January 29th, 2003

I have the worst typos in the history of man.

There’s a reason I try not to watch TV. 

1. I’m very critical of shows that try to be good and are crap.
2. I get addicted of shows that are crap, they know it, and make no effort in trying to improve them (i.e. VIP)

I really don’t watch much sitcoms.  I watch friends, Simpson’s, and Seined reruns.  I used to watch a good 5-6 hours of TV a day in college. And even more after college. Watch TV from 3-10, go out maybe, if not I’d watch TV till Conan.

In college, I had a schedule.  We had our South Park nights.  Always had to watch the daily show every night, Seinfeld was golden.  Even Golden girls were golden the mikes and I would watch them at 11 every morning before lunch.  The Mikes (they’re were two of them, roommates) would watch Dallas together.  I’d be on they’re computer.  On the Internet, about TV shows.

As entertaining as the schedule was, TV was starting to lose it’s luster.  Primarily, the Thursday night line up.  Oh, how I used to love my must see TV.  I had the wonderful experience of having memorized the great lineup of shows NBC had to offer on this night since the Cosby Show, family ties, cheers, night court days, only to see night court moved to Tuesdays to be replaced by the affable Dear John with Kirk (I remember this one episode that Kirk borrowed $20,I think, from john and Kirk tried to pay him back in condoms, comic genius I say.

Seinfeld left TV during my college tenure, and as did I.  At least in the prime time since.  Network TV was slowly fading from me.  I couldn’t stand the Thursday night hammock schedule.  When they would put a ruthlessly terrible show in-between two hits.  Such as the slot between friends and Seinfeld, and Seinfeld and ER.  For what it seems like 3 years we had to put up with The single guy, Men Behaving Badly, Caroline in the city, Boston Commons etc.  The only show I liked was the blanket episode run of Just Shoot Me.

Quick here’s an impression of my 15-year-old sister seven years from now at a bar with other kids her age.

“Like, oh my god! Remember Pokemon, Beanie babies, and remember the when the Olson twins were teenagers??!!!”

“Oh yeah, and remember when we always wore sock hats in 80 degree weather?  What’s up with that?”

“And Nsync? And the backstreet boys….OMG I soooooo was in love with them and stuff!”

“Oh yeah, and remember dial-up that was so annoying, and remember when TV’s weren’t flat?”

“And VHS!!!”

“VHS, VHS, I was soo embarrassed that we had one till like 2005.  Oh how I remember VHS!!”

As TV watching became more and more sparse, so did the loyalty of shows.  I now watch crap TV.  Really don’t turn on the TV till 10 or so.  I love Blind date, The Food Network and watch stand up comedy. And then I ….zzzzzzzz… damn I was starting to get boring.

Getting back to must see TV.  I had one of the top ten greatest TV watching days of my life last Thursday.  Considering, how un-loyal I am to the TV and most shows, I think I had an aneurysm of joy.  I had nothing to do.  It was Thursday, so I figured I would watch me a little bit of friends.  I like the show.  Don’t love it like I used to.  And it’s before Scrubs,  which is becoming a show that I make time to see.  Sometime during this hour of TV I started surfing.  And then I saw it.  The Tough Enough finale extravaganza!  I wasn’t feeling good sometime a week before and I became entrenched in the marathon.  Never watched the other two, don’t watch any reality TV actually.  But I became enthralled. I would soon flip back and forth more often.  What was he going to do? What was I to do?  I don’t have my notebook to write cute little antidotes or anything. 

I flipped again.  Man vs. Beast.  Quite possibly the greatest CTV television show I ever saw besides last years celebrated glutton bowl.  Man vs. Beast.  I only saw the last half I was too enthralled with another show, an offshoot of The Real World called the Surreal World.  And then I forgot about Smackdown.  Oh my.

Man vs. beast apparently was a repeat.  I can’t believe I missed it the first time around.  Where was I?  And surely Matt would have known about this and call me up.

This man vs. beast thing.  Amazing.  Sumo wrestler vs. An orangutan, in an all out tug o war battle over a mud pit.  A team of 44 little people racing 14-ton elephant…while both pulling a dc-10 jet!  Quality programming at it’s finest.  And of course. Tobayashi vs. A black bear, in a hot dog eating contest.

Honestly with all the commotion of these shows I couldn’t tell you who won what.  For a fleeting moment I thought Emmanuel Lewis was boxing a kangaroo.  It was pure bliss though.  Wrestling, Emmanuel Lewis and Corey Haim living in the same house, hot dog eating, scrubs, friends,  pure ecstasy.

The high light of my night came down to the race between an Olympic sprinter and a zebra complete with  Carl Lewis commentary.  After just beating a giraffe, a zebra was his next opponent.  Carl Lewis explained the strategies that each sprinter must do in order to win.

“For Sean to win he must have a keen start and maintain his speed as long as possible.  For the zebra to win…He must realize that he’s in a race."

I had to be resuscitated from laughing so hard.

Golden TV

By the way he lost to the giraffe,  the zebra had an illegal start and then he started talking crap.  He got another race and got smoked again.  I so need a TIVO, like 3 of them.

Matt left a message once in a hysterical fit.

“Steve, there’s a show on called “Stupid People (laugh) it’s stupid people doing stupid thing (another laugh) eh”-click- 

He then called me 5 minutes later.

“Steve, Steve there’s a show called Worlds stupidest people.  It’s stupid people from around the world.  Stupid Russian people are funny.  There’s a video of Russian dudes getting drunk in the woods, one of them get scared and goes up a tree  He  refuses to come down…so what do they do?  They throw rocks at him! But they’re drunk and they miss and can’t throw (laugh) and then what they decide to do since they’re drunk is to chop the tree down that he's in (dying laughter again).  Stupid Russian people are funny…oh and the Stupid Thai people…”