Oh, Reality!

For most of Life in the Boomer Lane’s actual life, people have asked her how she comes up with the things that come out of her mouth. She answers that she does nothing special. Life comes at her and her brain, in effect a well-worn Cuisinart-type thing, just puts items together in various ways and then spits them out. LBL, herself, is always surprised at what results.

Cole Escola, a brilliant and most likely dangerously as-yet-undiagnosed victim of some kind of as-yet-undiscovered brain disorder, has done this to the nth degree (Why N?, she asks) in writing and starring in “Oh, Mary!” on Broadway. Escola inspires in LBL what Trump does to the tee shirt and baseball cap-wearing crowd. For her, the show wasn’t funny. It was transcendant.

The best art of any kind tells us more about ourselves than it does about the artist. LBL is still reeling over her newfound awareness that one of the most tragic events of American history caused her to laugh herself sick for well over an hour. If you, like she, is a fan of the kind of irreverence that should either be prosecuted or hospitalized, run don’t walk to Broadway to see “Oh, Mary!”

But this is not the topic of this blog. No, Fans, it is not. Compliments of Heather Cox Richardson, it’s LBL’s new awareness that the world of reality TV is on the brink of demise, down 57%. Heather Cox Richardson is the opposite of Cole Escola. She takes actual political events and turns them into something that can be understood. LBL craves both ends of that particular spectrum.

Richardson postulates that the ongoing demise of reality TV results from people getting tired of the blurring between real reality and fake reality. For those Loyal Readers who are now saying, “Huh?, LBL will burst your bubble about reality TV. There is nothing real about it. Single hunky dads and their single hunky sons are not both actually competing for the favors of the same middle-aged women. Twelve ordinary women do not actually believe that a fake Prince Harry is the real deal and that he will choose one of them to marry.

The Apprentice, the uber-popular reality show about a billionaire who fired people competing to become just like him was the fantasy of its creator. The billionaire was not an actual billionaire, if one considers debt. He did not have anything to do with the competiton, other than to bark “You’re fired!” to the losers. The winners never did score the golden ring of wealth and power. But, to lots of folks out there in Reality TV-watching World, the “billionaire” was their idea of what rich people were (smarter than them, more successful than them, owning more toilets than them, and being able to solve all of their humdrum problems.) And, years later, while still running on syndicated TV, that show would help catapault the rich guy into the White House.

The huge dip in the stock market that we are going through now is partly due to humans’ fear of AI.(Strange, right? Look it up). So, what does all this mean? Are Americans getting tired of fake reality? Will reality TV actually die? Will we be able to stop asking ourselves “Where do these people come from?” and “Do Gypsies always have fist fights at their weddings?” Will someone, somewhere make sure that AI doesn’t destroy our lives? Will the fake billionaire guy actually lose the election?

Most importantly, will Cole Escola become some sort of national hero, for showing us that it is far healthier to manipulate reality in the most obvious way possible, than to present unreality and serve it to us as something real.