The other night, as I am often want to do, I was engaged in a tooth spitting tirade about my hatred of the local public television affiliate, suffering everyone who was unfortunate enough to be within earshot [*BORING POST ALERT*]. As I’m becoming older and geekier, I find myself watching less and less to the television, and what little television I want to watch is becoming progressively more and more public-televisiony. It seems to me that HBO is ruining network television. I love the various HBO series, but I’m too cheap to pay for them, and the networks seem to be responding to their lost market share by making airwave television progressively more ghetto to respond to the fact that the only people who are watching them anymore are ghetto-folk like myself. Ghetto as I may be, I don’t care for the ghetto television, so I watch the public television instead.

Unfortunately, the public television in Maryland sucks hogs ass. I’m am not the world’s best traveled individual by a long shot. I have never lived outside either the Washington or the Baltimore markets. I have no idea how bad public television programming is in Indiana, Alaska or Wyoming; but I do know that in comparison to Washington public television, what is broadcasted in Baltimore is embarrassingly low dollar and amateurish. I cannot pick up the Washington television stations, but I can and often do look up their programming schedules online to torture myself.

Granted, there are times when PBS forces public television in Maryland to show interesting shows, but eighty percent of the time they seem to have a free hand in choosing their own programming, and they invariably choose to broadcast worst garbage they can get their hands on. When I look up their schedule, and see they are broadcasting 4 hours of back to back episodes of Antiques Roadshow, followed by 2 hours of Are You Being Served, I’ll switch over the Washington public television website and see that they’re showing a beautifully produced documentary about the Third Crusade or Saladin or something, curse the public television gods for mocking me for living in a secondary market, which is only about 10 miles away from a primary market, turn on the TV and watch a rerun of a sitcom staring Mo’Nique, and then cry while I wish I never quit drinking.

So Friday night, I was pleasantly surprised. I looked up Maryland’s public television schedule and saw they were rebroadcasting the first part of No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s documentary following the life, career and social impact of Bob Dylan. Hmmm. Sure, Scorsese hasn’t made a REALLY good movie in almost 30 years, but his recent documentaries have been really good, and I’ve heard great things about this Dylan thing. I can’t help but be intrigued by Bob Dylan. I’ve always dug the songs, both pre and post Newport Music Festival, I know on a personal level that I would hate his guts, what with his pompous pretense and his old habit of blatantly lying about his own past and being one of the world’s greatest phonies, but I’ve always respected the fact that he was only broadly political and concerned more about the music than the message, and was never delusional enough to convince himself that he had all the answers to the world’s problems like those fuck-twits Joan Biez and Pete Seeger (how can anyone listen to Biez? Either singing or otherwise?). I’ve always absolutely loved the way he told to folk music establishment to go screw itself when he picked up the electric guitar in 1965 - the best heavy distortion “Kiss My Ass” in the history of music. I taped the show and watched it when I got home later that night.

Oh My God! Hand’s down the best documentary I have ever seen about a pop figure, ever. I could not wait to see the second part, so I went online to see when they were broadcasting the second part. After about an hour and a half of searching, I began to realize the local public television affiliate had no intention of showing the second part. Not this week, not next week, not next month, not ever. I seems they had two hours to fill and decided to only air the first part of a two part series.

WHAT THE HOLY FUCK IS THAT ALL ABOUT?!?

As I was saying, the next day I was bitching about this for a good half hour. After crying like a little baby, on of the guys I work with just laughed at me and said, “So I guess this means you’re not donating any more money to them, huh? Not one more penny, right?”

whrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.... [sails completely deflated].

Touché douché.