Is Ohio on Mars?
Check out the fun with “Lighten Up” Columnist Dawn Weber & Yours Truly in the Buckeye Lake Beacon newspaper last week…
‘God bless the ‘regular’ folks in Ohio for keeping it real…’
Dawn Weber, proud Ohioan and humor blogger, asked in her “Lighten Up: It’s Time for Quality Reality TV” column (2-5-11) “Where are the regular people? Where are the Ohioans?”
Interestingly, many of them are here in Hollywood working on the shows we love to hate. They are proud that they are from Ohio, but really proud that they left Ohio. They are tough nuts indeed, with a shrewd eye for entertainment, and bucks are a big reason they are here. (Jerry Springer ring a bell?)
The “achingly beautiful and disgustingly fit” people we must endure on TV are an OCD reflection of the industry’s reverence for the superficial – especially when it comes to women. In L.A. there is a peculiar alien race of ladies over 30 years old with swollen duck lips, fake balloon boobs, and startled looks on their sad faces. They resemble washed up porn stars. (We’ve come a long way baby!)
According to CalorieLab’s “Fattest States 2010” tally, Ohio ranks #13 and California #41. We don’t eat in L.A. – we experience eclectic cuisines in esoteric dining environments. We are not run-of-the mill, garden-variety gluttons – we are foodies. The only sweets we allow ourselves are eye candy – and it’s Halloween every day.
Ms. Weber is correct. There’s enough despair to go around.
In L.A. – where the grass is always greener around the corner at the medical marijuana pharmacy – fat, old and/or ugly people (excluding celebrities) are pretty much spurned, or worse yet pitied. Anyone “ordinary, normal, middle-of-the-road” is dead meat in the fast lane to show business fame and fortune.
Yes, perhaps the state that brought us the exceptional likes of the Wright Brothers, James Thurber, and Erma Bombeck could benefit from a style makeover, but God bless the “regular” folks in Ohio for keeping it real and beautiful.
Lighten up: It’s time for quality, reality TV
Although I keep trying to forget, it’s winter. Still. So lately I’ve been plopped on the couch like a proper Midwesterner. Watching the boob-tube.
Now that I said “boob,” and I have your attention, I ask you: Where are the regular people? Where are the Ohioans?
All this diversity in entertainment, all these faces in all these different skin tones, yet one thing stays the same – everyone is achingly beautiful and disgustingly fit.
I want to punch them.
As a Buckeye, (State Motto: Eat Your Food – There’s Nothing Else To Do) I’m feeling, well, under-represented. Where are the wrinkles, the paunches, the bellies, the double chins? Where are the split ends, the receding hairlines, the mutts, the American cars, the crappy jobs. Where are any jobs? Do these people work?
Holy Toledo, where are the old people? What have they done to the old people?
Just look at the “Desperate Housewives.” Why so desperate, skinny witches, I mean -ladies? Someone take your Botox docs? Gorgeous little minxes, all of you. Chiseled cheeks, perfect hair, long legs, flat tummies, jutting hipbones…
Us Desperate? Ha!
Hipbones. I remember them from such decades as the 80s.
Want to see a Desperate Housewife? Come visit me in January. Add bored, complaining, housebound kids and 11 piles of laundry. Toss in an elderly parent requiring attention, a rag-tag collection of needy pets and a good 20-lb. stress-induced muffin top.
But it’s not just the nighttime soaps. No, even the reality shows are in on it – “Jersey Shore,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “Big Brother.” For the most part, the participants in these programs look like they stepped out of fashion magazines…or at least out of high-end brothels.
There are a couple exceptions – for one, ABC’s “The Middle.” Although located in a fictional Indiana, it’s pretty accurate in Mid-America interpretation, with freakishly short Frankie, freakishly tall Mike and their wonderfully weird kids. In a messy, badly decorated, Midwestern house, schlumping through life like the rest of us.
And there’s TVLand’s “Hot In Cleveland,” featuring the usual skinny witches, I mean – supermodel types poking fun at Ohioans. But we can take a joke. Especially since the sitcom also stars a glorious, riotously funny, yay for old people Betty White. The cast may have a laugh at our expense. But they soon find themselves appreciating Midwestern living, just as the Victoria Chase character said in the pilot episode:
“Cleveland: Where everyone is eating. And no one is ashamed!”
Darn straight, Victoria. We are not ashamed, and we won’t be ignored. We are Buckeyes – tough nuts!
Heartland homeys, it’s time to take back the tube and tell Hollyweird: Listen up! We want to see some more “average!” We want hard-working folks living in two story, mill-worker row-houses, with beat-up Fords and a crabby mom who needs her roots done. Kids with messy hair, glued to electronic boxes! A dad scratching himself in front of the Ohio State game! A dog who wets on the floor! Sometimes!
Now THAT’S my house – I mean, some quality, reality television.
Dawn Weber blogs at DAWNLIGHTENUP
Like New Jersey, but land locked?
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