What you can learn from watching an hour of Jerry Springer

I'm normally not much of a daytime TV watcher (with the exception of Oprah, which I try and catch if I have the opportunity), for a number of reasons. First because I used to work during the day, second because I had no TV in the past year. But this morning, I had no classes, no pressing engagements and the lack of initiative to go out. So I bummed out on the couch and watched daytime TV. One and a half episode of Maury (never heard of him) and one whole episode of Jerry Springer (everyone's heard of him). Hmmm. Now I remember why I didn't like daytime TV much. It was horrible!! Worse than what I remembered, so terribly tacky.

But that was peanuts compared to the commercials! They were outrageous. In the space of 2 hours, I must have seen at least 45 minutes of commercials, promising cures to medical issues I didn't even know I could have (dry eyes), advertising colleges that promise a career in law enforcement (meaning prison), financial companies that want to clear up my $25,000 credit card debt with just one phonecall (hmmm, maybe they can get rid of my student loan...) and the worst were the lawyer commercials. I can now so understand why lawyers are the bad guys in this country. The worst two commercials (and shameless) were the possibility to sue medical companies if your teenager has committed suicide whilst on ADHD drugs, or to sue a hospital if your baby is born with cerebral palsy. How shameless is that!

Maybe I'm just paying attention a bit more to commercials now that I'm taking Advertising Management...

Spent the weekend lazing about (with the exception of Saturday when I actually did some work at Stern). I took a city hike on Friday night, visiting the Rockefeller Center (they were laying the ice rink), the Apple Store (interesting, not very busy, I like the new Mac laptops), the Colliseum bookstore (rumoured to go out of business soon so I wanted to catch it before it closed) and last but not least: MoMa. Target sponsors Free Friday Nights, which means they waive the normal entrance fee. And I wasn't the only one who had this luminous idea! It was crowded (I want to go again, but later at night, the open night is from 4 - 8pm), but I loved the space, and want to go back to have a closer look at the photographs. They have free audioguides included in the entrance fee, but you can also download the whole thing to your MP3 player (which I love).

Yesterday I wandered over to the Chelsea Market (15th street and 8th Avenue) which was blooming marvellous! I can highly recommend it to people who either like architecture or food, it's the old home of the Oreo cookie and how houses foodshops/wholesalers. My favourites are Amy's Bread, and the Italian shop (where they had 3 kilogram buckets of Nutella). On my way there I stopped in at Balducci's (14th and 7th Avenue), which is a food hall extraordinaire, well worth a detour). No pics unfortunately, I forgot my camera and my phone.

Comments

[Al]

I just don't think you're the target audience for daytime TV. The truly sad part is that a lot of people are the target and really believe all those ads or have those problems (debt, etc).

[Jeff D]

Mmmm...food....

I find myself listening to more American music over here (Bruce Springsteen particularly.)

You listening more to the Dutch stuff? :)