Wednesday, September 15, 2004
The Horrible Sucking Sound…
Have you ever suffered from insomnia?
I have a cure (one that works for me, anyway): turn on the TV and watch the junk that comes on at 2:00 in the morning. That stuff will suck your brain dry and leave you in a calm, restful, vegetative state. Complete alpha wave suppression, which is almost as good as sleep. The problem is, sometimes you get sucked into bad TV. Oh yes, it has happened to me. It’s not that you’re watching a good show. No, nothing that comes on at 3:00 AM can be deemed quality programming. It’s not that the plots are engaging or the characters dynamic. No, again, that would be a hallmark of good TV. No, these programs are just plain bad, and what sucks you in is the atrocity of word, form, and plot that has been launched against your senses.
By way of example, I offer the following: while flipping the channels (why can’t they build a remote with a “scan” button?) I wandered past a “movie” called Shark Attack 2. I happened upon it during one of the shark attack scenes (which were numerous, as the movie title might imply). The sharks were feeding hungrily on some surfers. All that seems very ordinary, but what caught my attention was one of the shark’s eyes. The shark puppets they were using were similar in construction to the ones used on Jaws (in fact, one of them could have been used on Jaws for all I know), but, on one of them, the eyes had been replaced with these bulging, bloodshot orbs that looked like they came off a bad Halloween mask. Seeing that was all it took… the show sucked me in and I was now at the mercy of bad TV.
Our hero is watching the surfers and he knows the sharks are going to attack. Were I in his position, I might have said, “Hey guys, I think there are five or six mutant, man-eating sharks out there. They ate three of my friends yesterday. Why don’t y’all skip the surfing today and I’ll buy everyone a round at the bar, where it is safe.” But no, our hero chooses to wait for the carnage, which, of course, gives him the chance to play hero on a jet-ski by ramming the sharks and trying to save the surfer dudes.
Wait, there’s more. After the surfers got ate up, the three main characters meet on the blood bathed beach and vow to kill those bastard mutant sharks. The scene fades to… a beach bar. Now our three heroes are sitting at a table doing shots. What? I thought they vowed to give us some carnage and get those sharks that killed their friends? You can’t just stop the plot while the heroes get their drink on! Oh, wait I get it, before they kill the sharks, one of the heroes has to give a socially responsible speech, saying most sharks aren’t all that bad and are actually afraid of humans. Of course, given everything that has happened so far in the show, our hero has to be totally snockered to say this believably. The bar scene also serves a secondary purpose: to get the heroine plastered so the completely uninspiring hero can have his way with her in the gratuitous love scene.
Mercifully, the movie soon ended in the gory destruction of the mutant sharks. TV land had been saved and I was free from the controlling influence of bad TV. Free at last! Free, at least, until Shark Attack 3 came on after the commercials…
I have a cure (one that works for me, anyway): turn on the TV and watch the junk that comes on at 2:00 in the morning. That stuff will suck your brain dry and leave you in a calm, restful, vegetative state. Complete alpha wave suppression, which is almost as good as sleep. The problem is, sometimes you get sucked into bad TV. Oh yes, it has happened to me. It’s not that you’re watching a good show. No, nothing that comes on at 3:00 AM can be deemed quality programming. It’s not that the plots are engaging or the characters dynamic. No, again, that would be a hallmark of good TV. No, these programs are just plain bad, and what sucks you in is the atrocity of word, form, and plot that has been launched against your senses.
By way of example, I offer the following: while flipping the channels (why can’t they build a remote with a “scan” button?) I wandered past a “movie” called Shark Attack 2. I happened upon it during one of the shark attack scenes (which were numerous, as the movie title might imply). The sharks were feeding hungrily on some surfers. All that seems very ordinary, but what caught my attention was one of the shark’s eyes. The shark puppets they were using were similar in construction to the ones used on Jaws (in fact, one of them could have been used on Jaws for all I know), but, on one of them, the eyes had been replaced with these bulging, bloodshot orbs that looked like they came off a bad Halloween mask. Seeing that was all it took… the show sucked me in and I was now at the mercy of bad TV.
Our hero is watching the surfers and he knows the sharks are going to attack. Were I in his position, I might have said, “Hey guys, I think there are five or six mutant, man-eating sharks out there. They ate three of my friends yesterday. Why don’t y’all skip the surfing today and I’ll buy everyone a round at the bar, where it is safe.” But no, our hero chooses to wait for the carnage, which, of course, gives him the chance to play hero on a jet-ski by ramming the sharks and trying to save the surfer dudes.
Wait, there’s more. After the surfers got ate up, the three main characters meet on the blood bathed beach and vow to kill those bastard mutant sharks. The scene fades to… a beach bar. Now our three heroes are sitting at a table doing shots. What? I thought they vowed to give us some carnage and get those sharks that killed their friends? You can’t just stop the plot while the heroes get their drink on! Oh, wait I get it, before they kill the sharks, one of the heroes has to give a socially responsible speech, saying most sharks aren’t all that bad and are actually afraid of humans. Of course, given everything that has happened so far in the show, our hero has to be totally snockered to say this believably. The bar scene also serves a secondary purpose: to get the heroine plastered so the completely uninspiring hero can have his way with her in the gratuitous love scene.
Mercifully, the movie soon ended in the gory destruction of the mutant sharks. TV land had been saved and I was free from the controlling influence of bad TV. Free at last! Free, at least, until Shark Attack 3 came on after the commercials…
R.T. Lemur 9:16 PM
4 Comments:
Bastard mutant sharks?!
What could be worse? Perhaps maybe bastard mutant ninja sharks...or maybe ill-tempered bastard mutant sharks.
What could be worse? Perhaps maybe bastard mutant ninja sharks...or maybe ill-tempered bastard mutant sharks.
....with lasers on their foreheads!
The deadliest animal ever!
The deadliest animal ever!
Throw me a bone here people...
Or the sharks with the frickin' "laaaazers" will get mad.
And, you won't like them when their angry...
Or the sharks with the frickin' "laaaazers" will get mad.
And, you won't like them when their angry...
Honestly, that's not my bag, baby!