I’m so excited. Black Gold is back (TruTv, Wednesdays at 10). Season two and this season, it’s a real challenge. Not like last season. Dude, anybody could put three wells down in 50 days. That was nothing. Hell, I could’a done that in my sleep.
But this season it’s on like Donkey Kong, bitch.
Four wells in 50 days!
Talk about ramping it up.
Okay, there are probably some of you who haven’t a clue and really that’s just sad. Black Gold is a reality series (yeah, yeah, I know, reality series’ aren’t real and there are few things more of a waste of time…I’m thinking now of something like talking to a box of rocks) about drilling for oil that for whatever twisted, perverse reason, I simply can not live without.
First of all, Black Gold is set in and around my hometown, Midland, Texas. That’s just cool ’cause the only thing anyone knows about Midland is that W says it’s his hometown (except it’s not really because he was born in New Haven, Connecticut and now lives in Dallas…but he lost his first political campaign there in 1977 to Kent Hance who never became President so who got the better end of that deal…and another aside, go back and read some of the news accounts of that race ’cause it had it’s own ‘birther’ problem for the future leader of the free world).
So anyway, last season the show looked at three rigs each trying to put down three wells in 50 days. Followed the day crews as they either got the job done or got their asses kicked. This season, they seem to be following only one rig but showing the better part of all three crews as they try to slam down four well in 50 days.
Cool as shit, baby. See, I grew up in this crap. My Mama worked in the oil field, counting all the money that came gushing up from those holes…or counting all the money that went disappearing down the dry holes. So I get kind of a charge from watching that stuff.
They show a decent amount of Midland…mostly only the bars but then again, we’re talking about roughnecks and tool pushers. These ain’t the kinna people what go to the theatre all that much and if they did, they’d spell it ‘theater.’ And you get lots of lessons on what a nightmare it has to be to work a rig…which I never had to do and as whackadoodle as those rig hands are, my hat’s off to ’em.
But mostly you get the beauty that is west Texas. The sand and mesquite and blowing dirt and gajillions of miles between any sort of civilization and I love it. Illinois friends of mine who’ve watched call me and say, “That’s where you grew up? In the middle of fucking nowhere? There ain’t nothing out there but dead armadillos and boys wearing waaaaayy too tight Wrangler jeans!”
And the guys working those rigs just make me laugh. Every other word is fuck this and fuck that fuck every damn thing in sight and I grew up with these cats. The guys who are now the tool pushers and drillers all around west Texas are the guys I went to school with, and the young’uns – drill hands and deck hands and worms – are all the SONS of the guys I went to school with. Not literally went to school with; metaphorically went to school with.
(yeah, none of those rig hands have clue one the difference between literal and metaphoric…that makes it even more delicious).
So I sit back and watch them get in fights over who’s the strongest son’a’bitch on the rig and who’s got the best truck and bestest gimme cap and I laugh my ass off. Then, when I’m done laughing at them, I laugh some more. Then I point them out to my wife and laugh at them some more.
See, the problem is, like all reality shows, the cast members are edited to be caricatures. Those aren’t real people, at least not completely real. Yeah, I grew up with them and yeah, the show characters are in the ballpark of my real life but not totally.
Still, it’s fun to laugh at them.
Make no mistake, though, there isn’t any way in Hell I could ever do what they do. There isn’t any way in Hell I could begin to even understand what it is they do. These idiots toss 800 pound tongs on and off the 100′ sections of pipe they’re throwing around like it’s nothing. Makes me sore just watching. So I do admire them. I admire the sheer balls of the work they do and I am in awe of the fact that they play a small role in keeping this country moving (which I say not to denigrate them on this particular point, but just in recognition that America uses way too fucking much foreign oil).
So, boys, I’m laughing at ya, but if and when I come back to town on that triumphant book tour, this socialist-commie liberal bastard will buy you at least one round…maybe two.
But…then…I’ll probably just laugh some more.
