Thursday, February 24, 2011

Home Entertainment and the advent of the Man-Cave...

I have to admit that right now my home entertainment system is presently made up of my computer and nothing else. I don't watch regular TV or listen to the radio. But the other day I went to a friend's house (at his request) to help him install surround sound speakers and an A/V receiver. Not being given the instruction manual beforehand, I was at a loss in terms of which wires went where, so for all intent and purposes I was useless, or should I say more useless than usual. That's saying a lot, but I digress.

My conclusion is that home entertainment systems are what has been rotting the inner core of American society ever since leisure time has become a pagan ritual of the ever-dwindling middle-class. This is why fantasy sports leagues have morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry driven by bloated, sedentary suburban white males with too much time on their hands and a morbid obsession with beer, chips, salsa dip, 6-foot heroes, and athletically gifted minorities.

Homeland Security should go after these domestic terrorists. They are destroying the fabric of the nuclear family. While these assholes are in their basements, wearing their foam cheesehead hats and rooting for their Green Bay Packers, upstairs their domestic life is crumbling right before their overextended bellies. They have kids they don't pay attention to, which is why their daughters become junior high-school anal sex/blowjob queens, taking more meat up their behinds than a Seymor Butts Tushie Girl, and why their sons are online pledging their allegiance to the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Nazi Skinheads.

And let's not forget mom, who if she isn't fucking Gustavo the poolboy and comparing how much of his second-class, illegal alien jizz she can swallow in one gulp in comparison to her equally bored and useless housewife neighbors (must keep up with the Jones', especially if Mrs. Jones is managing to slurp and deepthroat her landscaper's assistant's cock while tonguing his testicles all in the same mouthful), is joining her husband in this pathetic bloat-athon to see who can gain more weight the fastest.

Let me describe these motherfuckers-these are cats with $50,000 custom mahogany man-caves, shrines  devoted specifically to watching predominantly Latino and African American athletes from impoverished backgrounds, cheering for them on the field while secretly wanting to be like them (except for the skin-color part), with their chiseled torsos and their humongous schlongs.

This is quite an odd paradox. These same sports fans, helplessly devoted to their respective franchises, are the same ones who take a bizarre pride in watching young men from the very same ethnic and socio-economically deprived backgrounds on penitentiary reality shows like "Lock Up Hardcore-Pelican Bay". What you have transpiring in the basement of most suburban homes is a bizarre mix of jealousy, admiration, envy and visceral hatred towards a group of young men who they wouldn't want moving next door to them for fear their property values would plummet. Yet these same men become heroes on Sundays when the prison uniforms are exchanged for the colors of their home teams.

There was no better example of this disconnect than when Rush Limbaugh tried to purchase a stake in an NFL franchise. Limbaugh, whose obsession with race and black skin color can only be described as demonic, had the audacity to be taken aback when black NFL players stated unequivocally that they wouldn't play for his fat, Oxycontin-abusing monkey ass if he became an owner.

Limbaugh is the cultural zeitgeist for his ilk, a group of men who can be found in their basements plastered, literally and figuratively, in front of their 15,000-inch flatscreen TVs with a bowl of Cheetos and tanks full of cheap beer attached to funnels that chug brew straight from the keg right into their hippo-sized mouths, cheering on athletes they want their sons to be like yet at the very same time so desperately despise.

This brings us back to the home entertainment conundrum. I could not for the life of me concentrate on getting any work done at my friend's apartment. If I spent 5 minutes running a wire or setting up a speaker stand, I had to take a 30-minute break from the exhaustion. This is what home entertainment systems do to the average male-it destroys one's desire to get the fuck off that leather recliner and live life. But I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of my friend, who went out of his way to purchase a huge flatscreen TV and couches so comfortable and plush they would not be out of place on the most exclusively appointed yacht. I could see Pablo Escobar ordering furniture like this for HIS den. And if it's good enough for "El Padrino" it certainly is good enough for us mere mortals.

Besides, who the fuck wants to work when Sportscenter is on? And since I've never had the pleasure of such accommodations (in my house it was either a bit of furniture OR a TV, never both. And never in the same room. And cable TV? That was something out of "The Jetsons", and always something someone else had, not us. Yes, I had to actually go outside and do something for my entertainment. Sounds sad? Not really-it's the reason why at 5'10" I managed to play college basketball and football from 7th thru 12th grade) it was too much sensory overload. Not only was I becoming the type of dude I categorically loathe, I was ENJOYING it.

The moral of the story is, please steer clear of the man-cave. The whole basement thing with the multiple seating capacity for your equally out-of-shape friends, large screen TV and the separate refrigerated room for storing huge slabs of cold cuts is out of the question. This is a recipe for disaster that many should seriously strive to avoid. A man-cave is the indoor equivalent of tailgating, and will only lead to bratwurst-induced hypertension, anal fissures, hemorrhoids, flatulence, high blood pressure, triglyceride levels that would rival Ty Cobb's career batting average, broken marriages and the disappearance of one's libido. Not having sex because you're a fat fuck can be remedied with exercise, a proper diet and a woman who wants to sleep with you. Purposely preferring a BLT hoagie with french fries, a large pizza, pickles and a 3-liter of Pepsi over sex is inexcusable.

No comments:

Post a Comment