November 1999 Archives

Need proof? Let us examine the television offerings for Tuesday, November 23 at 10 p.m. More specifically the programming choice of ESPN2, the bastard child of ESPN that showcases cheerleading competitions, rodeos and dog shows, yet still has the temerity to suggest it is The Worldwide Leader in Sports.

And how did ESPN2 attempt to justify its claim as The Worldwide Leader in Sports? By televising the 1999 Magic: The Gathering World Championships.

Magic: The Gathering, for those of you who don't spend your free time debating whether Tasha Yar could kick Seven of Nine's ass, is a card game. Think of it as Dungeons & Dragons for those lacking the athletic prowess to throw dice.

Football is a sport, my friends. As are baseball, soccer, fencing and dwarf tossing. Those are suitable fodder for The Worldwide Leader in Sports. Even in a world where ballroom dancing qualifies as an Olympic event and the X Games makes heroes out of bungee jumpers, the Magic Championships just goes too damn far.

There is no possible argument for Magic as a sport. None. If someone says, "But Magic players exercise their minds," I'll start throwing punches. Baseball teams might get away with having one or two Fernando Valenzuelas on a roster, but the entire U.S. Magic team makes Terry Forster look like a Calvin Klein Bikini Briefs model.

What, you weren't aware that the U.S. even had a National Magic Team? And you call yourself a patriot? The fact of the matter is that the U.S. Magic team kicks butt. We've won four world championships, this latest one the result of our thrashing of a plucky yet outgunned German team.

As U.S. team member Charles Kornbluth put it, "It's an honor just to be here at the championships, representing the U.S." By golly, here's a kid going all out for his country. Move over, Mary Lou Retton. Get this guy a Wheaties box, pronto!

Of course, the Germans didn't take the loss very well and promised to do something about it. Apparently they've hired a new general manager, the former East German swimming coach, who has enlisted the help of some of his old friends. Already there are rumblings about a promising rookie, the world's first elite female player, an ex-East Berliner named Olga who can cast Cursed Scrolls left and right, bench press 400 pounds and has a voice like Barry White.

But this year belonged to the good ol' U.S. of A. Bringing the action to us were play-by-play commentators Brian and Chris, neither of whom were ever shown on camera, probably because they are slightly older versions of Harris and Bill from "Freaks and Geeks." There even was a cheery sideline reporter named Todd, who actually did appear on camera. Todd looked a lot like you expect TV personalities except for his death grip on the microphone and the thousand-yard stare in his eyes that said, "This was not what I had in mind when I applied to work for ESPN."

Unfortunately, I missed the first couple of matches, but managed to tune in for the crucial slugfest between American Kyle Rose and German Marco Blume. This was Rose's match to lose, yet he almost fumbled away his chances.

Presented with what was apparently a rather good hand, Brian or Chris seemed to think the match was in the bag. "As you know, a turn four wildfire can be very devastating." Well, duh! Thank you so much, Captain Obvious.

Yet Rose didn't see it that way and evidently made some sort of mistake that sent both Brian and Chris into a fit of hyperactive chimp chatter. "A lot of people would have played a cursed scroll there!" "I don't see the point of playing a mountain wild card!"

From Honolulu to Martha's Vineyard, a nation held its breath. Would Kyle Rose cost us the championship because of his boneheaded mountain wild card? Curse you, Kyle Rose! A pox on your first born!

But Blume was just as incompetent and quickly screwed things up even worse. When it was all over, Rose had taken the match three games to one and we were treated to an instant replay of Blume's tragic mistake. You've never seen instant replay until you've seen Magic: The Gathering instant replay.

"Blume played a City of Traitors and couldn't wildfire," the announcers explained somberly. The camera zoomed in slow-motion as Blume lowered the fatal card to the table. "It was a devastating mistake that doomed him." Indeed it was. Joe Theismann's shattered leg and Marco Blume's City of Traitors. Two images burned into my mind forever.

