I've spent 3 of the past four years living without cable. One of those years I spent completely without a TV. As a result, I know nothing about what happened in the world or in popular culture between mid-2004 and mid-2005.
But now I have cable again and I get to watch all sorts of great shows once more. I get to watch "Good Eats" with Alton Brown. Even though the skits are annoying and his dorkiness is often cringe-inducing, each show provides a wealth of knowledge about food science and cooking technique.
I get to watch endless reruns of "Seinfeld", "Friends", and "Law and Order", and it seems like "Globe Trekker" is always on too. The other day the nasally little British guy went to Lappland. How cool is that? I get to watch "No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain, and I've also gotten into the new show on that channel with the bald guy who scours the globe looking for disgusting things to eat.
The Hallmark Channel shows reruns of "Little House on the Prairie" four times a day, and since we get four PBS stations I can watch Charlie Rose in the afternoon, and all four seasons of "New Scandinavian Cooking" are in heavy rotation. The ones with Tina Nordstrom are my favorite. It's like that Weird Al song about the guy who quits his job so he can stay home and watch TV all the time.
But my favorite of all of these is "The Dog Whisperer" on the National Geographic Channel. I'm totally hooked. I'm sure it's edited to make Cesar look better than he really is, but something about this show I find fascinating. I think because it's essentially about someone who's really good at what he does for a living, and the whole point of the show is for you to just watch him doing it. The show is a great argument for the value of going through training and developing expertise on a subject.
The best career advice I ever received was- go out and become really good at one thing. If you're good enough at it, people will come to you. I would amend that to "become really good at one useful, marketable thing", and Cesar's life is this idea personified.
Another reason why the show works so well is the fact that many people, even dog owners, don't know much about obedience training and animal behavior. Cesar shows up and probably tells a lot of people in one hour, more useful information about dog ownership than they've heard their entire lives.
The show strikes me on a personal level for three reasons: 1) I like dogs and animals in general so I'm naturally drawn to the subject matter. 2) The suburban Southern California setting of the show is very familiar, as is Cesar's Mexican accent. 3) I see parallels between what Ceasar does and what I do. I also go into homes and offer my expertise to people, to help them with a problem that one of their family members is having. A lot of my job is training the parents as well as treating the client. And, just because someone is a parent, that doesn't mean they automatically know a lot about how children develop speech and language. I seem to have a hard time remembering that last point. I'd say the similarities end there though.
I'm not as confident or as effective as Cesar yet, nor do I have a TV crew following me around into people's homes, but in continuing with my time-honored tradition of learning about life through what I see on TV, I now have a new role-model to follow.
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2 comments:
A few notes:
1. Alton Brown DOES overdo the suburban dorkiness thing, and I also find some of the skits cringe-inducing, but seriously, the man is a genius.
My only criticism is that sometimes he's a bit too fond of making things complicated. Take the hot wings episode I saw the other night. He wants you to cut up the wings yourself, chill them for X hours to dry them out, steam them in special rig you hafta build yourself, and THEN bake them in the oven. Oy. Episode after episode has the line, "Sure, it'll take you a LITTLE LONGER to do it this way, but you'll be well rewarded." OK, that may be true, but dude, it shouldn't take 4 hours to make a good sandwich.
2. We don't have National Geographic anymore, but when we did we also watched the Dog Whisperer; I agree with everything you said about him. (Although, not that your larger point about training isn't true, but I think Milan is totally self-taught.)
I think the best thing about his show is that he reminds people that dogs aren't little people, they're DOGS and they're happiest when they're understood and treated as such.
Make sure you read this excellent profile of Milan by (equally genius) Malcolm Gladwell: http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/dog_whisperer.pdf
Oh, I forgot to mention, Brendan interviewed Milan for work. He's a fan too.
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