Real Me TV

Dear Diary,

The following is a conversation I had with my wife on Sunday night.

MY WIFE: You want to make a reality show out of our marriage?

ME: And our home life.

MY WIFE: Who’s going to watch that crap?

ME: I’m going to shop it around to all the big TV networks.

MY WIFE: Nobody knows who we are. We’re not the Osbournes.

ME: Nobody knew Jon & Kate Plus 8.

MY WIFE: They have 8 small children. All you have is a cat.

ME (adding to her last sentence): Who’s rambunctious.

MY WIFE: Nobody’s going to watch a show about a guy who keeps calling in sick at work just so he can play with his cat.

ME: They will if you and I keep having disagreements and throw furniture around.

MY WIFE: I’m not going to be in your stupid show.

ME: You just wait and see. This thing is going to be huge. I’m so happy.

That night, before going to bed, I set up my aunt’s video camera in the kitchen. This camera has a hard drive and can record for many hours on end. Yesterday morning, I turned it on as soon as I woke up. The following is a log of the crazy insane footage I have so far.

7:45am

I walk into the kitchen, rubbing my sleep-puffed eyelids, and wearing a ragged, frayed “wife beater” T-shirt and a very loose fitting pair of tighty-whities (which were my grandfather’s who passed away over twenty years ago. I only recently inherited a minuscule portion of his estate, after a lengthy court battle with friends and relatives. This portion basically consists of just socks and underwear. I don’t want everyone to think that I fought for almost twenty years just for underwear; I just wanted what was rightfully mine – he was my grandfather after all! I don’t really care about the underwear, really… but I digress). My eyes are still only half open as I boil water for tea and then feed the cat, and then steep the tea. All this hectic activity takes about an hour and a half. So far, I haven’t said anything. I start to worry that I might run out of stuff to do and whether my show, in future episodes, might have some lulls in it.

9:15am

I finally sit down at the kitchen table and sip my tea while silently reading the paper to myself. This takes about an hour.

10:11am

While reading the paper, I doze off. The camera keeps recording as I sleep for the next three hours.

12:20pm

I finally awaken with a start. I stand and walk to my cat’s litter box in the corner of the kitchen, and proceed to clean it out - something I haven’t done in almost four months. It smells terrible. I swear out loud (the only word spoken so far). After spilling kitty litter everywhere, I open the door for fresh air and my cat darts out. I scramble out after her. For the next five hours, the camera records the empty, silent kitchen.

5:45pm

Still recording the empty kitchen, the camera’s hard drive runs out of memory and shuts itself off.

I now find myself with all this provocative footage of what it’s like to be me, and what the inside of my head might look like. A sort of “a day in the life of”. The only thing left to do is edit this footage to make my “pilot’ episode, which I’ll show TV execs, just to tantalize them. I haven’t been this excited since I won underwear in court, shouting, “That’s the one thing I won’t let you take from me!” and then being smacked in the face with a (thrown-from-across-the-room) tied up bundle of tighty-whities.