Missing Bob

It's not a secret that I am a big nerd. I used to beg my Dad if I could stay up past my bedtime just so I can watch the British Parliament debate on CSPAN2 or catch the end of Book TV. I recorded speeches by Hillary Clinton and spent evenings imitating her pronunciation to perfect my English.

So, when I was on the train this morning I thought about how awful it was that television seems to have gone downhill. Sure, there are the few cable channels such as Discovery, Nat Geo, History... but other than that, what are we watching? The esteemed news channel CNN is going entertainment. I get more news off of watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart than rolling my eyes at Nancy Grace and begging the Lord to step in and and help this awful woman.

PBS still stands, but barely. They are more than ever relying on the telethons and viewer contributions. Thank God Arthur is still on. What happened to Zaboomafoo, Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, and Julia Child?

I love eating and unavoidably cooking. When I first saw Julia on American television my jaw dropped. "Mom, look at the size of that woman!" I exclaimed. After the initial phase of getting over her height and presence, I began to admire her cooking. You can't taste or smell through the television, so it was never about how well she cooked. It was her joy of cooking (title of her cookbook). She talked to you as if you were in the kitchen with her. She wasn't a perfect chef. Her mistakes were all right there on television and I laughed along with her. "Just use your hands to marinate this chicken. There is nothing better than using your own two.... OH~~~! That's a cold chicken!"
I don't use 1/16 of the amount of butter she uses in her food. However, I try to always emulate her happiness and adventurous cooking in my own house.

When Mr. Rogers passed away, I was in high school. My friends and I dressed up in cardigans, parted our hair to the side and plastered it to our skull. When homeroom time came around, we took off our shoes and changed into slippers. It was a silent tribute to the dear old man that taught us how crayons were made and how candy were wrapped.

Every Saturday morning, I sat in front of the television with my bowl of cereal and flipped the channel to none other than PBS. I fell in love with this visionary artist named Bob Ross. I've never seen skill or hair like his. He always painted the most perfect blue sky and fertile dirt. Then, he picked up his landscape knife and placed a dark dab of brown-black paint across that perfect sky. Every time he did that, I almost dropped my bowl of cereal and yelled, "What are you doing, Bob?!" I was convinced that he had ruined the best painting of his career, but he always seemed to gain my trust back toward the end of the show when he began to paint "happy trees".

"Shoo, shoo. swish....." he would say as he painted every little happy tree.

It made me smile.

Not to pull a "You've Got Mail" moment, but can we save PBS? Does good television still exist? Are we forever stuck in the Real Housewives, and voting competitions era? Or, can we save true, educational, happy television?

Okay. Back to my ramen.