Hollywood lied to me...

I'm the first to admit that most of my ideas about life come from the movies. Or TV. Which is ironic when you consider that for the vast majority of my 20-odd years, I have been without a television set. In fact, even now as I write this, settling into my new apartment in this grand city, I find myself too poor to afford cable TV, reducing me to a steady diet of whatever the networks are offering online and whatever was on sale at Best Buy last week (at least if I buy it, I get to keep it forever.) My parents' early efforts to prevent the rotting of my brain were rewarded by my love of literature, but offset by the fact that since becoming (ostensibly) an adult, I have yielded to a long-supressed voracious apetite for all things on the screen, big and small, and not even the good stuff. I'm way more likely to enjoy the cheesy rom-coms, Lifetime Original Movies, and teen dramas than anything that approaches cerebral, intellectually stimulating, or even, let's face it, of high production values.

And yet, as I venture out into the great unknown, I've learned nothing with more certainty than the fact that Hollywood has lied to me. My life is not glamourous like the Sex and the City girls, or entertaining like the Friends. I don't have a bar like Cheers, a butler like the Nanny, or even a shrink like Frasier. And that's just the small screen. I also don't have neighborhood like in You've Got Mail, a gay editor to solve my problems like in My Best Friend's Wedding, or a hot boss like in Working Girl (although to be fair, I also don't have a horrible boss, like The Devil Wears Prada.)

So thanks are due to you, Hollywood, for the lies, the laughable inaccuracies, and the unrealistic expectations about life, love, and city living. You have made me so wise.