Self Involvement at Its Peak

Do you ever get the feeling your whole life is a small part of a gigantic Truman Show-like experiment? Plenty of people have told me they get these notions, when it seems like life is catering to their needs seemingly more so than would an unforgiving natural world. In simpler, less-media soaked times I would assume people would chalk it up to religion, fate, karma, or whatever.

Usually I don't get these feelings, primarily because my life is boring almost all of the time, and if there was a show based around me, it would have been cancelled ages ago.

That said, I think there's a 70% chance that the new television show Pushing Daisies was created specifically with me in mind. As in, someone sat down and polled my friends, read my blog, tracked down my myspace, and then secretly observed me from the nearby bushes for several days until they had a nice long list of things that appeal to me. Then they took said list and combined all the items in such a way as to make me entirely unable to look away from an utterly ridiculous show about a man who brings people back from the dead (but only for 60 seconds).

Don't believe me? Take a look at a list of major and minor plot points from just the first three episodes:

• Cute boy with an unrelentingly amazing smile (my one true weakness)
• Tons of Pie (no wait, that's my one true weakness)
• Small, dark-haired, earnestly-optimistic-pretty girl (we've gone over my issues with the whole Regina Spektor, Zooey Deschanel, Mary-Louise Parker thing, right?)
• Difficulties with physical closeness
• Accents
• Musicals (particularly featuring Wicked and/or Olivia Newton-John)
• Cheeses
• Beaver themed t-shirts
• (Also, the term "Beaver Boy" used in the non-entendre way that is usually reserved for myself)
• Appallingly sappy love stories
• Big-time vocabulary words and resulting wordplay and puns (The Pie Hole. Seriously.)
• Eating disorders

Okay, I'll give you the fact that many of these things are pretty universally loved (or experienced), on their own. But all taken together at once? Unlikely. Many a gay boy may love his musicals, cute guys, and love stories, but would he also like beavers and big vocabularies? A gourmand who is a nature lover might adore pie, cheese, and have an affinity for beavers and other aquatic mammals, but probably wouldn't be a big musical fan.

What I'm saying is that if it's not directly aimed at me, it's targeting a very, very tiny slice of a demographic that I happen to reside in.

I do take comfort in the fact that there are some quirks to the show which are not directly tailored to me, which gives hope to my non-paranoid side. There is a feature of knitting, which does not apply to me (I can only crochet), and there is the bit with the one-eyed mermaid aunts (so far as I know, I have no relatives in the side-show industry, disfigured or otherwise. I did have that stint as a carny, but I don't think that counts).

Anyways, mostly what this boils down to is that I love this show so much that it hurts. It almost feels like narcissism - loving this show is like loving a part of myself - but without most of the gross connotations that usually brings up.

So that means that all y'all should watch it. Because you're entertained by me, right? Therefore it stands to reason that the show will also entertain you. Although you may go into a diabetic coma from the resulting sweetness. (That's the other thing that doesn't really fit - I'm waaay more jaded than this show. But it's still early. I was once idealistic too. Give it until sweeps to get dark.)

Oh, and also if any future episodes center around badminton, I'm officially going to sue. I'm pretty sure they've got one of those disclaimers that runs during the credits about any similarities to people living or dead being purely coincidental, but one more match and I bet I could convince a panel of 12 people that I'm not that crazy.