Reality is Cheap

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 Paulette Petard is a former classmate at the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.

 Paulette Petard was my lover at the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.

 She was the pillow upon which I would rest my head.

 Sometimes, the pillow was made of mortar.

 Paulette was made of 100% schlangya.

 I had no idea what that meant.

 We will now let her explain:


"Paul, it didn't matter what I studied.

 It didn't matter how hard I partied or how soft.

 What mattered is that I was pure unadulterated schlangya:

 A Persian word for the absence of failure  or  the guarantee of success. 

 Hollywood beckoned but I was not an actress and I definitely did not want to direct."



 Paulette became a producer of television shows. Her nickname was "the checkbook chick."

 A successful TV sitcom or drama would ultimately be worth one million dollars a month

 to cover all the checks the chick had to sign.

 But it would pain her to pay actors more than one million dollars a year to do nothing but

 move in front of a camera and convincingly mouth the words of a scriptwriter who

 made much less than one half of that amount.

 Scripted television shows, regardless of subject matter or type, would never have

 become endangered if actors remained under contract like the film stars of the best decades

 in Hollywood history. The decades resulting in Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Wizard of Oz,

 On The Waterfront...


"Paul, those films were before my time, of course but when contract

  acting met its demise, the producer's profit margin took a nosedive until what we put 

  in front of the camera was not a trained and highly overpaid actor or actress but what
  
  I will call real people.

"That sure is a much nicer name for them than 'cheap labor' 

   which is exactly what they were. People who would stand in front of a camera for 
  
   monkey paychecks instead of gorilla paychecks. The only acting direction we give them 

   is 'the stupider you behave, the more successful we will be.'

"But the concept would have been a big flop if we called it
                                                                                                
  CHEAP TV   therefore we named it in honor of real people. We called it  REALITY TV 

  and the producer's profit margins have gone intergalactic.  They will continue to do so 

  because of a misnomer on a mission. It will always be  known as Reality TV  because 

  there is a pool of fools who will believe whatever we tell them to believe. We can put 

  a pile of manure on their television screen, computer or mobile device and we can make 

  them think of nothing but the white palomino who delivered it. The people you see in

  Reality TV are merely uncaged monkees with lots of make-up but some of them, 

  admittedly, have great tits and ass. Reality TV.  But it pays for my lear jet.

"However, that does not mean the name has never been 

  genuine or authentic. Reality TV began and ended on 9/11. 

  The only day in history to be remembered as a fraction."



"Wow, Paulette, I never heard of September 11th in those terms before."

"Wow, Paul..."

"Why are you laughing?"

"Because when I share what is my innermost thoughts,  I am constantly

  being told by people  I never heard ____ explained that way before."

"If your 'innermost thoughts' are as interesting as how you described the first day

 of World War III, then I can't blame people for saying that. Consider it flattery

 as a side dish when the main course is your verbal bouillabaisse."

"But there was a time in my life when I was always saying variations

 of  I've never heard that before."

"Oh really, when was that?"

"Back in college, when you were my lover, my mentor, and

 my greatest source of frustration."

"Oh, Paulette. I've never heard me explained that way before."

   
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Footnote
REALITY IS CHEAP  is the copyrighted property of LCSoL. 
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