The subject of injuries didn't come up but I can imagine such thoughts must weigh heavily on the minds of the players. A really nasty one must be a godawful mess, made all the more repugnant by incessant replays from a dozen camera angles. "Oh, dear lord in heaven! He's torn his City of Traitors almost completely in half! The trainers are rushing out with the Scotch tape, but frankly Brian, I don't think there's much they can do!"

With the Rose-Blume match decided, the U.S. championship hopes rested on the ample shoulders of Zvi Moshowitz. Surely you've heard of Zvi Moshowitz. Creator of the Zvi Bargain deck? Yes, that Zvi Moshowitz.

Evidently, each player can pick and choose the cards in his Magic deck. Moshowitz's Zvi Bargain is one humdinger of a deck, according to Brian and Chris. "Zvi's Bargain is one of the most difficult decks in the world to play well. Moshowitz is one of only a few top players confident enough to play this deck," they pronounced.

What the hell are these cards made of? Plastic explosives? While that would have made for a much more exciting television experience, sadly, it was not to be. With all the hype surrounding him, I expected Zvi, dressed head-to-toe in leather, to come charging onto the playing floor through a wall of fog and lasers while "Bad to the Bone" played at ear-bleeding decibels.

But there was no was taunting of the audience, no beautiful bikini-clad girls getting into hair-pulling fights, no folding chair violence. Instead there was only Zvi, a man who probably waddles a lot more than he charges, already sitting down, ready to face off against his bitter rival, Germany's David Brucker.

But this match was a laugher from the start. As everyone knows, Brucker's Living Death deck "is historically weak against combo decks" like Zvi's Bargain. Within a couple minutes, it was obvious Moshowitz-Brucker would be the fantasy card game equivalent of Tyson-Spinks.

Just a couple minutes into the brouhaha, Brian and Chris were already all atwitter. "Ladies and gentlemen, we could be watching a turn two kill here!" And just like that, it was all over. Delusions of Mediocrity -- bam! Mox diamonds -- crunch! Blaze spell -- pow! And Brucker is down for the count!

You could almost hear Al Michaels screaming "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" The only thing missing was the US team's hosting of Moshowitz onto their shoulders for a victory lap. Then again, judging from Moshowitz's Michelin Man physique, that was probably for the best.

Who needs football or baseball now? The next generation of athletic heroes are the ones who stay at home, avoiding sunlight, physical fitness and social interaction. Thank goodness the Worldwide Leader in Sports will be there covering every single Magic championship and Quake Deathmatch.

Of course, there's some work that still needs to be done before Magic: The Gathering can become a true television spectacle. There's no halftime show and precious few opportunities for blimp shots. And where are the obnoxious celebrations? You slam down a Scroll of Monkeys, you dance, dammit! Cheerleaders would be a big improvement, too. Maybe dressed in "Star Trek" uniforms.

And who will bring all of this to you ? The Worldwide Leader in Sports, of course. Can ESPN's Magic: The Gathering Primetime be far behind?

Recently, the nation's No. 1 distributor of oral carcinogens launched an ad campaign to let the world know what else it's good at. No longer content to get its props as the leading profiteer of lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema, the company began running a series of Phil-good television commercials last month.

You may not know it, but Philip Morris funds domestic violence centers, sends tangerines to food banks and counsels convenience store clerks against peddling smokes to kids. It's also the corporate parent of Kraft Foods and Miller Brewing.

The company spent $60 million on charitable efforts last year, according to this $100 million "Making a Difference" PR campaign.

Fittingly enough, one of the ads ran during the Oct. 21 episode of ER, which included a storyline about a pregnant woman endangering her fetus by smoking. If this tie-in is a result of corporate synergy between the cigarette maker and a TV network, I hope we'll be seeing more of it in the future -- "tune in next week as Ally McBeal is date-raped by the Marlboro Man in a daffy dream sequence!"

