I have a lot of great reasons I haven’t been writing, most of them boil down to: hangnails, barometric pressure too low, lint on the chair, you understand, but let’s face it – one of the big reasons is that we own a TV. Why am I not outside, milling about, having adventures I could later write about? TV. Chat up a good book? Movie? No, sorry. TV. Want to talk about TV? I thought you’d never ask. How is it I can now find time to write, you ask? Well, I currently don’t have a TV around me. It’s making me a little sad in fact. Could we turn off the camera a minute? I’m having a moment.

My number two reason, which could be the number one reason on any given day, is I own a computer, but this isn’t about the computer, this is about TV. Maybe I’ll vilify the computer at some later date. (HAH! Some days I crack myself up.)

In our lineup of shows which range from Women of Ninja Warrior to the Daily Show and include many rating winners I may be too ashamed to admit I watch is Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs”. We’re not die hard fans, we’ve missed an episode or four, but we’ve seen many a marathon. (Only having to turn it off when the job gets to be a little too “dirty”. My personal breaking point happens to be large amounts of swarming bugs in houses.) The show is followed by “Wreckreation Nation” and really, we watch it because it’s too hard to change the channel some nights.

So, what does it take to get a devoted TV lover outside to have something to write about that’s doesn’t come dressed up as a Jumbotron? Combining themes from shows I like with reality (that thing I try to resist). Is that vague? Then how about “plan a weekend away from home in a small town, discover a demolition derby and attend”? And that’s how I spent one of my nights last weekend in a small town called Nacogdoches where the temperatures were in the low 40’s, the venue was mostly open to the elements and sitting on a metal bleacher waving a checked flag.

Every sense was overwhelmed from the sight of the cars, the sounds of the revved up engines, the smells of fuel wafting through the exposition center and the smoke as it billowed out from the cars (well, not every sense – not taste because I tried to keep from licking things (difficult), but had I gotten up the nerve and licked one thing, I’m sure that too would have been overwhelming – I mean, I saw what was on the ground there and am almost 100% certain my tongue would have been in a complete uproar had licking been involved).

My only complaint (aside from no commercial breaks, no slow motion captures of the more dramatic wrecks and being 4 ½ hours away from my kitchen) is that the actual smashing of the cars could have been a little more exciting – the joyful crunching sounds got drowned out by the engines and then absolutely nothing exploded – I thought this was a demolition derby, doesn’t that imply explosions? – not even one single unplanned flame licked any of the cars. Sure, this one time a car came up the bank and then there was that car that turned on its side (yawn), but couldn’t they throw in a few more loud bangs and at least one flash fire? I wasn’t looking for injuries, just some overly dramatic, car crunching wrecks. Although, tires slowly spooling off was pretty good. Still, I was with the rest of the audience as I made “ohhhh” sounds for each really good smash. This completely beat TV – well, except they didn’t condense the best of the best into a 30 minute to 1 hour format and my tush was exceptionally cold.

My hillbilly trifecta was nearly complete – demolition derby, small town – the only thing missing was the beer (yes, thank you Jess for pointing out my complete failure). I gave it some serious thought, thinking about a picture of me, monster truck in the background and my gloves wrapped around a brutally cold glass of some sad little sissy light beer and it was too much to take. I’ll just have to find another derby in the summer, I suppose.

For future inspiration, I guess I just need to flip the channel as a means of getting out of the house and coming up with something to write about. Hopefully it will be cheap and involve a tacky t-shirt.