By Gary Martin
Gary B. Martin is an illustrator and animator who has lived on the Upper West Side for more than 30 years. His illustrations appear in the Rag on Sundays, chronicling life in the neighborhood, New York City, and the Universe. See them all here. For a broader range of Gary’s work, including animations and other motion graphics, please visit www.martoons.com
Listen to Rag Radio’s interview with Gary Martin — HERE.
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
Best to leave the real world to the experts –reality show tv producers!
Better fake reality shows than actual reality.
Watch Fantasy Island next.
Pretty much the same thing on a global scale!
I think we all wonder about that? Great cartoon.
Gary always gets to the heart of the matter! I love this cartoon and btw when we try to find a new show this is a good rep of what we find!
LOL!
We all wonder! Thank goodness we live here where reality rules the sidewalks and the subways.
Better to keep watching those silly tv shows for now!
keep on watching- real world nothing to see!’
It’s “reality,” isn’t it?
It’s amazing what we miss by concentrating on fantasy. Good one, Gary!
What?
Ain’t much better out here
Sometimes wise to take that break from reality
Terrific, as usual! Thanks for sharing this.
Love this…thanks Gary. Reality bites !
The “Real World” is a horrific mess due to the War with Iran! The outcome is likely to be very bad!
The real world? Perhaps it’s best not to know….
For a small fee I’m sure you can upgrade your subscription to watch the real-world series finale. It’s shaping up to be a real banger.
Reality TV has helped destroy American society. Okay, may that’s a TAD hyperbolic, but it’s not far from the truth.
First, Reality TV was created primarily for economic reasons; it is FAR cheaper to create and produce than game shows, sitcoms and romcoms, and especially episodic TV like police procedurals, forensic shows, and other shows with large production budgets.
Second, Reality TV is actually nothing of the sort. Like “professional wrestling” – which claimed to be real for many years until it was forced by the FCC to “out itself” as completely fake – reality TV is NOT entirely unscripted, unplanned or “undirected”; it is, in fact, as carefully created as soap operas; i.e., there is actually very little “reality” at all.
Third, and perhaps most apropos, don’t forget that it was reality TV that gave us Trump (among others). In fact, it was partly the following for The Apprentice that helped created “MAGA nation” (along with the remnants of the Tea Party).
I consider reality TV as “damaging” to the human mind and psyche, and society in general, as social media.
You must be really fun at parties.
No prophet is accepted in his hometown.
I belatedly went cold turkey on the Vast Wasteland in 2011 and have not looked back. It’s such a refreshing feeling!
this is quite sad on more than a few levels.
if you are simple minded maybe the tripe aimed at the simple minded would work well
“A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.”
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
— That Jefferson guy
Judging from the comments here, it seems my current practice of reading 150+ current-events stories daily falls a tad off the apex of the bell curve. Well, I’m used to it.
You don’t want to know.