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The Duke's Views
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My Name is The Duke, and I am an Addict
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Posted by The_Duke on Thursday, September 23 2004
Greetings
people of Earth and beyond. As you may know, this site
is still in its infancy having been launched only a
couple of months ago. Before its existence I intentionally
stayed well off of the radar screen. Was I hiding? Perhaps.
But from what? My objective was to take a year off to
write music without any distractions whatsoever. The
truth is I am an addict. Hello, my name is The Duke
and I am addicted to all forms of entertainment and
information.
I
will spend hours on the Internet reading commentaries
on politics, exercise, news, alien encounters and the
list goes on. But that's not the bad part. As time-consuming
as the Internet can be, at least there can be an educational
component to it.
My
real demon is TV. Give me 130 channels and I may starve
to death because I won't get off the couch to eat. I
will watch just about anything. If there are cars going
around in a circle at 190 miles per hour, I will pee
on myself before I will get up to use the bathroom and
take a chance of missing a second of the race. Yeah,
I know that I could record it and go back to the parts
that I missed while using the bathroom. But I don't
want to. I don't limit myself to NASCAR either. I’ll
watch Formula One, Indy and Champ Car (formerly Cart)
racing too. Oh, and I’ll watch every pre and post
race show as well. During the Indy 500 this year, they
had a four hour rain delay. I watched all four hours
of "rain delay coverage” which included captivating
discussions on such weighty subjects as rain tread tires
vs. slicks and the financial future of American open
wheel racing. If that wasn't bad enough, NASCAR's Coca
Cola 600 was on a little later that day on a different
network so I watched both races with the split screen.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
My
next vice is English soccer. I'll try to watch every
English Premier League soccer match that is broadcast
on Fox Sports World. That's usually six, two-hour games
a week. Plus, I'll watch Sky Sport News, a one-hour
nightly news program that features the highlights of
games that may not have been televised. Now this is
where the story gets genuinely ugly. Fox Sports usually
replays 2 or 3 of the week’s best matches, so
I'll watch those games again! Pray for me.
Now
let’s move on to news. I watch Crossfire, The
O'Reilly Factor, Brit Hume's nightly news cast, Hannity
and Colmes, Dennis Miller and, dare I admit it, C-Span.
Those are just the shows that I make a point to watch.
I'll keep the news on for hours watching discussions
about Scott Peterson, Kobe or Michael Jackson's court
cases. I don't care about the outcome of those cases,
but you see that's why I have a problem. I can't turn
the TV off. Here's a list of miscellaneous shows that
I regularly watch; The Simpsons, South Park, The Aqua
Teens, King of the Hill, That 70's Show, Third Rock
From The Sun, X-Files, 24, The Osbournes and Law and
Order just to name a few. Then I flip over to The Discovery
Channel (I think that there are like 6 or 7 different
ones), Animal Planet (Steve Irwin is your Dad) or TV
Land (Sanford and Son, baby).
Now
I know you’re thinking that I can still be saved
with proper intervention and medication. That would
probably be true except for the fact that I haven’t
touched on the holy grail of my info-obsession yet.
Just saying the words gets my heart rate elevated -
talk radio! I first got turned on to talk radio about
12 years ago when I used to have a job delivering flowers.
(Yes, that’s just one of the many labor roles
I’ve played in life.) One of the other drivers
that I worked with told me about these guys that he
listened to on the radio and explained that it helped
the day go by quicker. If you have ever had to spend
nine hours a day in Atlanta traffic, then you were probably
as desperate for cash as I was and you have lived the
brutality.
When
I say that I listen to talk radio, I mean that I will
listen to ANYTHING with a talk format. Yeah, I listen
to all the political commentary shows including Neal
Boortz, Rush, Glenn Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly and
Tony Snow. I don't always agree with the host’s
views, but they always stimulate a good and lively debate.
I also listen to shows like Coast To Coast AM (a late
night show that discusses everything from extra terrestrials
to government conspiracies), Phil Hendry (I can't even
explain his show, but everyone should check it out at
least once), and Handle on the Law (a legal advice show).
I'm so addicted to talk radio that, if I'm in the car,
I will listen to the lawn and garden show on Saturday
morning before I would listen to our local rock radio
station. It gets better. I have never liked watching
baseball on TV, but I will listen to a Braves baseball
game on the radio. Hell, I'll listen to the post game
show.
Let's
backup so that you can get the true scope of my illness.
I don't like, and could care less about football, basketball,
baseball, tennis, volleyball, hockey, horse racing,
shuffle board, ice skating, curling, skiing, track and
field, bobsledding and even this list is boring me.
So, armed with that information, please try to help
me make sense of this. In my car I'll have a stack of
my favorite CDs and at least 3 rock radio stations to
chose from and if the only thing on my am talk station
is "sports talk" then I'm listening to "sports
talk." Now brace yourself! I've had passengers
in my car driven to the point of insanity because I
will listen to a talk station that is going out of range
and is 95% STATIC! Hey, I can still hear 5% and that's
still better than whatever rock radio is cramming down
our throat this week.
Now
that you know the true not-so-Hollywood story of The
Duke’s dark secrets, I guess you're wondering
how I manage to find time to do anything else. How could
I write three albums worth of material in a year? The
answer? Detox. Just like any good addict, I got rid
of things that made me a marshmallow. First thing I
did was cut my cable off and then I cancelled my Internet
account. I only listen to talk radio in the car, so
that wasn't an issue that needed immediate attention.
I tried that for a year and it's amazing how much work
I was able to get done. This is the period of time that
I spoke about in the beginning of this piece.
OK,
flash back now to November of 2003 and, for almost a
whole year, I had not watched television and had even
gotten to the point where I didn't miss it. So, I guess
I thought that I had beaten the demon and, with moderation,
I could rekindle my relationship with my long lost friend,
The Adelphia Cable Television Company. After all, it
was the Holiday season and Rudolph, A Christmas Story
and the Charlie Brown specials would be running. It
was tradition to watch these shows so how could I not
participate in these spirited holiday classics? Are
you buying this load? I did! So, by New Years I had
become chemically fused to my couch with an adhesive
made of stale Doritos, cat hair, peanut butter, protein
powder and Diet Mt. Dew. I had no new material written
for the upcoming Fozzy record which had to be ready
by February 1st. My experiment had failed because I
chose to be too weak to turn off the TV. The horror
and shame…
We
all have our vices and they negatively affect each of
us in different ways. Yeah, I don't smoke, drink, do
drugs or spend my money hanging out in strip clubs until
four in the morning. But if I can't stop watching TV
long enough to play the music that I love, then conceptually
that makes me no different from the dude with a doobie
in one hand and a beer in the other. Makes you think.
As
you can guess, I have spoken to my friends at The Adelphia
Cable Television Company and relayed to them my displeasure
with their product and promptly cancelled my service.
With the birth of my new web site I decided it was necessary
to join the online world again so that I could communicate
with all of you out there who care enough to read this
verbose diatribe. Do I still frequent the news, entertainment
and other sites out there on the web? Yes. But this
time I have good friends to help keep me in check. In
fact, my friend Ed who got me set up again has installed
an electrical shock device in the keyboard programmed
to zap me if I’m online longer than an hour at
a time. It’s been 58 minutes so I’ve got
to split!
In
closing I leave you with this thought. If you can sue
McDonalds for making you fat, I wonder if you can sue
the cable company for making you LAZY! God Bless America!
I
am The Duke and I love ya, Rich Ward
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