Illuminations

This rabbit hole just keeps going deeper. 

Over the course of the last few weeks I have found myself amazed and not too delighted to note that my adoptive home base of Jacksonville, Florida is by far the single most featured location on the reality show “Cops.” Episode after teeth-grinding episode of trailer trash rednecks and crazy ghetto crack heads that I used to enjoy watching—from a safe distance—as a sort of exercise in urban anthropology is now a near nightly reminder of just how far I’ve come, and in what direction (they don’t call it “going south” for nothing).

This is no exaggeration, believe me. Every freaking night there’s a “Cops” episode, sometimes even three episodes back-to-back, that takes place right here. There is obviously such an abundance of Jacksonville footage that even the majority of the quick clips used as the show’s lead-in (you know, as they play “bad boy bad boy, what cha’ gonna’ do when they come for you”) were shot, yes, in Jacksonville.

I’d be better off in Scranton; at least my home towns’ TV presence is (1) fictional and (2) no less an award-laden comedy sensation than “The Office.” Minneapolis, called home for a couple years, was where The Mary Tyler Moore Show took place. The bedroom communities of southern Connecticut, where I slept for some 14 years, are the favored domicile locations for shows like “Mad Men” and movies like “Revolutionary Road” and New York City, well, forget that noise. It would be easier to list the shows that don’t take place in New York.

But now I’m in Jacksonville. And Jacksonville’s got star billing in “Cops.” 

Today, I open my news browser to see the featured link: America’s Top 10 Unhappiest Towns, presented by Business Week magazine. I click. I read. Fears confirmed: Jacksonville does in fact make the list, and in a respectable 6^th place, too.

From today’s local headlines, and it’s hard to pick just one I can assure you, we have “Gunman Steals Toilet Paper from Elderly Couple.” Now that’s harsh. You can be elderly or out of potty paper, never both.

I hope the production team for “Cops” got the no-doubt terrible aftermath of that particular Jacksonville crime on tape. We’re sure to find out later in the production cycle.

Funny thing is, I used to think those “Smile, You’re On Camera” signs you see at all the convenience stores and gas stations down here were referring to security cameras, not those of the TRU-TV network. You live, you learn…

And with any luck, if you live in Jacksonville and end up on “Cops,” at least hope you're wearing a shirt at the time. Oh, and if you can manage not to have a girlfriend/baby momma with blackened eyes protesting your innocence while you’re being cuffed, so much the better.

After all, it’s one thing to fit in, quite another to join the herd so completely you disappear.