rant

I don't watch a whole lot of tv. I mean, we watch our fair share but, except for Canadian Idol, we mostly watch "good" stuff. BBC Canada, PBS, HBO, etc. I have a guilty pleasure that I'm not too ashamed to admit to most days. I like Dr. Phil. Let me re-phrase that, I like the Dr. Phil TV Show, him, I go hot and cold on.

Every morning, I get up around 5 a.m. and I workout at home before going to the office. If I didn't do this early in the day, it would never happen. Anyway, I really like to watch the good doctor when I'm exercising. On tape, his show takes about 40 minutes to watch and that's generally about how long I workout for. All summer though, it was repeat city so I didn't watch him.

His new season, the third, started this week. Last year, he tackled weight-loss this year, he's fixin' to "heal" America. He's "adopted" a town and will deal with family issues, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, domestic violence, you name it, he'll heal it. It's a continuation of those exploitive shows he did last year with "the Dr. Phil Family" and the "Anatomy of Divorce" couple. If you haven't seen these before, you can read an overview of them on his website.

Now, when the "Ultimate Weight-Loss Challenge" started last year I was interested. I had begun my own fitness/weight-loss program in January 2004 and watched the challengers get fitted up with new precor equipment, medical check-ups, personal trainers, consultations with nutritionists, etc. Of course, he was hitching a newly released book to this series but the book was actually solid. At Christmas, I picked up a copy of it on sale, and it's a good read. He offers good advice about sorting your head out before you try to fix the fat problem. It's not rocket science really, it's common sense. Most of it, I was already doing but it was an interesting read nonetheless. This year, as I learned about half-way through the first episode, Dr. Phil has a new book out: "Family First." I saw copies piled up at Costco last night. Season 3 is going to be one long info-mercial for the book it seems.

I will admit, it made me angry. The weight-loss book was one thing but this, it's disgusting. He's going to exploit these sad people from a small town in Texas to sell his book. Of course, it didn't make me angry enough to stop taping the show, afterall, my workout's go much quicker when I can yell at Dr. Phil along the way. Still, it's really irritating how during each segment, he shamelessly plops a plug for the book in. It's a little sick.

One thing that made me smile today: Getting home from work. Tonight I was so happy to pull into our drive way and see our cute little house. This week has been dragging on and on and on (despite me wishing otherwise) and today was a particularly brutal day at work. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy a peaceful evening with my hunny in our very own house. What could be better??