WHAT DO I WATCH ON TV?

Life and death in real emergency rooms, in an unimportant town somewhere — that I'll watch, if there isn't an old or new movie that sounds interesting. Or the cable "Forensics" show -- I'll watch it. Not "Scrubs" or "Grey's Anatomy," but I'll sit and take in an old "ER" -- I've met most of the cast -- JC played the father of Dr. Greene, the main doctor.

The news -- the repetitious selling of the terrorism scares, scandals, murders, political-congressional wars -- though I like Maddow, Brokaw whenever he appears, and Anderson now and then, lately, it's not what I want to watch at the end of the day.

Sitcoms? "No, no no!" I moan, grabbing the remote the moment I hear a laugh track, or see a NCIS or CSI in the title. I do not want to see manufactured crimes --NOT with what's going on in the real world these days!

The acronym titles are a meaningless jumble so I Googled them. (I prefer to complain with a modicum of accuracy.) NCIS = Naval Crime Investigative Service, CSI = Crime Scene Investigations. TV's got CSI Las Vegas, CSI Miami, CSI N.Y., NCIS, and NCIS Los Angeles.

Their brilliant successful wealthy creators loom in my mind as foes -- the indefatigable Don Bellarsario, and Jerry Bruckheimer (See my post, "Off with his Head" 8/12). I've seen Bruckheimer's name on too many violent shows and megahit films. And though I've dined at Bellarsario's home and met his kids, I'm bored and repelled by what he loves to dramatize.

Sometimes I watch Dick Wolf's "Law and Order, Special Victims." Maybe because JC's been a lawyer, and a judge on SVU, I feel Wolf's shows occasionally ring with truth and are based on issues, not just shocking events.

"Forensics" is easier to take. Fingerprinting, DNA, tests, techniques relating to the investigation of a crime -- the plainer, duller, the less dramatically enhanced, the better. I can chat and watch -- cook/snack and watch -- or watch while I clear the table, run the dishwasher, set out the vitamins and coffee for tomorrow.

The dry narration of who-what-when-how facts ... yes, they're repeated too many times but the salient plot points stay with me. Instead of watching actors act/react to manufactured horror -- bang bang visions of cruelty, pain and blood hitting me -- I'm seeing a story unfold, as told by a police person, or an ordinary looking relative, who explains what happened sadly (but not yucky emotionally).

The actual forensics -- colors, tubes, droppers, flagons, DNA imprints, patterns of fingerprints -- it reminds me of OP art, POP art of the sixties, but isn't boring -- it's a kaleidoscope in motion.

Alas ... last night, making popcorn watching "Forensics ID" a new version of last season's show, a purring sympathetic voiced female narrator kept making comments ...

Is she where they're heading? I've noticed that quite a few new network shows are trauma-dramas, and they keep flashing that word -- "interactive."

Oh God, will it be like "Idol," or "Next top Model," "Biggest Loser," "Dancing with the Stars"? Will we be voting on guilty, not guilty? Live or die?

Gee, I've never really be able to sit and stare at a cartoon show ... gee, do they have p.m. re-runs? Maybe I'll be popcorning, dishwashing watching the "Simpsons," or "Family Guy?"

MURDER DEATH NEWS

In the morning, we need the weather news. Outside our windows, it's grey tall buildings. Then, the latest news -- last night's drama, an accident, a murder, death, divorce -- we're already involved, interested , because it isn't us, it's them.

Our kings and our queens -- the sports heros, politicos, songsters, rappers, top of the chart talent -- perfect diversion from disasters, floods, fires, bombs, disease, the starving, the abused, the homeless.

No point in trying to go on with this list, you know what it is. Murder death disaster news wouldn't exist if our need for it didn't exist.

Why does it?

Why is our hunger for it, our need for it growing?

Is it our already over-crowded world, the doomful predictions based on history that move us, hurry us faster toward more, worse, worser, and beyond worst?

Will my turning it off, tuning it out make any difference? Except make me feel a very tiny bit safer, in the cocoon of house/home, America. NY where we're more or less safely monied, tucked into familiar everything.

What does all this mean -- am I complaining or bragging, because we're here and all that is there ... not surrounding me, really quite nicely, quite far far away.

PLEASE GOD . . .

Since the day, the night, thousands gathered and rejoiced with tears in their eyes, we have joy and hope again. I feel it every day, we feel it, you feel it every day. We still get tears in our eyes, amazed that it happened, and proud to have shared it with so many many many people.

I'll not forget it. None of us will. He won. He's the president. His spirit and all that he conveys is inside, all around us, touching us all.

Shh. Whether we believe in prayer or not, we pray that nothing will hurt or harm or destroy that one guy. We don't want to think about the way our other heroes were taken away, don't want to mention their names in the same breath and connect them, so that assassinations belong in the past, and that good man will go on and on being what he is.

(I asked JC to read this. He said, don't publish it ... don't put that awful thought in anyone else's mind.)

The hardest thing is to write about the hardest, worst things that you know, and feel. I think it needs to be said. So, here it is. Should I, shouldn't I keep it on Em's Talkery?