. You know, just in case your neighbor is on it. Holiday present time is coming up!
Apropos of nothing, the new Andrew WK album is a total treat. "I WANT YOUR FACE"? "YOU WILL REMEMBER TONIGHT"? "I WANT TO SEE YOU GO WILD"? "I WANNA TAKE YOU ON A DATE?" Parts are the same all-chorus headbanging (chorus usually being just repeating the title of the song) straight up party tracks that you'd expect, while others are Queen-esque space operas that otherwise defy description. And it's all awesome. I can't wait until AWK's lecture date this Wednesday. It will explode heads.
Edit: I noted above that I managed to say "any lawyer worth HIS salt." Clearly I am sexist.