Jealous Much

I am the first to admit to reading every single Harry Potter book cover-to-cover and loving every minute of it, but is this newly announced spin-off tome of Ms. Rowling's reeks of post-book-series-partum depression. Coincidental that the publication is announced at the peak of Stephenie Meyer mania? I think not. Perhaps Rowling just read one to many "move over J.K. Rowling" Twilight reviews and just couldn't take it anymore. Yes, the book sales will benefit the Childrens High Level Group charity, but there's more to be made from publishing glory than just cold hard cash. I imagine at this point the taste of the limelight is a hotter commodity for the writer that has it all.

And so it begins...

Lifetime writer, first time blogger here. Before I get started, I have to admit that I am still not 100% sure why I think having my own blog is a good idea. For reasons still unclear to me I am a bit leery of this whole blogosphere thing in general, but more on that later. I suppose I could say starting a blog is simply a result of boredom, perhaps a shade of curiosity, or even more likely, the fact that Facebook (where I spend way too much of my time) is not nearly as interesting as I give it credit for. Ultimately, I think I will use this space as a journal of sorts, where I can work out some thoughts, comment on likes and dislikes, and ponder my current tv and food obsessions (of which I have many).

Since I have decided to make this somewhat of a public diary, I figure it would be fitting for my first post to share with you one of my biggest guilty pleasures, a deep dark secret that only my husband and a handful of people who have glimpsed my Tivo list know about: 

I watch a soap.

More specifically I watch "All My Children." I began watching sometime in early 2003, I had just "lost" my job, so naturally I was going to the gym at noon time and while there, treading away on the elliptical machine, wedged between the rest of the sweaty, unemployed I discovered "All My Children" or AMC as the die-hard daytime tv crowd calls it. I was immediately hooked and began timing my workout so that I could watch Bianca Montgomery, one of daytimes first openly gay characters, fend off the advances of creepy, psychopath Michael Cambias, all while burning off a few hundred calories. My casual gym viewing quickly turned into a daily obsession and finally earned a top five spot on my Tivo's season pass list. Eventually I became gainfully employed once again and was forced to trade in my daily doses of Pine Valley's inhabitants for a weekly catch up session on the weekends provided by the previously mentioned Tivo (the greatest invention since television itself) and to this day I am still caught up in the tangled web of love and deceit that is AMC.

What is it about AMC or soaps in general that makes them so addicting? I'm not sure I fully know the answer to that, it may be that at their heart they are basic human stories about love and loss which everybody can relate to, sure those stories are dressed up in fancy mansions and couture attire and have the occasional mine-shaft entrapment, baby-stealing, and long-lost-lover-back-from-the-grave storyline thrown in to spice things up, but at the end of the day even the Erica Kanes of the world experience joy and heartache just like the rest of us. 

And for the record (I may get kicked out of the AMC fan club for admitting this), while Susan Lucci is truly a powerhouse of daytime television, Erica Kane is my least favorite character on the show.

Call it a waste of time, call me crazy, but I know I'm not alone in my daytime tv watching habits, many reasonably sane, intelligent people have admitted to watching soaps for at least some period of time. My husband will probably kill me for broadcasting this, but in as much as he often makes fun of my AMC obsession, even he has admitted to watching Days of Our Lives at one point in his otherwise "studious" college career. For further proof that I am not the only non-housewife soap viewer check out this great Salon article. 

Regardless of what they are, everyone has their guilty pleasures, I guess the ultimate question is, if we find them genuinely pleasurable then why do we feel so compelled to keep them a secret?