GOOCHONLINE - Since 1999

Gooch: The Column
Title: Traversing the Vast Wasteland of Cable Television.

Through illness, insomnia, appendicitis, and sheer laziness, I’ve watched a lot of television the past couple of months. Equipped with extended basic cable without porn, I’ve been forced to channel surf the 50 or so stations I have in a desperate attempt to quench my thirst for mental stimuli. While watching TV, I sometimes take notes as to what I like, dislike, and why. This column is based on those notes.

I want to give Kudos to MTV for actually showing videos during daylight hours. I’ve been getting tired of throwing cheeseburger wrappers at my television every time Carson Daly appears on the screen. Unfortunately, the music video channel only has what appears to be a 5-disc DVD changer with only the following videos loaded: Alien Ant Farm (cool Michael Jackson cover tune), Gorillaz (“Clint Eastwood,” I like it, but not as much as everyone else), and videos either produced by P-Diddy, featuring P-Diddy, with cameo appearances by P-Diddy, or with cinematography by P-Diddy.

One click down from MTV is VH1 - the thinking person’s MTV. VH1 is the home of some of the better music programming on television and the embodiment of what I think “music television” really is. “Behind the Music” is without a doubt one of the most influential programs on TV, prompting other cable stations to produce their own documentary-styled shows. Unlike the “reality” trend that has plagued TV, the documentary genre is one of the rare instances where the copycat shows (E’s “True Hollywood Story”, for example) are as good as the original. The stories on “Behind the Music” tend to be formulaic at times. Typically a nobody band gets a break, becomes famous, one of the members overdoses/crashes a car/gets arrested/all of the above, the band produces a #1 ballad, acheives mainstream success, breaks up at the peak of their stardom, reunites ten years later, and is currently working on a project that you will likely never hear about again.

As I come in to contact with more and more local bands through my work with Jam Magazine, my hope is that I will someday end up on Behind the Music or a show like it. My guess is that in twenty years I’ll be 300 pounds and talking out of a cancer kazoo, begging for a chance to be on TV and talk about “the wild times.” When interviewed, I’ll likely discuss how “the band” and I used to snort cocaine off of the asses of underage Vietnamese boys. Of course, I’ll be joking, but I’ll forget to tell someone that and my comments will air, and I’ll get sued.

Bad commercials, unlike bad television, have the power of repetition to annoy me multiple times throughout my viewing session. Case in point: Old Navy. Model Molly Sims (I only know her name because I’ve been stalking her for about a week) does a runway walk to disco music surrounded by anorexics, convincing women (and some men) that they’ve “got to get this look.” Molly Sims needs to get a pizza. Where did the skinny models come from? We were doing so well - I was embracing the late-nineties backlash against the waif look. Now, Old Navy is showing a group of eight models with a combined weight of 200 pounds telling prepubescent girls that They’re supposed to look like that? Get me the number for Anna Nicole Smith.

I’m willing to bet that if Jim Spagg and his controversial cable-access show hadn’t aired in Portland, cable viewers would not pause for a second on the community access stations. Thanks to Spagg, his bizarre antics and his show’s gratuitous nudity, cable-access has served many viewers as an alternative to the commercial television crap that has numbed the minds of children and adults alike (not that Spagg is brain fodder, either). In 1994, another outlandish, obnoxious, fat person entered the cable-access fray. Harry Lime, whose show I’ve seen but once, stars in and produces a show where he dons a costume, takes calls from the 19 or 20 people who are watching his show at the time, and drinks MD 20/20 fortified wine from a hypodermic needle. I honestly thought that Lime was going to inject himself with the “Mad Dog” (as some of us refer to it) and I was so enthralled with this possibility that I watched with the same tunnel-visioned interest that a two-year-old watches Blue’s Clues. For more information on Harry Lime, visit www.harrylimetv.com.

Reality television has spread like a virus throughout the television world. Starting with the innovative “The Real World” (actually, the reality genre has been around for years, I’m just discussing the latest trend) on MTV, then “Survivor,” and now there is everything from “Big Brother 2” (as if Big Brother 1 didn’t suck nearly enough ass) to “The Mole” (intriguing enough that I actually sat down to watch a few episodes) to “Boot Camp” (absolutely some of the worst programming to hit the airwaves since “Cop Rock”).

One of the best reality shows ever to be produced is on KPDX (UHF channel 49, most cable stations: 13) at 1am on Monday mornings. “Cheaters” is actually a group of private investigators who will spy on your boyfriend or girlfriend should you suspect infidelity. The typical show, hosted by the sensitive/macho Tommy Grand, covertly videotapes the cheater in action and presents the evidence to the victim, who is given the option of confronting the cheater in public with a camera crew. You cannot fake the reactions that are caught on tape. This is one of the few shows that I will set my VCR to record. Cheaters has a website, www.cheaters.com. Check it out.