'Bred Crumbs

I'm surprised how many of my Web cohorts are pausing to eulogize Fred "Mr." Rogers upon his passing. When I heard the news, I said, ""Aw, Mr. Rogers died," and I was kind of done – no surprise, no sense of loss. I appreciate his accomplishments but don't feel any attachment. Maybe it's because I have a titanium-cold lump of machinery for a heart. Or maybe it's just that, unlike nearly everyone I know of approximately my age, I didn't grow up watching anything on PBS. Zoom references are lost on me, and to this day I have trouble distinguishing Ernie from Bert.

Has this formative absence of public television stunted my growth, and if so, is that because it was actually good, nourishing television or simply because it's what everybody else saw? And if the latter, am I slipping into further decrepitude because of my modern-day refusal to give a flying fuck about Survivor and American Idol and the rest, which has put me so at odds with the entertainment-consuming public that now EW refers to some of these slagheaps' contestants on the cover by first name only and I have no idea who they're talking about? And should I give a damn about this widening gap, open my mind and let the greed and narcissism and idiocy and meanness in? Or should I embrace my inner curmudgeon, go buy a box full of rocking chair at the Depot, and start getting my curse on at at all those kids to get the hell off the lawn I don't have?

Eek, I used the f-word in an item about Mr. Rogers. I feel so dirty.

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Maybe I'm wrong, but while there certainly is a wide variety of horrible hold music, I think the last thing I want to hear while waiting for my call to be answered is Jon Anderson's eardrum-piercing shrieking. At least the voice mail picked up before the sanity-shredding layers of inevitable ba ba ba bas began.

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