The Weather Channel: A Personal Rant

I'm not one of those shut-ins who obsess about the weather -- "Hey, it's raining in Milwaukee, I didn't see that coming!" -- but I have to admit I keep The Weather Channel on a lot of the time.  It's a place-holder, a default, a safe space where I know I'll never have to see any politicians unless they're holding a press briefing on some catastrophe, in which case most of them are tolerable.  (Also a good way to pick up some American Sign Language, unless those folks in black are all faking it.  Been known to happen.)  My beef is that they seem to have lost sight of their original mission, which is to tell me the temperature and whether it's going to rain.  Right now, for instance, the screen is subdivided among snow falling someplace, a man with a map, a local map of nothing much happening, and a crawl of numbers too small to see.  If I want a forecast, I'll just have to wait.

Today's obsession, it goes without saying, is a white Christmas.  "Will we have a white Christmas?"  "Ooh, I really want a white Christmas!"  Yeah, it's pretty, until you get behind/in that twenty-eight car pileup on the interstate.  Or trapped in an airport that isn't even on fire like Hartsfield-Jackson.  I blame Irving Berlin and Currier & Ives.  In the real world, snow is a dangerous pain in the ass, and if you're going to grandma's in a horse-drawn sleigh, good for you, but this is the goddam twenty-first century.  And for you war-on-Christmas religious types, was it snowing in the Middle East when Jesus was allegedly born, allegedly in the spring?  I don't think so.  So you can take your white Christmas and put it where you put that fruitcake.

I feel better.

About ten years ago, it seemed that all the women on The Weather Channel were pregnant at the same time.  I haven't seen that lately, but now all the men are pumped up.  At first it was just Jim Cantore, but they all seem to be spending their down time at the gym.  Some kind of Cantore challenge, maybe.  They look --

Damn!  I missed it.  Another ten-minute wait.

They look like they have pillows stuffed under their dress shirts.  I'd need to see them in t-shirts to pick a winner.  Paul Goodloe is definitely in the running.  And this guy, whose name I don't know, talking about the California wildfires.  Everything relates to the weather.  This is the only place still reporting on the plight of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, still largely without electricity and other basics after three months.  Everyone else has moved on.  Yes, fire makes for better visuals than people lined up for water, especially when Oprah's house is threatened.

Here is Winter Storm Dylan, working its way through the Rockies.  The Weather Channel has taken it upon itself to name winter storms, just as the National Weather Service names hurricanes.  Because we need more storms with names.  "Maybe Dylan will bring us a white -- "  No, I can't.  "HEAVY SNOW IN NORTH DAKOTA."  Yeah, that guy with the shovel certainly looks merry and bright.  He'd rather not be in Oahu right now or anything.   Split screen of Dallas, on one side all gray and cloudy, on the other, the way it's supposed to look.

 I am turning into one of those weather bores.  "Oh the weather outside is frightful, and the fire is fifty percent contained in Ventura County..."  Oh, this man has been lifting.  Who is he?  Names, we need names.

I should go read a book.  Let's be careful out there.  If you're planning to slip on the ice and break something, try to do it in front of Paul Ryan's house.