Giving Someone the Finger

For as long as I can remember, whenever someone would really irk me, I have tended to do this thing with my index finger, where I simulate pressing a button. Just a tap. It’s always been my way of saying, “I would like to make you go away. And if I could I would.”

Not dead, mind you. Just away. Immediately and, with any luck, incontrovertibly. Tonight, for example, while I fretted about something beyond my control, I watched back-to-back-to-back entertainment shows and I swear to you that my index finger is cramping.

It wasn’t so much the antics of the actors and actresses that were being interviewed, heading in and out of premieres, or offering “exclusives” from their various sets. My expectations for their conduct is so low they would probably have to physically assault me to get me to care.

It’s the hosts of these talk shows, this herd of blathering blondes and shiny, brown-haired boy babes desperately trying to bridge the distance between them and the actors. Like, trying to pretend that they’re friends. As if we care.

First there was Botoxed lioness Mary Hart dry-humping a bemused Sean Penn. Then Chaz Bono lookalike Stephen Cojacaru slobbered all over Sarah Jessica Parker—while her tragic failure of a hairdo (it’s a technical term) was nearly poking him in the forehead saying, “Hey, dummy. Look at me. I’m a train wreck.”

But it goes beyond them. David Patterson, that Saints defender who hit Favre’s knees, Jon Bon Jovi, the lady who clips her nails on the N heading uptown from Union Square.

I wonder if it’s therapeutic. I suspect that it must be. After all, I just tap-tapped about twelve people on that “Lost” (everyone but the fat guy) and I’m smiling.