If you tried to catch some news on any of the major cable networks last week, you would have been shit-out-of-luck. Between the hours of 9-5, the only face gracing the TV screen was: none other than Judge Larry Seidlin, the judge in the hearing for custody over the body of Anna Nicole Smith.
Okay, so it is understandable that following Anna Nicole's death was like Christmas for cable and entertainment news networks(young celebrity death, drugs, mystery, millions and millions of dollars to be claimed, baby-mama-drama = JACKPOT.) But even the most cynical bloggers had to be disgusted surprised by the circus that was this trial.
Any legal expert could have told you that the judgement of the case could have been decided in 30 minutes: Dannielynn is Anna Nicole's next of kin, thus she gets custody of the body. Since she is a five month old baby, her guardian gets custody, and since the paternity trial has not yet began, the baby's court appointed guardian decides what will happen with the body.
The honorable Judge Seidlin eventually reached this conclusion, but not before orchestrating a three-day festival of ridiculousness in which issues not pertaining to the case were investigated thoroughly, lawyer's objections and cries for sanity were shrugged off, and many tears were shed (mostly by Seidlin.)
America seems to love this kind of thing. The televised OJ Simpson trial brought viewers into the courtroom for months. Since then, the media can't seem to wait for the next high profile court drama. The Jackson trial was good, but limited access to the court room didn't offer much in the way of highlight-reel moments.
Here is a sampling of the craziness:
But you really had to watch a few hours of the trial to get a real impression of how unprofessional and embarassing this trial was. It made me wonder what vending machine Siedlin got his law degree from (turns out he got his degree from night school in the Bronx. Close enough.)
I have seen more professionalism on court TV shows such as Texas Justice, where the judge uses a baseball bat in place of a gavel. In fact, it is now being reported that Judge Seidlin has long had aspirations to become a TV judge celebrity. Somebody please strip this man of his certification.
Surprisingly, I only follow a few current shows on TV. First and foremost of those shows is Lost. To say that I am a regular watcher of the show is an understatement. I make any arrangements necessary to be sure that I will be in front of my TV at 9 p.m. on Wednesday nights, and if they decided to air the show five nights a week, I would be forced to quit my job.
Now, I know there is a lot of hype about the show. Some people are fanatics, and others can't stand the series. ABC has not done a very good job of attracting new viewers with its awkward methods of splitting up seasons and changing the show time.
Two weeks ago marked the continuation of season 3 of the show on ABC. I jumped on the Lost bandwagon a little late, during the second season. After seeing a re-run episode during the second season, I promptly coerced my roommate to go buy the first season on DVD, which I finished off in under a week and then caught up with the second season by watching episodes on line.
If you have not yet been initiated to the Lost habit, you have literally dozens of hours of work to do to play catch up. You see, Lost is much more than just a TV show. If you can recite "the numbers" by memory, you know you have already been afflicted.
J.J. Abrams and the other show producers have come up with a brilliant method of keeping followers entertained. They have developed an intricate and seemingly endless puzzle (aka, "The Lost Experience") that plays out online as well as through television commercials such as this:
Some of this puzzle is entwined with advertisement campaigns, which is a clever way of making some money. Regardless, the extra curricular content is not necessary to follow the show plots, but it makes for a whole lot of frustrating entertainment.
I have been sucked deep enough into the Lost world to even read the novel "Bad Twin," which was inconspicuously released last year with no announcement from the show, but sporting a "Lost on ABC" decal. The author of the novel is a fictional writer who is actually mentioned briefly on the show. It has been rumored that the actual writer of the book is none other than Stephen King, who has been named as a big inspiration for the show's writing team. The novel, like the online elements, helps to decipher some of the show's mystery, but mostly adds to the questions and intrigue of the show.
It is really difficult to explain the plot and happenings of the show to someone who hasn't seen it, and is incredibly frustrating to try to answer all the questions a casual viewer might have. I believe Lost is leading the way in a new breed of TV programming that requires it's watchers to be more than just passive viewers, on both a investigative and intellectual level-the show subtly ties in multiple philosophical perspectives with characters as representations of historical theorists (John Locke, Rousseau, David Hume, etc.)
As a journalist, and just someone who needs to figure things out that interest me, Lost extremely addictive, and is in fact better described as an "experience" rather than just a show.
