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A few nights ago I watched TV for too long, and this is the result A few nights ago I found myself in front of the TV all night long. ALL NIGHT LONG. I caught the tail end of Jeopardy! and then I watched Wheel of Fortune and then I watched Fear Factor and then I watched For Love or Money 2 and then I watched the finale of Who Wants to Marry My Dad?. For Love or Money 2 came with five minutes of instructions. It's a show full of twists! It's like a soap opera. From what I gather, last time around Erin (who is really cute; why is she trying to find a man on a TV show?) killed some guy in order to get his money, and then now all of a sudden he's back from the grave! He wasn't really dead! He was just hiding out, recovering, at his aunt's house in New Hampshire! Meanwhile, Erin has been dating all these new guys. They have the opportunity to kill her for her money, and they think that she doesn't know that, but get this: she really does know! It's a twist! And then one of the guys left the show in order to get some easy money, and then there were four left, and they all need to either cut their fucking ugly hair or just grow it out. They all slick it back and it makes me want to barf. Anyway, one of the guys is totally psycho, and the other three are all ugly. Poor poor Erin. But now she has her old boyfriend back! It's so exciting. I wonder what's going to happen next week! Will he fight her new suitors? Will she kill him again? Will he avenge himself? Will they get married? It's so exciting. This, my friends, is quality television. And I'm only being a tiny bit sarcastic there. During the many many hours I sat there staring at that black box with the glass front, I heard a Modest Mouse song playing during a Nissan commercial and a Ramones song during a cell phone commercial. Which leads me to my next point: Oooo, boohoo, fucking sellouts, boohoo. I've never been comfortable with the whole "sellout" thing, like people are always accusing bands of being sellouts, but what do they really mean? What does 'sellout' really mean? But then, I think it sucks when bands sell out, when songs you like get bastardized by big companies, overplayed, every single commercial, you can't get away from it, the song starts to suck, etc. Last year someone wrote a letter to Pete Townshend about a Who song on a Nissan commercial, and Pete Townshend wrote about it on his website. He explained why he'd done it. Blah blah blah, anyway, is it really that big of a problem to have 15 seconds of a song play during a commercial? Aren't we intelligent enough to decide for ourselves if we want to buy a Nissan or not? I love Modest Mouse, and the Who as well, but I'm not going to buy a Nissan. And artists have to be able to make some money, they have to be able to earn a living. How many people have burned Modest Mouse CDs? Hmmm? And I'd rather have them make some money from Nissan than 1. quit making music in order to get other jobs, 2. charge more for their albums, 3. charge more for concert tickets, 4. have a big huge corporate sponsored tour, or 5. die of starvation. And so I'm happy to report that, even though I was shocked when I heard those first strums of Gravity Rides Everything and I sat for at least 10 seconds not believing my ears until I heard Isaac start to sing, after a few days of thinking about this, after a few days of wringing my hands and wailing, "Why Modest Mouse, God? Why? How?" I am okay with it. Modest Mouse, make your money. Nissan, try to sell me your cars. Cell phone companies, shut the fuck up, I'll never get a fucking cell phone. And everyone can live happily ever after.
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