As part of the effort, Philip Morris is even admitting that cigarettes are both unsafe and addictive. Company exec Steven Parrish told an AP reporter that the tobacco conglomerate is committed to improving lives -- not counting, presumably, the 418,000 people each year whose smoking-related deaths disqualify them from further improvement.

I'm a lifetime non-smoker (can you tell?) with genuinely hostile feelings towards Philip, R.J., Brown, Williamson, Joe Camel, the Congressional delegation from North Carolina and both Benson and Hedges. These new TV ads are aimed directly at me, and I haven't felt this much loving attention from a tobacco company since my early teen-age years.

After seeing these commercials, there's a question I'd like to ask Philip Morris and Leo Burnett, the Chicago ad agency that's running this campaign:

What are you smoking?

No amount of TV commercials is going to make me experience branding bliss with a tobacco company. These Kodak moments about battered wives living in Philip Morris shelters may cause a lump in the throat, but most of the smokers in the viewing audience will subsequently schedule a doctor's appointment to check whether that lump is cancerous.

Additionally, no one who feels warmly about a company like Kraft Foods is going to transfer those feelings to Philip Morris. You make a recklessly harmful and addictive product that has killed millions of people and is going to kill at least five million more, according to present estimates. Until last week, you didn't even admit it was harmful, blowing smoke up our ass for so many years the whole country needs a proctological look-see for abnormal cell growth.

Now you're eagerly telling the world you also make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Kool-Aid drink mix, Oscar Meyer weiners, Miller beer, Jell-O gelatin... a whole family of products not normally associated with merchants of death.

Your "Making a Difference" campaign has already worked. The next time I'm in a building and the Kool-Aid Man bursts through a wall, there's no way I'm going to run towards him to eagerly drink the liquid in his head with my friends.

Instead, I'm calling the cops.

Additional contributions to this article by: Rogers Cadenhead, James Collier.

	Currently	$27,000,000		First bid	$525,000
	Quantity	1		# of bids	13
	Time left	None		Location	New York City
	Started	11/11/99, 21:01:03 PDT
	Ended	11/15/99, 10:01:03 EST
	Seller	teevee@teevee.org (1)
		(ask seller a question)
	High bid	cbsles (12)
	Payment	Cashiers check in U.S. dollars
	Shipping	Seller ships to home country only. No Canadians please.

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This buck isn't one of those WATERED-DOWN MULATTOES OR OCTAROONS being passed off by unscrupulous sellers, we have certification from the Coalition of African American Television Writers declaring him as a FULL-BLOODED NEGRO!!! and he's PRICED TO MOVE!!! Don't let this once in a lifetime piece of memorabilia slip away. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded.

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JAMES COLLIER (Item #186293499)

For example, a puppet show demonstrating cellular mitosis, complete with "Love Theme from Cellular Mitosis," may not be the best way to get an A in biology. That staring at your feet, mumbling and blushing bright red every time you ask a girl out is not a recipe for success. And we mustn't forget that writing a story about Wilbert the Revolutionary Worm when you don't know the answer to the second essay question on the AP History test is not the recommended path to a passing score.

Of course, some of us also learned that writing an essay about Wilbert the Revolutionary Worm will, in fact, garner you a passing score on the AP History test.

But that's not the type of education you see on TV. No, from Dawson's Creek to Beverly Hills 90210 to Popular what you really learn about high school is that everyone there is beautiful and that given two girls, both equally likely to show up on the cover of Vogue, the brunette is the unpopular, ugly duckling.

But no matter how beautiful, popular and accomplished the lead female character is, she will invariably dump the chiseled quarterback with a chin dimple for the nebbish, deathly shy school newspaper editor once she finds out he's been in love with her since the third grade.

You know, just how it happens in real life.

Well, maybe not your lives. Apparently you readers have some issues with TV shows that purport to showcase those wonderfully painful years. Judging from the steaming pile of nearly three letters we've received about our review of the new WB melodrama Popular, teen-oriented series bring up some uncomfortable memories while reminding you of how TV high school qualifies as science fiction programming.