For those who do follow the show and wish to figure out more than you could ever want to know, Lostpedia is a vast and encompassing wiki fan site that is constantly updated with new information. Enter at your own risk.
And at of sounding like an advertising whore, I strongly encourage anyone who has not yet seen the show to find somewhere online (you know where to find these things, folks), or legitimately obtain the DVD's and tune in to ABC on Wednesday night so that the network does not decide to make the mistake of canceling this show.
(Tune in next week when I look at the top 10 worst TV cancellation mistakes of all time.)
(A note about “to be continued...'s: I always hated it when shows did that, I'm not talking about like dramas that having running plot lines, but sitcoms and the like that had “to be continued” episodes really bugged me because I never remembered to follow up and watch the next one. It especially sucks for re-run syndication). So anyway, picking up where we left off...
The Face of Unamusement
10:30 p.m. Jackass is jackass, you know it. It's stupid, but funny at times. By now the shock value has worn off, but I still remember about 10 years ago when the show first came out and parents were flipping out and I thought it was the best thing ever. I wonder how far our moral standards will digress and what we will start seeing on cable TV in the next 10 years. I can hardly wait
Country Fried Home Videos is CMT's version of America's Funniest Home Videos. There is your usual cornucopia of people getting hit in the crotch, falling down, crazy pets and bad facial hair “this is absolutely horrible,” claimed The Friend after seeing a few too many tractor-riding-gone-wrong clips..git 'er done.
Conan O'Brien is the only late night show worth watching these days. Letterman is getting too old and seems uninspired, Jay Leno is awful as always, and the rest are irrelevant. Especially irrelevant is Carson Daily, who looks like a Cheeto, by the way. But Conan is consistently creative, funny and has great guests. I can't wait until he takes over for Leno in two years.
I plan to do a comprehensive blog about public access programming sometime in the near future, but if you have never tuned in to your loal public access channel, do it, and preferably very late at night. You will see things on public access that very few will ever have the opportunity to witness (E.G. Very very VERY low budget sci-fi movies filmed in Tucson in the 1980's about traveling through holes in the fabric of time through stereo speakers.)
Lifetime's Gay, Straight, Or Taken was a great interactive show that did a lot more to fend off the weariness than jumping jacks have been doing. In the show, a girl goes on a four-way date with, as the name implies, a gay guy, a straight guy, and a guy in a relationship. She has to try to figure out who among them is the straight guy to win a date. “I don't think he's gay, I think he's just foreign” commented The Girlfriend. The Friend ended up being correct on her original gay, straight, and taken predictions.
1a.m. First on the schedule for day 2 was E!'s “the soup” which is basically a clip show, highlighting humorous bits from the past weeks television programming. I think this was a poor choice on my part, because all those clips almost made it feel like I had just watched about 20 hours of TV instead of 10.
MXC is actually a dubbed over version of a crazy Japanese game show from the late 80's. It has somewhat of a cult following, much like Iron Chef. I can't really do this show any justice with words, just try to catch it sometime if you are flipping around at 1 or 2 in the morning, preferably drunk.
Full house at two in the morning is a lot better than I had even hoped. This is the second show of the day to feature Bob Saget, and I can't say that makes me happy..but the awesome music at the end of the show can brighten any situation..even a very poorly thought out blog experiment.
It was after full house that everyone who had joined me decided that could not stomach anymore and left me alone to make it through the night. I am about to enter the death valley of TV programming. What comes on between the hours of 2 and 5 in the morning is designed to either help insomniacs get to sleep, or take advantage of their fragile mental state and drunk poor judgement.
For one whole hour I watched nothing but QVC and infomercials. I had to restrain myself from buying a Boss stereo, a set of 80 pocket knives and a 2007P Jamestown Proof Commemorative Silver Dollar, NGC certified PF70 Ultra Cameo...only $149.97.
Focus
Commercial count update: Car commercials:7 vs. Erectile Dysfunction treatment: 4
Maybe it's just the sleep deprivation, but much of the humor on the Naked Trucker & T-Bone show was lost on me. It seems like the show is a potentially very funny 10 minute skit dragged out into a 10 episode series.
