Thu, July 17, 2003

I was in the dentist's chair on Tuesday and because I go to a swanky Beverly Hills dentist, there's a little TV mounted right there on the arm that holds the bright light, and you can get free DirecTV while they jackhammer their way around inside your mouth. This is good for me, because TiVo and I have DirecTV at home, so I know all the channels and I can find Family Feud in two seconds flat.

Which is exactly what I did because when you sit down they have it tuned to CNN, which is ostensibly because it's the least offensive channel although for the last two years or so that's debatable. I can't take CNN (as you well know, and if you don't you should go to that little box on your left and type in CNN and hit enter) and I particularly can't take Wolf Blitzer and his breathless Middle East coverage. And Conan isn't on at the right time and Cartoon Network is showing kiddie stuff, so trusty standby Game Show Network is where it's at.

Dr. Chemla shares my frustration with politics these days (he's from France), but he still shook his head when Richard Dawson proudly took the stage. I told him I wanted to keep my mind sharp while he worked in my mouth, but the real reason was that Nick Swardson was on Comedy Central and I didn't want to laugh in the middle of a filling and get a drill through the jaw bone. The fun thing was that for the first half of the show it was kind of like playing Family Feud and $100,000 Pyramid at the same time, because I would always miss the survey question due to drilling in the vicinity of my face. So I had to figure out what eggs and hamburgers had in common while also trying to guess what else would be on the list. (People put ketchup on them, by the way.)

So, everything was smooth sailing until that wrapped up and GSN wanted to follow it with another episode of Family Feud from the Ray Combs years. As a kid, I watched the Ray Combs Feud plenty, but that was before GSN introduced me to Match Game and the beauty that is Richard Dawson. Now, anyone who tries to replace him is a filthy usurper. Combs knew it; in 1996 he Cobained, and I'd say Louis Anderson and Richard Karn are more than welcome to join him. No way was I watching that.

So, with just a few more minutes until the appointment was over, I decided to just ride it out with CNN. The good news was that they were off the foreign policy beat. The focus had shifted to Hurricane Claudette. The news loves hurricanes because you don't have to make up anything to make them sound frightening, they're pretty much frightening on their own. (Which is not to say they don't come up with scary graphics to enhance the effect.) What I find amazing in this age of satellite photography and computer graphics is that they still feel the need to have a guy stand out there in the driving gale-force rain. (Jon Stewart mentioned the same thing tonight.) Dave Barry's Tricky Business features a riotous subplot about Florida TV newscasters getting whipped into a fury over a hurricane. The Floridians have the most proximity so they used to be the worst at it, but now all the networks are 24-hour networks so they've picked up the hurricane hysteria baton.

Claudette was still barely coming ashore in Galveston, so we were just watching a guy in a slicker standing in some heavy wind and rain. (She's only a Category 1 anyway, so it was never going to get too dramatic.) As usual, he had nothing of value to report, because the only real information would be better delivered by a guy at a desk in front of a satellite image. What's the point of the guy on the ground? At best, you can see what's happening at that particular intersection. (I can't wait until the day they send a helicopter up to get a better shot!) In this case, he would talk for a while as the wind whipped the hood of his parka against his head and then he'd turn around and the cameraman would focus on a thrashing limb or swaying stoplight. What is this? What information are we getting here? The crew seemed to be gasping "How is that stoplight just moving like that?? It must be magic!" The whole scene reminded me of something from the days of Greek mythology. The people had no idea what caused most of the natural phenomena around them and they concocted mythology to explain what confounded them. I imagine them staring in awe at windswept branches in the same way that this reporter stood transfixed as the stoplight bobbed around. What was the perceived news value? ("You see, Frank and Judy, this stoplight is bobbing around about 40% faster than it would be in mere high winds. The fact that it spins like that indicates that we're looking at 75mph gusts...")

It reminds me of the scene at LAX every Thanksgiving or Christmas when I go to fly home. There are always a half dozen news vans parked in front of the concourse, blocking the best unloading spots. They're there to do a story on how crowded the airport is around peak travel periods (surprise!) and they like to have a shot of how backed up traffic is. Well, idiots, traffic is backed up because you parked your goddamn news vans in the way!

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