the REAL show about nothing

Sunrise Earth should be made a controlled substance. Watching it creates a sort of mellowed-out state that I used to only experience while watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as a child. It’s both a nature show and in HD, so that’s already a combination of doom, but there’s no narration to break your trance, no commercials to release you and if you’ve ever been someplace and gotten up to see the sunrise, it strikes a chord.

I try to watch it in small doses when I’m getting ready to go to work in the morning because I do like the nature sounds in the apartment. And that’s about the only time I can have it on and not get caught up in the show. If it’s in the evening when I’m trying to do chores, forget it. I turn to look at the screen for “just a few minutes” and suddenly 15-20 mins. have passed by, I’m still clutching the trash I meant to take out and I’m wondering what smells so bad.

The worst of it is, even I admit that it’s a show where nothing happens. The occasional fish jumping or flock of birds, maybe a bear washing itself in a stream, but there’s no nature-related action! No predator/prey scenes at all. If the parents in Bradbury’s “The Veldt” had just gotten their kids thinking of Sunrise Earth, it would have been a happily ever after tale of them raising the most well-adjusted and boring kids ever.

I’ve got three episodes to get through on my TiVo, and a mental health day in which I should be tidying and doing chores… assuming I can just get up off the couch and stop gazing at sunrise over Cadillac Mountain.