57 Channels and a Stetson Hat On

For some reason, this year's forced change to digital TV is a hot topic among senior citizens like my mom and her neighbors, as well as Rex's mom and her friends at her assisted living community. I've joked here on Roxiticus Desperate Housewives that I was the only child of the MTV generation who didn't have cable television growing up in the 80s. Twenty-five years later, my mother still doesn't have cable, so she had to jump through hoops to get her broadcast TV signals... when Aunt Veg and Uncle Quiet came to visit last month, we found them on the roof hooking up a huge antenna so Grandmom could finally get back to watching her favorite shows.

Now she has lots of new channels, mostly in foreign languages. The rest of the modern world is already accustomed to having at least 57 channels, including many that I couldn't pick out of a line-up (pardon the pun). Anyway, Grandmom won't find truTV's Black Gold -- the channel that exemplifies real-life television -- on broadcast TV, even with her enhanced digital signal. So she'll miss the premiere of Black Gold tonight -- August 19th at 10:00pm EDT/9:00pm Central and all of the new episodes on Wednesdays at 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central.

Here's what Grandmom's missing: In the unforgiving oil fields of West Texas, the toughest guys in the Lone Star State have just 50 days to drill four back-breaking holes. It's the second season of a reality TV show from the creator of Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch. These are men who can't afford to make any mistakes that might cost them their jobs or.... hold onto your Stetson hat... their lives. While I like to think I'm nicely suited to my career as an investment banker, all of the on-the-job training in the world couldn't make a roughneck on the oil fields out of Roxy. My first employee review as a roughneck would go down like a review by Simon Cowell in the early eliminations of American Idol.

If I qualify for a spot as a roughneck on a future episode of Black Gold, Grandmom will have to watch me at a friend's house. In the meantime, she (and all of you) can check out the truTV's Black Gold trailer right here:



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