I don't know what kind of people CNN is trying to appeal to at 4 in the morning with the special investigation report “How To Rob A Bank,” that literally describes the techniques used by criminals to steal identities and rob banks. I learned that banks in the U.S. send out over 5 billion credit card offers every year, and it is ridiculously easy for someone to take one of those offers you casually toss out, purchase your identity information on line for 50 bucks and run up thousands of dollars of credit in your name.
It would appear that the only time you can find music videos being shown on MTV or VH1 is at 5 in the morning, and even then it's the shittiest of the shitty music videos. VH1's top 10 video countdown made me want to give up on this gig, go put on some Neil Young and sleep for 12 hours straight. Every minute I am becoming more bitter and more hungry.
Hope
Around 6am the sun began to come up and I knew the hardest part was over, I still had 8 hours of TV left to watch, but I was confident I could make it through. After an hour of cable news on MSNBC (O'reilly's least favorite network), I felt sufficiently informed and turned to TBS for an episode of the classic series “Dawson's Creek”. You know you have watched this show at some point, so don't try to hide it. This episode featured Joey's dad being released from prison, only to fall back into his drug-dealing ways. It is refreshing to see Katie Holmes before she became crazy and married the King of Crazy aka Tom Cruise.
Perhaps the least exciting program of this entire thing was the E! True Hollywood Story of Rosie O' Donnell. Somehow, this was the the best thing on at 8a.m. Come on, TV, you gotta get some better stuff up on Saturday mornings. I am pretty neutral about Rosie O' Donnell, it just doesn't seem like she her life has been exciting or controversial enough to earn a True Hollywood Story.
A portion of this that I was really looking forward to was Saturday morning cartoons, like all 20 somethings, I often reminisce about that awesomeness that was Saturday morning cartoons that were on when I was little. I wanted to see what was out there for the youth of today. I was sorely disappointed. I watched the Bratz cartoon, which featured a villain turning innocent Bratz into “pink zombies” with what looked like pink spray paint. I then watched a bad Scooby Doo adaptation which just had Scooby and Shaggy trying to save a bunch of pygmy marmosets (not kidding.) And Finally, Viva Pinata, a cartoon about...talking pinatas. Oh youth of this generation, how I pity you.
I happened upon some show on the travel channel about haunted buildings. Again this is one of many shows that doesn't seem to fit with its allocated cable channel, but somebody made the damn show and they have to put it somewhere.
After watching 20 hours of TV, I wasn't in the mood to have a really intense guy with crazy hair yell at me about being fat, but that's what I got when I tuned into PBS. “Kiss Your Fat Goodbye” is a show that tries to analyze why we are all overweight, and claims that we can be living to be 140 years old if we make the effort. I think if I wasn't so exhausted I would laugh at this show, but in my current state, it just made me a little bit angry. “You tip into distress and then full blown disease,” claimed crazy hair guy about weight gain.
A couple steps up from Tucson Public Access is channel 12, a local channel that usually programs really boring things like county legislative meetings and such. There are a few programs on it worth viewing though. Sam The Cooking guy is one of them. It is enjoyable local programming.
11:30 a.m. TV land had a special showing the 100 greatest TV catchphrases of all times. Among the top 20 was this gem:
I'll just come out and say it; I love the history channel (aka The Hitler Channel). Modern marvels, True Crime, How William Shatner Changed The World, whatever it is, I will watch it and re-watch it every time they replay it for a month. It was a pleasant surprise to see that a special about cannibalism was being shown this afternoon, as I'm approaching the final stretch, some good history channel is exactly what I needed.
I felt it was cheating somewhat to watch the UA vs. Washington basketball game, as it was something that I would have been doing anyway at this time. Nonetheless, I was grateful that the game was on, and that UA got the much-needed victory. I was so elated, I barely noticed that as the game ended, I was entering my final hour of TVing.
I spent the final hour channel surfing, because I didn't feel it would be complete without some mindless clicking (and after 23 hours of nothing but a screen in front of you, believe me I was mindless). And before I knew it, it was over. I felt empowered as I turned off the TV. I also felt exhausted, ashamed, dirty, and irritable, but empowered nonetheless.
