Keeping up with the Joneses

Last night my husband and I were invited to a friend's house to eat chinese food and watch the "Lost" season premiere (which had aired two nights prior.) Another couple, "Lost" fanatics as well, were invited to attend. All in all we had an incredibly fun evening, with lots of laughs.
I should clarify that I live in a town where many of my friends have larger homes, better media systems and overall, more money. And while I understand that "Thou Shall Not Covet" was one of the key directives handed down by God, I can't help but envy the new cars, exotic vacations and overall better material circumstances of many of my friends. (notice I said "material". There are friends of mine that are rich as hell and just as miserable. Given the choice I'd rather have less house and more happiness...)

Still, as I sat on with my feet up on the incredibly comfortable sectional sofa, a 52" HD Plasma television positioned directly in front of me with surround sound speakers behind my head, I couldn't help but wish for a similar situation in my own home. Forget that such an indulgence would put my family even further down the financial hole that we've already dug ourselves into. Still, it was hard not to feel a little jealous.

And then, just a few minutes into the program, I noticed something unusual. Sawyer (hard to ignore being SHIRTLESS) was an unusual shade of orange. Yes, the guy had a tan, and yes, he had been on the island for 108 days, but this was beyond your usual bronzed god, Sawyer was bordering on Oompa Loompa territory, he was positively glowing like GEORGE HAMILTON.

When I commented on this, some of the other folks watching brushed it off as Sawyer being tanned from being shirtless so much of the time. But even in the night scenes he was almost carrot-like. And then a close-up of Juliet revealed that SHE had been visiting the same tanning booth.

My husband, the video editor with countless hours of color correction under his belt, whispered to me that the chroma was off on the television, which was why the colors all seemed so saturated.

My jealousy disappated. Thousands of dollars spent on a Hi-Def system and all it took was a little bit of orange Sawyer to take away my green envy.