An Off the Cuff Offseason Presents: The Continuing Misadventures of Napoleon in Rags, Vol.1 – Come on Down!

To fill some space during the offseason I’m going to be running a series of stories about the “hilarious” mishaps that I am growing ever more accustomed to. My days are generally filled with fraudulent attempts at professionalism, lame attempts at humour and staggeringly transparent attempts to fit in with the normal humans. It’s mostly gaffes, apologies and dizzying social awkwardness – just ask anyone who has had the misfortune of being romantically linked to me. Don’t worry, not everything is 100% accurate or 100% hilarious. Here is today’s installment:


The Price is Right as a Sociological Phenomenon


This one's not really a 'mis-adventure' but I don't like being constrained by labels.

In the position I currently find myself, both vocationally and geographically, I am afforded the privilege of eating lunch at home every noon hour. This is a vastly underrated event and one which I credit for 3 of my 5 remaining scraps of sanity.

However, with the Flintstones no longer offered as lunch time programming, coupled with my meager cable package, I used to struggle in finding something to watch that doesn’t include afternoon courtroom drama. That is, until I discovered that my west coast CBS station shows The Price is Right from 12-1, and in HD no less. Happier I could not have been.

I love The Price is Right. But it’s not just because I love flashing lights and guessing how much things cost, which I do. It’s also because I love the deeper social implications of this show. Let me explain in a convenient 3-part list:

1) The Price is Right is better for your body imagine than watching a six-hour marathon of The Biggest Loser. Nowadays on TV we mostly see people with bodies that you and I could never achieve, especially you. A single episode of Two and a Half Men contains more perfectly formed T&A than the word attaint (yes that is a word, yes I had to look it up, and no it doesn’t mean what you think it does). After an evening of prime time TV, if asked, I would generally rate of my level of attractiveness as falling between gargoyle and goblin, or possibly hobgoblin. However, after one hour of the Price is Right I feel 75% less grotesque. It’s refreshing to see actual, normal human beings on TV.

2) As refreshing as it is just to see regular people on TV, it's even more refreshing to see real emotion from those regular people. There are very few places in society where we're allowed to let loose with what we're feeling. Screaming at the people in front of you in line at the mall to just HURRY UP AND PAY SO WE CAN ALL GET ON WITH OUR LIVES is generally frowned upon, trust me. But on the Price is Right anything goes. Screaming, yelling, shouting, jumping, high-fiving, hugging, kissing, running around, falling down - you get it all, and in a completely natural and uncensored form. It's great.

3) The absurdity of retail pricing. I'm serious when I say the Price is Right is 35% more difficult because of the ridiculous retail pricing. Where on earth are they buying these prizes? I think the Price is Right has a special outlet store where everything is marked up 30%. $2500 for a 42 inch plasma TV? C'mon, this isn't 2002.

One more thing I should mention, and it's that I'm clearly not the target audience for the mid-morning gameshow. Commercials during the Price is Right are aimed at diabetics, geriatrics with no life insurance, and people with so many health problems they should be living in a bubble surrounded my people in HazMat suits - much like the ending of E.T. The lists of medication side effects are always my favorites; and because I want everyone to know what they're getting into, I'd like to thank you for reading this post but I should mention that reading in the future could cause: uncontrollable urge to stop reading, jimmy legs, glaucoma, earwigs, bitter regret, yellow toenails, despair, unkempt nosehair, jimmy arms, feelings of dread is your basement or attic, puppy punching, two left footedness, chemical dependency, ground beef dependency, better website dependency, boredom eating, laugh line strain (extremely rare), nausea, inability to unread what you just read, and numbness of the outer extremities.