Commercial tying is a hellish occupation, once your orders breach the 100 dozen of a single fly single size – it’s becomes a ghastly test of endurance where perspiration and desperation perch on opposite shoulders, you discover nerves in your backside you never knew existed, and all the careful planning has been frittered away by pals and fishing, it’s crunch time and a #18 Pale Olive is this week and most of next.
Your only real friend is “Fly Tying Theater” – that collection of tapes or DVD’s whose dialog you recite from memory, you know the audio cues for the heroine disrobing, what she displays and for how long, and can list the internal organs forcibly removed by the next violent death.
National Geographic loses luster after 1:00AM, and as eyelids start to droop and you’re gingerly shifting weight from one tender cheek to the other, you want coffee, Sensurround, and the screams of the dying…
You can’t watch it – the TV is there to give the illusion of company in the pre-dawn darkness, glance up and refocus the eyes – then back to threading small stuff onto smaller stuff.
Audio-only is the best of the Best, those actors and subjects whose delivery is so wooden and uninspired you’ve no need to watch:
5) Anything by Steven Seagal. Note the deft use of all black clothing and clasped hands at midsection to disguise his ponderous gut. Ninjitsu can render an entire human invisible – but the gut is still a problem even at the 13th Dan.
4) Anything by Chuck Norris. Like Steven Seagal, Chuck possesses only a single facial expression. He let’s Steven live only because he needs an opponent in his next movie, he’s killed everyone else.
3) Anything with Jean-Claude Van Damme. No, Bruce Lee never sounded like that. Chuck lets him live so he has a love interest in his next movie.
2) Anything with The Duke. You’ve seen them all 17 times, and only his 4″ lifts hurt more than your 14 hour marathon of garage sale chair and hip pointers …
… but the undisputed King of fly tying theater – the show that dwarfs all competition is ..
1) Anything with Mel Kiper. He emerges from under a rock one day each year, hosts the NFL Draft, the most inane non-event on television, and as quickly vanishes from whence he came.
For those that aren’t fishing, Saturday is your chance to make up for winter sloth.
The NFL draft is about as exciting watching people file their taxes. I don’t get the attraction.
Your eyes are on the fly, allowing you to listen to it … it’s enough of a distraction to make you feel like part of the human race – versus a PMD cranking automaton,
That’s Funny, I believe Mel Kiper ties flies for Orvis the rest of the year. Doesn’t have time for additional broadcasting. The flies he ties have a little “R” on the butt. Could stand for ReRuns…the other white-noise.
Funny, I read this weekend that viewer #s for the first 2 rounds of the draft have increased every year since 2002. Maybe not so funny. What are all these people doing in front of a TV on a Saturday afternoon?
I read where we’re now the fattest country on the planet. It could be viewership is on the rise as it’s the lesser of evils – versus lifting that ponderous bulk to mow lawn.