Jacques

I spent most of yesterday watching big chunks of a Jacques Cousteau marathon on Turner Classic Movies.

First, permit me to thank TCM for the effort. I can't even log on to check my email without being involuntarily exposed to crap about Kate Gosselin, Lindsey Lohan or other celebutards, and sometimes I forget that there really ARE people out there who give a shit. Thanks, guys, I needed that!

Jacques Cousteau was a big hero of mine back in the 1970s. I suspect he was to a lot of people. My heroes at the time were Neil Armstrong, Jacques Cousteau, and Roger DeCoster, a Belgian motocross racer - you can't be a boy without having at least one sports hero, I guess, even though I remain torn to this day on whether racing is really a sport or not.

So I watched the Cousteau specials, many of them narrated by Rod Serling, and couldn't help but feel that we'd lost something over the years. Imagine it - a TV documentary that doesn't insult the intelligence of the viewer! That doesn't rely on irritating camera tricks to conceal a basic lack of content!

But I will say this - sometimes I saw just a little too much flesh in them. I'm no prude, but I don't really need to see a French scientist wearing a swimsuit the size of a piece of toast. Really.

Alas, the marathon is over, and the world moves on and sinks back into its trough of celebutard dissipation and irrelevance.

Sigh.

Still, I draw some solace from the fact that in a hundred years, more people will remember Jacques Cousteau than Kate Gosselin.