Commercial count: Valentine's Day jewelry commercials: 9 Insurance commercials:9
So what did I learn you might ask? I wish at the end of this I that I had come to some vast spiritual awareness or new sociological perspective, instead I just really got sick of TV and don't think I will be able to watch much for the next few weeks. Some say there is too much on TV now, but I think choice is a good thing. There is something out there for everyone. If you want nothing but racing and car programming at all times, you have the SPEED network. If seeing uncensored open-heart surgery is your think, there's Discovery Health. And if you have a longing for Bob Saget, he can be found somewhere out there at pretty much any hour of the day.
I realize that blogging about TV is pretty lame. Not being one to do anything half-ass, I figured the best thing to do is to fully embrace the lameness and do something different with this blog. It is with this sentiment that I bring you...The great 24 hour television experiment. Yes, I plan to watch 24 hours of straight television without sleep. Here are the ground rules: -24 hours of TV with as few breaks as possible -I shall not watch any one channel for a total of more than 1 hour, in attempt to get a more well-rounded sampling of television -No DVDs, no movies, no video games -No sleep! I am beginning this stupidity adventure at 3p.m. on Friday afternoon, and will not turn off the television until 3p.m. Saturday. For once I actually don't have to work on Friday night, and this is how I am using the time, man I'm awesome. Of Course, I was not able to convince anyone to partake in this with me, but a few friends agreed to join in for limited periods and will hopefully ease the pain and boredom. Without further ado, let the games begin:
Lets get it on
3 p.m.
I feel that Dr. Phil is the perfect introduction to the festivities. Today's topic is the reunion of a daughter with her father that killed her mother when she was two years old. It is actually a continuation of yesterday's show, which I obviously did not see. By the end of 30 minutes, I shit you not, The Girlfriend was crying. “This is good TV,” she muttered between sobs. She has never seen Dr. Phil before.
30 minutes in and tears have already been shed, far exceeding my expectations.
The food network is an amazing waste of time. 30 Minute Meals features Rachel Ray (who I don't really think is even a chef), making meals that anyone can supposedly make in “30 minutes or less.” When Rachel Ray talks, I have the feeling her mouth can't keep up with her food lovin' imagination, causing her to talk 400 miles a minute. She managed to make a pretty mediocre pizza, along with bacon-pineapple shrimp.
After watching the food network, I realize I have not gone shopping in quite some time, and may be unprepared for this voluntary house arrest.
Jeopardy makes me feel like a real waste of space doing this experiment. Wayne Cherry is the returning champ. Alex Trebek seems uninspired, and who wouldn't be after 24 years of reading questions off cue cards? The girlfriend and I tied at 15 correct questions each. What I learned: Cuba is the largest Island in the Western hemisphere. Wayne Cherry remained the champion. (By the way, I want to legally change my name to Wayne Cherry because that name is amazing.)
5 p.m. The hills offered the first hurdle to this. It took a lot of self control to stop myself from turning the channel watching spoiled brats drive around in their BMWs and trying to balance cushy jobs with superficial relationships. Since I don't follow the show, I had a really hard time keeping track of all the relationship triangles. I'm sure this show is plenty entertaining to some people, it's just not my thing. Best line of the show: “It's my birthday, of course I can say who can come. I'm an American Princess.”
Myth Busters was entertaining enough. They were testing how hard it would be to sell a classic corvette after letting two pig corpses rot inside of it for 2 months and then trying to clean the smell out, as well as something involving storm drains, explosions and raccoons.
At 5:30, the sun began to go down and I began to seriously question this venture. Not only is it a waste of a Friday night, but it seems pretty difficult to pull off. There is also a good possibility that after today, I will not want to watch TV for a LONG time to come...which might not be an entirely bad thing.
I decide to continue for as long as I can...
King of Queens is one of those shows you see every once in a while, but don't realize how long it has been on TV --The show has now been on the air for 9 years.-- And while it is pretty humorous at times (especially any scene containing Jerry Stiller), it is impressive that the show has lasted so long on the same underlying formula of the overweight buffoon husband and the attractive, somewhat overbearing wife. They haven't even had to dip into the “someone get pregnant to liven up the show” box, yet.
There's not much I could say about Seinfeld that someone hasn't said already. It is far and away the best sitcom ever aired on TV. In my life, I've determined that people are either Seinfeld people, or they are not Seinfeld people (usually, these are 'Friends' people, though the two may overlap.) I try to associate with these non-Seinfeld people as little as possible. Tonight's episode was a classic; George buys the cheapest wedding invitations available, and the glue from the envelopes kills his fiance, Susan.