The cascade of e-mails had a recurring theme: how the good-looking girls all ignored the Toughskins-clad chess club captains and sweet, sensitive yearbook editors in order to go out with the loutish, brawny jock types who possessed table manners that would make a Neanderthal blush. Then when the popular girl found out you had been in love with her since the third grade, she slapped a restraining order on you.

As one of those demonized brawny jock types, let me respond: You chess club captains had it pretty good.

You say TV is unrealistic? Sure. After all, where's the awkward silence and teeth-gnashing agony when our hero discovers the popular girl he's just asked out -- solely on the basis of scuttlebutt that said popular girl is hopelessly in love with him -- is actually hot for a guy with the same first name and a last name that is an almost perfect homonym to his own?

But it wasn't supposed to be like that. My secondary school experience was supposed to be modeled after all those perfect dream lives you see on television. For I was that most celebrated, most blessed of teenagers.

I was a high school quarterback.

It all started out reasonably well. While I was a sophomore field general on the JV team, the varsity was led by a guy named John Erving, a senior that the vast majority of 10th grade males were in awe of. He looked like a soap opera's leading man, his parents were spectacularly rich, and he drove a Ford Bronco. But most of all, he made kissy-face with Susan Lange.

Susan was only a sophomore, but had already won universal acclaim as the most beautiful girl to ever walk the hallowed halls of our school. She was a soccer player, not a cheerleader, but other than that, John Erving was the perfect model of Hollywood's high school golden boy.

During our first game of that season, I injured my arm and had to drive to the hospital for X-rays. On the way out of the stadium, we passed the varsity warming up for their game later that night. Erving asked how I was feeling. It was unbelievable. He actually knew my name!

I had finally arrived! In a couple seasons, the sophomore guys were going to be in awe of me and I would be dating Susan Lange.

A couple games later, it was obvious that Erving sucked and he was benched. He and Susan broke up. She transferred out at the end of the year.

I turned a blind eye to all of this. TV wouldn't lie to me, would it? Two years later, everything would turn out all right. The Stanford, USC and Florida State recruiters would be fighting amongst themselves in the living room when Susan called to say she had returned for our senior year and, by the way, was I doing anything Friday night?

Junior season was much the same. The starting QB was a real popular guy and dated a gorgeous girl. He also was a lousy quarterback.

As a senior, I would live up to only one of those three precedents.

For some reason, the light generated from the popular kids didn't reach my particular high school social solar system until last Tuesday. And forget dating the cheerleaders, I was lucky if they even knew my name. When I'd drop back to pass the cheers would go something like "Don't throw another pick, Number 11!"

On the other hand, my offensive linemen, who evidently never read the Official Hierarchy of Football Position Sex Appeal, were very cool. They were the guys dating the cheerleaders and soccer players. One of them was the Homecoming King. All the while their quarterback, the guy they had sworn to take a bullet for when they recited the Oath of the Big Uglies, was reduced to putting a dress on the kitchen mop just so he would have a date for the Homecoming Dance.

Offensive linemen. For crying out loud, it's just not natural.

The stories you people send us always have a happy ending. Three days after being promoted to vice president, you run into the head cheerleader only to find her 50 pounds overweight, divorced from the alcoholic quarterback and trying to support a couple of rug rats while pulling down double shifts at the truck stop.

Victory over the cool kids is finally yours! This must be what Bill Gates feels like when he attends his high school reunions. Why doesn't TV show us that part?

How I envy you. A few months ago, I ran into a former cheerleader. I was surprised to learn she actually remembers me. I was further surprised by the fact that, a) she is more beautiful than ever, and b) she is engaged to a scrawny little Web Weasel, a man whose arms I could easily rip off and use to beat him to death. A man who celebrated the booming success of his IPO by asking her to marry him, thus scoring several hundred million dollars and one of the most gorgeous women in the world within a 12-hour period.

