David Brent Frightens Me Happy new year.

My wife gave me The Office: The Complete First Series for Christmas, and my wife and I watched all of it last night. It is one of those shows that makes me cringe while laughing hard. The faux documentary style makes the behavior of the characters realistic enough that I actually get embarrassed for Brent and his employees. I've noticed that I am in the set of people who get easily embarrassed by T.V. depictions of tricks played on real people. For example, I think Tha Ali G Show is great, but I have to steel myself to watch it, as much of the humor comes from the embarrassing situations Ali G (and Sacha Baron Cohen's other characters) create for unsuspecting people. Cohen makes it easier for me by putting much of the deplorable behavior and stupidity on himself, so that the real people are reacting to his goofiness and idiocy, rather than themselves being lampooned. This makes it easier to watch. But the effect on me is still pronounced, I think because I can identify with getting suckered and embarrassed.

The Office also makes me nervous for another reason, as it invokes in me a comparison of myself with David Brent, the shows loathesome main character. While I don't think I am a back-stabbing, insecure, sexist, incompetent, stupid jerk, there is some of him in me. Like him, I want to be liked, and will sometimes say stupid things to ingratiate myself to others, and, and this is the thing that really hurts, I'm probably not as funny as I think I am. Mind you, I think I'm actually funny, unlike Brent, but wonder if I come across as a dork every second of the day sometimes. Thank God I have this anonymous blog read only by total strangers who somehow came upon it even though it is unpublished, so that they cannot see the way I speak and behave, and thus not then evaluate whether or not my suspicions are true. Whew.  ¶ 10:21