Our Western culture values a puzzling menagerie of unrelated and diverse topics. The slow death of our nightly news continues as it selectively chooses the carnage and distress from every corner of the world. We as the public beg for more technical intervention to fill in the gaping holes that the standard press leaves. Our fascination or albeit obsession with ghosts, fallen or downtrodden celebrities, looking good, wealth, and cooking are slowly being satisfied by a cable channel for every topic. If there isn’t a cable channel, an XM/Sirius radio station, a Blog on the web, or an app for your Iphone that isn’t devoted to it, your topic probably holds little or no social importance.
In the early 90’s I pitched a dozen new television concepts that had yet to be seen on any major television network. The representative from the production company seemed to show interest in my novel pitches but failed to make anything happen. My favorite of the shows focused on what is now the hottest and most mainstream of accepted shows, ghosts and the paranormal.
Now, almost 20 plus years later, in 2010, there are over a dozen shows dealing with ghosts and the paranormal. Here are most of the major ones: Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Paranormal State, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Lab, Ghostly Encounters, Scariest Places on Earth, Ghost Academy, A Haunting, The Haunted, Celebrity Ghost Stories, Psychic Kids, not to mention Crossing Over with John Edward and many other psychic-related shows that are semi-associated to this rant.
By now you either think that I am high on my soapbox, trying to flaunt my self-proclamation of being a visionary, that I am crying in my beer, or that I am embittered and mad at the world for not receiving my 15 minutes or the millions that no-good no-talent celebrities get for shaking their liposuctioned booty.
I am none of these. Novelty and creativity are important ingredients to the soup of success but that’s all they are. Timing is an essential key. Receptivity and knowing the right people are two other ripe elements that make for a deal.
Our lives can change or fluctuate in a second. I truly believe that when a door closes a window can open. I also believe that as hard as some of the things that we are forced to endure at times in our lives, that if we are able to stand back and dissect our situation, there is a lesson or message for us. The message that I get from this trend watch and memory is that maybe we don’t always get what we want when we want it but maybe we get what we want when we need it.