Revenge of the nerds, indeed. And I don't even get any empty, meaningless glory days to look back on during my night watchman's shift down at the cracker factory.

Somehow, I don't see my high school experience turning up on Dawson's Creek anytime soon, if for no other reason than I look a lot more like Richard Belzer than James Van Der Beek. That doesn't mean there isn't a place on TV for my life. I'm sure the producers of Freaks and Geeks are looking for some good stories, and "Love Theme from Cellular Mitosis" would make a snappy addition to any TV soundtrack.

a. an elaborate tablecloth on Mother's dining table
b. a flamboyant 4X400 relay team member
c. the person responsible for shepherding script, actors, and other assorted elements required to out a television show every week

While it might be fun to discuss fabulously befrocked track stars, this is a site about television, so we're going with answer C. A new book, The Showrunners by David Wild, attempts to give non-showbiz insiders a look at the juggling duties that comprise the average showrunner's job.

The very nature of the job, as the book makes clear, is difficult to pin down: showrunners can be writers or producers, engaged in everything from scheduling wrangles with Scott Sassa to last-minute rewrites with the Friends writing team. Showrunners cast pilots, sell shows to networks, sweat location logistics, write scripts, make final edits, coddle actors (hilariously dismissed by Will & Grace's showrunner Max Mutchnik as "silly people"), fire writers, and somehow find time to track and maintain the creative vision driving the show. Lest we forget, if given a moment to surf the Web, they'll only find a bunch of snotty TV-themed Web sites featuring items written by people who just don't understand how hard it is to do what they do.

It's a job only a masochist could love, and the book illustrates that abundantly, trotting out vignette after vignette about 20-hour days, divorces, and sudden career devastation.

But the book's not about recruiting people for a life in showrunning; it's about being a showrunner. Structured in a series of chapters meant to mimic the lifecycle of a show during a single television season, The Show Runners attempts to follow the runners at shows as diverse as 7th Heaven, NewsRadio, South Park and Party of Five over the 1998-1999 season.

I say attempts because the book's reach far exceeds what it grasps. Wild has strung together vignettes from 7th Heaven, Cupid, Dilbert, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, It's Like, You Know ..., Jesse, NewsRadio, Norm, Overseas, Party of Five, Seven Days, Snoops, South Park, Time of Your Life, Veronica's Closet, and Will & Grace, and attempts to use the different stories to illustrate the very different fortunes awaiting shows and showrunners each season. It's a Hollywood take on the noir contention that there are eight million stories in the Naked City.

Unfortunately, the sheer volume of the show list prevents any of those stories from being substantive or compelling; trying to follow the slender thread of an individual show's tale through anecdote after unrelated anecdote is tiring, and the rewards one reaps for doing so are slim relative to the amount of effort required to keep all the stories straight.

The seasonal structure doesn't help matters. While it's true that some shows' fortunes rise or fall on sweeps, not every show's story fits so neatly into the artifically imposed calendar. The real drama on Everybody Loves Raymond last year was hiding Patricia Heaton's pregnancy, then writing around Peter Boyle's heart attack. Neither happened in a sweeps month, and the hair-pulling effort to sustain the show's momentum is diluted because of the book's uneven structure.

No two television shows are alike, and each of the shows was included to illustrate a different facet of show business. But none of the shows illustrates any one point particularly well. This book could have used some serious editorial pruning and reorganization. For example, the sections on Friends product team Kaufmann/Bright/Crane all mention that the trio is overextended from trying to sustain one network star and nurture two weaker sitcom properties (Veronica's Closet and Jesse.) A similar tale unfolds with the Keyser/Lippman team behind Party of Five, the failed Relativity and the drastically revamped Time of Your Life, and there's passing mention of increasingly overbooked David E. Kelley and Snoops. So why not simply focus on the Kaufmann/Bright/Crane story, explore how show runners are now brand name franchises, and follow the trials of trying to recapture lightning in a bottle with each successive show? One well-researched, meaty case study would be far more entertaining than a series of connect-the-dots anecdotes.

