You’ve been watching home improvement and sell/flip your house shows, haven’t you? 

* * *

“Well thanks for joining us back at the beige, drab, Phillips’ poor excuse for a home. I’m Ryan Seacrest for Spruce that House, and we’re trying to make this plain, yucky 1700 square feet prison into something exciting. Kevin, how are we doing with the random purple Kool-Aid painted walls?”

“We are struggling with it, bro. I used to whip my kids for saying the words Kool-Aid when they were standing by a wall; now you’re telling me to blast it all over the place?  I don’t know.  I mean, won’t it get on the carpet?  You didn’t say to tape anything up?”

“Kevin, Kevin, Bo Bevin!  It is supposed to go on the carpet!  Then we’ll paint red flowers on the ceiling, add wainscoting on the dining room wall, and put a black curtain between the dining room and living room to create a fung chai bo-bo chicken vibe.  You might call it a combo c'est la vie and savoir-faire feel motif.  A “I don’t care if you care” look, if you will. Trust me, it is the latest trend.” 

The show ends and you’re treated to four carpet cleaning commercials before the next show, Sell that Sucker, starts. The theme music blazes and the shows opens with the host standing in the Phillips’ dining/living room.

“What…the…Kevin, what happened in here?” mutters Andrew Dice Clay.  Are all the hookers busy now?  ‘Cause you are obviously running some kind of home business here and it ain’t selling spaghetti sauce, if you get my meaning.”

“Ryan Seacrest was worried about my fung chai Bo Bo.”

“Oh no!  Hey, a little penicillin will take care of that, but this paint?  Makes me think of (edited for G-rated television).

“Lookie here, take all the pictures of your ugly kids off the walls before they make someone puke, go into your bathroom , dose it with some spray, please, and take those big black bloomers hanging from the ceiling back to your mom’s house; can’t have your big mom going commando now, can we? You know what I’m saying?  Simple sells.”

“But…well…Ryan said making a personal statement of who I am is important.”

“Not today, cupcake.  We gotta sell this place, so make this purple monster into a plain, beige, yucky 1700 square feet house, will ya?  Looks like a freakin’ TV dinosaur lives here or something…”

Tomorrow there will be more “do this” followed by another show pleading with you to “do that.”  In between, of course, there will be commercials selling the tools of construction and destruction, as well as promo spots for former actors who now demo bathrooms. 

Remember watching This Old House years ago?  Getting more than a little creeped out by Norm, but yet not able to turn away as he whipped up an armoire in 22 minutes?  Now the industry’s exploded right before our very eyes.  Somewhere Bob Vila must be saying, “Hey, HEY…I’ll do whatever, okay?  Like a big dog.  I will, just let me back in, please?”