Who Says Television Dumbs You Down?

Tonight, while watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent, I learned something I had no knowledge of - high-frequency cell ring tones used by teenagers so adults, particularly teachers in a classroom, can’t hear them ring. I found a website that has an mp3 of two popular ring tones. As a middle-aged guy, I can’t hear either one of them. My dogs ears didn’t even perk up when I played them repeatedly. Makes a fella wonder what other sounds he’s not hearing. Makes a fella wonder if there’s a way to not hear some other things, without going deaf of course.

I followed Law & Order with a wonderful show, Boston Legal. It’s my vital dose of sarcasm. It’s quite popular with many other folks, too. My therapist says I need more than one dose a week so I’m always searching for new sources. Okay, so I don’t have a therapist, but if I did I’m sure she’d strongly prescribe “more sarcasm.” And I’d be duty bound to oblige. In fact, tomorrow I may make an appointment to see if I could get such a prescription. Then I can hit work and be just as smart-mouthed as I want to be without reprisal. That’d be worth the price of a therapist. Whip out that prescription every time somebody hard times me about it.

Boston Legal always teaches me something. Mainly, it teaches me that great writers are still out there working in television. David E. Kelly is brilliant. He’s one year younger than me, but when I grow up - I want to be David E. Kelly.

Sarcasm is a lovely thing. Somebody even wrote about “The Anatomy of Sarcasm.” Deep stuff. Sort of takes all the fun out of it, if you ask me. Even so, learning more about sarcasm leans me more toward wisdom.

Working in an atmosphere like the offices of Crane, Poole & Schmidt would be terrific. It’d be fun and stimulating. Somehow I can’t see law offices of any of the bright attorneys I know being anything close to that. I admit I don’t know that many litigators, so that crowd might be more capable of quick witted retorts.

I think we should all give more time to pre-thinking our sarcasm. I plan to start writing down ideas tonight for possible use at work tomorrow. I know people aren’t able to execute those quick-witted-one-liners in real life. But, perhaps if we all scripted our talk like David E. Kelly scripts Boston Legal - then we could all have lots more fun (or get ourselves fired, but even that might be fun). Thanks, Boston Legal.