2006-11-16

A Lifetime of Withdrawal

I�ve been in quite the emotional tailspin for the past few weeks, chickens. Disappointment darkens my mental doorstep. Each day brings with it a new maelstrom of tedium. I have eked out only the slightest pleasure from watching Kevin Federline slowly circle the pop culture drain.

And it�s all because the cable company yanked the Lifetime� channel from me.

I mourn it like a lost lover. All I can do is curl up on my couch, my Restoration Hardware� lap duvet offering me little solace. I replay our happier, more tender moments and wonder where I went wrong, what I could have done to have it leave me so suddenly and with no explanation. And it�s not as if I can even call it at inappropriate hours and hang up when it answers. Terrible.

Some of you may recall that we terminated all but the very basic channels from our cable package. I went through a fairly awful period of withdrawal, torn as I was from the warm soft bosom of VH-1 Classic�, but found quickly enough that I could do OTHER stuff without the constant distraction of 800+ channels � like reading really terrible $1.99 gossip magazines. Like answering ridiculous MySpace� surveys. Like spackling.

And so I settled into a more or less tv-free evening routine. Other than the mandatory weekly viewing of �House,� and the periodic ceremonial RE-viewing of �Pretty In Pink� on DVD, the tv stayed off. And other than the vague sense of loss � the nagging feeling that I was missing the video for Morrissey�s �November Spawned A Monster� (which of course I could remedy fairly quickly via the miracle of YouTube) � I was remarkably okay with it all.

Until one evening last month, when I was desperate for just about anything to keep me from actually sitting down and WRITING (because, chickens, if I may be brutally frank, I hate to write. I hate it, yet I am compelled to do it, and any writer who tells you that she simply LOVES to write is either A) high, or B) completely batshit insane), I turned on the tv and began flipping through the mostly scrambled channels in search of some mindless distraction.

And there it was. A Lifetime� movie.

I don�t even remember who was in it. Probably Tracy Nelson, or JoBeth Williams. Maybe even Valerie Bertinelli. I do remember that it was about mid-way through when I tuned in, but it didn�t matter. The sheer novelty of having a channel heretofore denied me was damn near intoxicating.

Thus began my shameful affair. Lifetime� introduced me to a sordid world full of scheming, murderous psychopaths I never even imagined possible. I�d always thought it odd that we got SpikeTV as part of our reduced package, with its ostensibly �male-oriented� (car chase videos, wrestling, and �Caddyshack�) programming, and yet we were not getting its softer counterpart. Now I know why. It�s because Lifetime� movies are just about the most violent, horrifying things I�ve ever seen! In one, this woman finds out that her ex-husband (portrayed by John Ritter!) has been slowly and steadily poisoning her by scraping selenium from vintage radios and then ROLLING HER MASCARA WAND IN THE SHAVINGS. And then at the end of the movie, you find out that it�s a TRUE STORY. And it�s not just the husbands. In another movie, Tracy Nelson stabs her husband to death in their sun-dappled kitchen as the surrogate mother of their baby runs screaming into the street! And I was getting all of this for FREE.

Until the first of November. And then, as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.

I was devastated.

I think I was getting it all through October because it was �Breast Cancer Awareness Month,� now that I think about it. Because when Lifetime� wasn�t warning me of the perils of suburban marriage, it was reminding me to feel myself up on a regular basis.

lisamcc at 4:14 p.m.



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