The Miss America pageant has been downgraded to Country Music Television for some reason. I don't know why CMT would want it, or why no network channel would, but what the hell. The host is none other than Mario Lopez, better known as Slater from Saved By The Bell. The Roommate:“When is Slater going to hit locker and make it magically pop open?” Miss Oklahoma was the winner, and I couldn't be happier.
I think it may have been all the glitter and high pitched singing, but around the time of Miss America being crowned, a slow but persistent headache began to set in...
7 p.m. For the second game show of the day, Bob Saget now hosts “1 Vs.100,” a simple concept game where the contestant has to get questions right, and the “mob” of 100 is weeded out by answering questions wrong. It was entertaining for maybe 3 minutes.
In order to combat atrophy, I am doing jumping jacks, push ups and sit ups every couple of hours. Apparently sitting and watching TV burns barely any more calories than sleeping. I will need to make an extra trip to the gym this week to counterbalance this abuse to my body.
Fuel
Nanny 911 features a British woman that producers found to help bad parents control their worse children. The kid on the episode was kicked out of preschool for biting another kid on the crotch. How about some counseling instead of an overbearing woman with an accent? My first yawn made an appearance during this show, and it's not even 8pm. This is not a good sign.
Since I will probably only see a few hundred commercials during this ordeal, I thought it would be a good idea to watch The greatest Super Bowl Commercials Ever. Actually, it was some the the most entertaining TV I have seen so far...which is pretty sad (as a side note, this years Super Bowl commercials were pretty good in comparison to the last few years, especially the Kevin Federline Nationwide life insurance clip:
The Suite Life is a show on the Disney channel, that from what I could pick up features 4 kids who live in a fancy hotel, and appear to be allowed to run rampant, their parents suspiciously absent from the picture. I don't think I understand kids programming these days, and I wish kids were still raised on Duck Tales and Wonder Years, like I was.
My headache was beginning to fade around 9 p.m., so I decided to watch some good Ol' O'Reilly Factor to kick it up a notch. Bill: “I'll be the first to admit I was wrong in my analysis of the Iraq war. I assumed the Iraqis would want to fight for their freedom, and I was wrong.” I don't want this blog to get political, so I will restrain myself from saying too much about this. A lot of people do like O'Reilly, so I suppose he must be doing something right, I just don't see it.
I just watched a man bite the head off of a water snake and then eat the rest of it raw, still wriggling. Man vs. Wild is a discovery channel show that puts a some kind of wilderness expert in an desolate location and he then has to survive and make his way back to civilization. I wonder how much of this show is real and how much is scripted, but either way it's impressive. This guy is taming wild horses and biting heads off snakes while I'm eating Funions and watching more television than most do in a week.
As far as drug addictions go, I figure caffeine is a pretty mild one.. I usually have a cup of coffee in the morning, an energy drink sometime in the afternoon, and several cups of tea at night. I am also well aware of how caffeine affects me. I have pulled plenty of all-nighters in my college career and know that trying to stay caffeinated the whole time is a really bad idea. At 10pm, i figured it was a good time to down the first of two energy drinks i purchased in preparation. As a side note, I have tried well over a dozen different energy drinks, and in my opinion Bawls (carried at most 7-11's) is the best.
The girlfriend, for some reason, likes a show called “What Not To Wear” on TLC (which I think stands for The Learning Channel, though I'm not sure what I am supposed to learn). On the show, a couple of cocky fashionistas find someone who they think dresses horribly, throws away all their clothes, and forces them to go on a shopping spree to make them look more presentable. Apparently the victim's friends and family sign them up for this show. I can't wait to come home and find out that the people in my life feel like a dress like such a bum that I need an intervention. The hostess keeps referring to breasts as “the puppies,” which makes me uncomfortable. Thank you, The Learning Channel, for learnin' me some fashion.
The puppies
I have also decided to pay close attention to commercial advertisements during this. For the sake of entertainment, I am comparing frequency of certain type of commercials. First is beer/junk food commercials versus diet pill commercials. And the winner is.....beer and junk food by a score of 13 to 7.
After 8 hours –or an average workday-- I am only a third of the way towards my goal. Stay tuned for the next installment....
