I want my Am-TV
May 6, 2005 | 12:00am
I am in a hotel room in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This beautiful city is the antithesis of a glitzy tourist spot. It resembles one of those destinations devastated by the blonde Beavis and Butt-head of Simple Life. It is cold, quiet, and endlessly gray – ideal for 1) settling down; 2) raising kids; 3) writing long, laborious novels that recall Norman Mailer; 4) listening to Van Morrison 5) or watching TV.
Click.
Great. It’s The Howard Stern Show. Two silicone refugees from the Playboy Mansion are promoting their idiotic movie in the irreverent radio jock’s show. One girl who looks like Pamela Anderson (actually, they both look like the human floatation device from Baywatch) takes her top off and agrees to be put in chains while Stern tickles her. The other Pamela looks on in delight. Stern’s sidekicks get annoyed at the blondes for talking nonsense. You reap what you sow. They should’ve invited Stephen Hawking instead if they wanted to talk about math or the cosmos.
What follows is even more gauche: an amputee beauty pageant. Stern and his sidekicks act as judges as the girls in bikini show off their severed limbs. Newsflash: Civilization has just developed colon cancer.
Click.
Oh. VH1’s 25 Greatest Power Ballads special. Well, even more atrocious than poking fun at amputees is glorifying power ballads from poodle-haired bands such as Winger or Warrant. Would you believe Motley Crue has reunited and is currently touring? The band responsible for the stupid Sunset Strip anthem Girls, Girls, Girls is now being showered with hallelujahs by media. That’s like electing Rasputin as Pope. Another thing: Crue singer Vince Neil has had as many plastic surgery procedures as Pamela Anderson. Yet he still looks like comedian Jon Lovitz. Too bad no plastic surgeon can operate on Crue’s music.
Hmm… Silent Lucidity. It is such a well-written song. Queensryche is tragically underrated.
Every Rose Has Its Thorn… tolerable. Features the least annoying C.C. DeVille guitar solo in existence. Good to see vocalist Bret Michaels before he became the male version of Paula Abdul (although less loopy) in the Country & Western spin-off of American Idol.
November Rain… okay. Good song, overblown video. Axl Rose and a leggy model get married. It rains on the reception. The cake gets left out in the rain. The bride catches pneumonia and dies. Axl sues the caterer, fans with cameras, and God. At least the dead woman won’t have to endure Axl’s "Chinese Democracy" album or his tantrums.
Open Arms by Journey is number one? I want to throw the TV out of the hotel room like a Rolling Stone.
Click.
Oh. A documentary on American chess master Bobby Fischer on CNN. Fischer beat Russian Boris Spassky in ’72 in Reykjavik, Iceland and became the only American who has ever won the FIDE world chess championship. He became a recluse shortly afterwards and didn’t play chess publicly for 20 years. Then came the series of bad moves. Clearly, the man has lost his rooks.
In ’92, he resurfaced to play a rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia, violating UN sanctions imposed against the Balkan state. He spat on a document from the US State Department, became a fugitive, went to Budapest, lived for a time in Baguio City, lauded the 9/11 terrorist attacks over Bombo Radyo, ("I want to see the US wiped out…"), had his US passport revoked, made fanatical anti-Semitic statements even if his mother was a Jew, and moved to Iceland (the site of his past glories). No one knows what Fischer’s next move is. Everything is in a sort of stalemate.
Click.
Great. Nice to see Married With Children again. I believe Al Bundy (played by Ed O’Neill) is the prototype of Homer Simpson. Classic Al Bundy quote: "The Bundy philosophy was built on lying – well, lying, owing money, and perhaps beer… The only thing that separates us from the Kennedys is that they have money." Another killer line: "Standing here with my family, I wonder why I’m running from an axe." And this unforgettable quip: "Why is it that Elvis is dead, but I’m in hell?"
Married is followed by classic sitcoms The Cosby Show, Saved by the Bell, and Full House, featuring John Stamos’ crappy acting and even crappier mullet.
Click.
Then I see something more surreal than a Salvador Dali painting: an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger showing Chuck Norris and Hulk Hogan teaching kids how to play basketball. Duh! Maybe the kids would be future Ron Artests or Ben Wallaces. Conan O’Brien has a red-and-yellow lever that automatically activates scenes from Walker. I wish for a lever that would make them go away. Forever.
Click.
On HBO is a standup comedy gig featuring Whoopi Goldberg. What I like about HBO in the States is that it shows comic bits, quirky cartoons, and great movies, unlike HBO-Asia which boasts a TV schedule filled with made-for-TV tearjerkers and Jean-Claude Van Damme/Steven Segal visual bollocks with the usual plot: One man uses reality-defying karate skills to defeat a gang of 700 criminals – and manages to snag a bodacious lady reporter in the process. Cue Survivor song.
Whoopi pokes fun at the people who condemn same-sex marriage. "If you hate same-sex marriage so much, then don’t be in one," she guffaws. Whoopi goes on to say that in ancient times there was a rule: When a man has sex with an animal, he shall be put to death… and so shall the animal. "What?" snapped the comedian, "did the sheep come on to the man to deserve that?" I can so visualize a sheep in a negligee, dancing lasciviously, holding a bottle of merlot while Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On plays in the background.
Click.
Great. Music videos without obtrusive video jocks for a change. At last, no dull bits of music trivia, or indecipherable mumbles. Some VJs give viewers their "recommended daily dose of annoying."
I adore Nine Inch Nail’s Closer (even in its heavily edited form), with its crucified monkeys, bald chicks, pieces of Francis Bacon meat clinging to doorways, floating Trent Reznor in leather, and Expressionist mood. REM’s Losing My Religion is another favorite. By the way, its director stole images and motifs from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings and other magic-realistic stories – effectively, at that.
Another good one is Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues clip (from Don’t Look Back), which shows the folk-rock icon flashing cue cards. Bearded-and-bald Beat Generation bard Allen Ginsberg is seen chatting with someone in the background.
I also love Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees video. The band is shown inside the loneliest grocery store in the universe playing a song about sad synthetic lives.
Props also go to The Smiths’ Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before, featuring Morrissey cycling around Madchester, er, Manchester followed by a horde of Moz clones.
Even for a couple of days, it’s good to be away from Pinoy TV shows that feature a super-heroine who swallows a magical stone. You have to really be stoned to dig that. The hero who flies with chicken feathers has been replaced by a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings. When my mother told me she loves Stairway to Heaven, I thought she was talking about a Led Zeppelin song. Not! Another thing: I don’t miss overacting, hyperactive newscasters who talk as if they swallowed a magical stone.
Click.
A reality show.
Click. Click.
More reality shows, each more "real" than the other.
Click.
I am watching too much TV that I get the feeling that the TV has started watching me.
Click. Click. Click.
BrandSpace Articles
<
>