Curses to you Netflix. You should go far, far away and stop enticing my children with your alluring offers of a free month — a free month to get the watcher hooked so he can’t conceive of ever letting go of this addictive subscription.
This is the way it works:
My son accepts the offer of a free month of Netflix, and suddenly we are all watching garbage we never could have seen (or have already seen and should not watch again). There are bad horror movies, bad Leslie Nielsen movies, bad reality TV shows — it goes on and on. My teenagers, who have never been allowed to have TVs in their rooms, watch these shows on their laptops, their giggles oozing under the doors and flowing to my room, making me wonder what is so funny. They hook up the Wii to the TV in the living room, the only TV in the house, so we can all watch the rubbish. Books are shelved. Movement is ceased. And alas, I fall prey. Not to the horror or the spoof, but to Cake Boss.
My daughter, having already viewed an entire season, shows me an episode. I am hooked in five minutes. How? How do they do it? How do they create the wonders? I marvel at the beauty; I drool as I consider how delicious it must all taste. And I am not even a big fan of cake!
Somewhere in the midst of season two, the girl decides she must have something delicious. Where is the nearest bakery? When can we go?
Instead, I decide to bake. I’m not a baker, so anyone who knows me just laughed loudly!
She says, “There is an angel food cake mix in the cabinet.”
I say, “I can make pound cake like my grandfather used to make with just the ingredients we have right here.”
An hour and a half later, the cake is done, and we compare it to a Cake Boss cake. Well, there is no comparison, but that is of no consequence. In seconds, I am cruising down nostalgia lane with two slices of pound cake and a glass of milk. Oh . . . . so . . . . good. Just like Grandpa used to make.
I will not step on the bathroom scale tomorrow; I do not want to know. I can tell, though. I can practically feel the fat growing around my middle, the copious butter and sugar weighing me down, my arteries hardening.
It’s your fault, technology. It is not my fault at all. No one should be allowed to see 50 episodes of Cake Boss. It just isn’t right.
I would offer my friends out there some pound cake, but there won’t be any left. Curse you, Netflix!