dont encourage them

I was walking in Rittenhouse Square at lunch today. It's a very nice park in downtown Philly where business types can go to get some air and eat their cart lunch on a park bench without much hoopla.

In the middle of the park one of the network had gone to quite an expense to errect a large tent promoting a new reality show. The tent was furnished like a very cool apartment inside and was staffed by 15-20 college-age gung-ho kids.

They had a karaoke machine and were taking turns singing, and inviting the onlookers to come up and sing too. They had several video recording booths set up as well, and were promoting some dumb ass-contest for the person who made the funniest video. The winner will get their video played on tv and get featured on their website. Personally, I'm pretty sick of reality tv, and dont want these people to succeed.

This sort of tent would probably be successul on a college campus, but this crowd of monkey suited schlubs is just plain tired.

I sit with a growing crowd of people who are enjoying their futile quest for someone to be lured into their lair. The college kids have been selected for their white smiles and been given colorful logoed tshirts. They are young and thin and trying to infect the onlookers with their positive attitude. They all have messenger bags that must be filled with colorful Marketing crap. The audience are all seated in a wide arc, a safe distance from being singled out by the loud girl on the microphone.

In between Kararoke renditions, their is a silence that reminds me of crickets. It's awesome. I watch these poor kids try and try to whoop up some interest. I wonder how much this whole campaign is costing the network.

I consider going into one of the video booths and just eating my lunch on camera. I worry that it might actually be funny if I did that, and I might have to talk to someone and tell them my name and address and give various shouts out to my peeps. This would be a betrayal to my generation. I'm just not that spunky.

I fantasize some more and think it might be funny to walk a block to wawa, pick up 10 hot dogs and speed eat them in the booth in my shirt and tie. At the end of the tenth one I would stick my finger down my throat and projectile vomit all over the booth. This makes me laugh, and I'm alittle sad that I dont have the balls for something like that.

Can you imagine the look on the kids face when he opens the booth and is hit with a wall of hotdog-puke-stentch? Nobody needs a minimum wage job THAT badly......could I break them? Make them quit? Have a bad day? It's tempting....