Reality.TV?

I was just gettin’ ready to sit down, hoping tonight was the night I’d write that world class stellar post, that somethin’ somethin’ that even my mom and Miss Carol would be proud of and maybe even read.

But then I got to watching Deadliest Catch again.

And my incessantly constant laziness kicked in and I thought, ya know, maybe familial pride and readership is overrated and maybe I’ll just take the easy road, ’cause I’m all about easy, and write about the Alaskan King Crab fishermen again.

Quick sidebar-These guys are, without a doubt, the hardest people I’ve ever seen and, as a guy myself, as much as I might like to think I could throw myself up against that life and somehow prevail, or at least survive, I know in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t.

But. Still and nonetheless, I wanna think I could or should?

So, anyway, I started googling for Deadliest Catch pictures because taking photos of the TV doesn’t work so well anymore and as soon as I googled it?

I found out that Captain Phil Harris died.

And it stopped me and deflated me.

Captain Phil ran the Cornelius Marie and was a hugely colorful character, as they all are. He’d had his share of medical problems in the last year or so but, well, damn. And fuck.

So I sat back and thought, hey, it’s not like I’ve ever met him, or ever would, or for that matter might not even ever want to.

But still.

I found myself strangely saddened by his passing. For reasons I can’t even begin to describe, I was suddenly missing him, even as the show kept spooling out on the TV behind me and-a-still-alive-Captain-Phil hauled his strings and cursed his crew and smoked his endless cigarettes. And I wondered what his sons and crew who work the boat with him would do without him at the helm, even though I have NO connection with him whatsoever except via me watching a TV show.

And then it got worse. I realized that blogging and reading and caring about fellow bloggers is kinda the same kinda shit.

I’m all caught up in the lives of strangers that I’ve become close to, having never met them.

And it’s cool.

‘Cept it makes ya think, ya know?