Guilty Pleasures

Okay, maybe this is just because I am on vacation and have extra time on my hands (had to have an excuse), but I have been addicted to the CBS show Big Brother for the past several weeks. It is truly addictive, even if it is pure fluff for my brain. And so what? We all have and need our guilty pleasures and this is one of mine. There is so much seriousness in the world, what's wrong with giving the brain a little idle time once in a while. This brings me to an interesting experience I had back in college.

My best friend, Shelley, and I were discussing some of the finer point of Cap'n Crunch or something very deep like that, when a mutual friend of ours made fun of our conversation. We had been decompressng from spending all day in class. Our brains were feeling overloaded and needed time to think about something trivial. So we indulged ourselves in what our mutual friend deemed "idle talk." She really had an issue with this kind of chatting and felt any conversation worth having ought to have some intellectual merit. Well, Shelley and I debated this at length with our mutual friend and came to the conclusion that it really didn't matter to us what others thought. If we wanted to dissect the characters of "Melrose Place" (yes this dates me) or delve into the mysteries of cafeteria food, so what?

And so goes my obsession with shows or books I enjoy. It's like discussing a really good movie. I recently sawTalladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and then two nights later saw World Trade Center. The first movie was pure comedy and hilarious. Great way to spend a Saturday night with my husband and three of my nephews. As for the second film, I saw it with my 13-year old nephew and we were thoroughly moved by it. It brings you right back to 9/11 and all of the heart-wrenching feelings that go with it. That's the beauty of tv, films, and literature. You can escape into comedies, tragedies, and the like. As I write this, it is just flowing so it I may be rambling a bit, but it is a fun topic for me to articulate with "some intellectual merit" or at least chew the fat. So to those who deny indulging in a guilty pleasure now and then, I feel you are missing out or lying about having one...:) I mean come on, most of us had a teen idol plastered on our bedroom wall at some point or might confess to actually enjoying MTV's The Real World. Whatever your sin, be proud of it!