The Real World: Done

Finally, after years of vicariously watching that overdone Bunim and Murray confection where twentysomethings are "hooking up," I can honestly say I'm over The Real World. Gag me with a fork, I am done. Watching plants produce oxygen could easily top The Real World Paris as far as sheer excitement.

I'm not sure why I ever began to watch this show. Possibly peer pressure: the need to chat at the water cooler with the other fact checkers and editors over those crazy Gen Y nudists. I guess in the beginning, before we all became jaded on reality tv shows like a hobo on muscatel, there was something going on .

The Real World was my crystal meth. And it was good while it lasted, I suppose, as tweaks go. But I'm over it. I mean, everyone would like to watch attractive twentysomethings get amorous -- wouldn't that explain the porn boom? It's just that watching these pretty but dim bulbs start "businesses" and compete against each other and get on each others nerves is just a bit of a snooze. Soap operas have better plots.

The Greeks were great with wisdom. Cephalus quotes Sophocles the playwright and poet in The Symposium as follows:

Cephalus: . . . "I was present . . . one time when someone asked the poet Sophocles: "How are you in regard to sex, Sophocles? Can you still make love to a woman?" Hush man, the poet replied, I am very glad to have escaped from this, like a slave who has escaped from a mad and cruel master." I thought then that he was right, and I still think so, for a great peace and freedom from these things come with old age . . . . (329 c)."

Well, at 32 I don't need the viagra yet, but like Sophocles I am free from the tyranny of the cruel master The Real World. Basta!