In addition to a lack of focus, the book also suffers from flat writing and repetitive phrasing. Actresses Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston are both described, within paragraphs of each other, as "incredibly slender," whereas Matthew Perry is constantly labeled "funny." Not only do these labels tell us nothing new, they're dull. Coming as he does from a reporting background, Wild may be following an old journalism rule -- eschewing adjectives and adverbs for descriptive nouns and verbs -- but he's not writing for the typical newspaper audience, so there's no reason to keep the word choices confined to a fifth-grade level.

That's not to say the book is a complete waste of time. Finding out that the producers of Everybody Loves Raymond feed their studio audiences dinner during tapings is the kind of charming detail that one wouldn't know from watching the show. Reading the banter between The NewsRadio cast and the invited audience at a Museum of Television and Radio event is almost as good as being there, especially after an A.M. radio reporter responds to Dave Foley's ribbing with the catty remark: "You're right... but at least I have a job next year." Learning how very much showrunners and network types hate the June network kickoffs and subsequent summer press tours is also engaging: it's always fun to find out what crosses each industry asks its members to bear.

But these isolated moments do little to help lift the book's fragmented story arcs. The Showrunners is billed as a behind-the-scenes look at how the shows we see get on the air, but the reader is taken past those scenes at a dead sprint. If this book is a behind-the-scenes look at showrunning, you might as well argue that jogging on a treadmill is a behind-the-scenes look at Olympic training. Any track star can tell you that ain't so; I'm here to tell you the Showrunners, while superficially amusing, isn't anything like the book it's billed to be. That's a shame: unraveling the web of behind-the-scenes tasks and decisions, suprises and crises could have made for a truly informative and entertaining read.

The whole cigar thing has sent enough shivers marching up and down our collective spines to last a lifetime. We, as a nation, are tired of wanting to take a shower. We'll settle for pretty much anybody these days -- druggies, felons, people from Texas -- just, please, nobody creepy.

Which is, of course, why Steve Forbes -- publisher, multi-millionaire, candidate for the Republican nomination -- doesn't stand a chance.

The man emanates Strange Neighbor rays. He's probably got his windows covered with tinfoil. I'd bet five bucks that stray cats have learned not to hang around his house. If you catch my drift. Creepy, near as I can tell, is just about the only thing Forbes does well.

And creepy, unfortunately for Forbes, comes across very, very well on television.

TV may not be able to pick up the subtler qualities that go into leadership -- moral character, a vision for the future, that crap -- but it loves the superficial gloss. Majestic backdrops and snappy soundbites have overwhelmed American politics because they come across so well on the tube. If TV can effectively communicate anything about potential leaders of the free world -- aside from the fact that they have wildly inappropriate ideas about what constitutes an effective humidor -- it's basically this:

• I'm tall.
• I have good hair.
• I'm not creepy.

For instance, the man blinks too much.

I mean, way too much. It's unnerving. And even if you don't consciously notice it, it will set you on edge. In the age of televised everything, a candidate who can't look into the camera and not make his audience shiver had better start making lecture tour arrangements with Michael Dukakis, because he's not going to be getting a promotion any time soon.

Recently, Forbes was interviewed on Party Down with Sam and Cokie and managed to put any epileptics in the audience in seizures. He looked like he was trying to get a Morse code message out past his captors. He could have given nervous tic lessons to people suffering through heroin withdrawal.

Of course, there's a perfectly logical explanation for Forbes' behavior: he's suffering through heroin withdrawal.

Ha ha! Just a little joke. To my knowledge, Mr. Forbes has never taken illegal drugs, save walking into his bank vault and inhaling deeply. No, Forbes' behavior has a much more sensible explanation, one that's not only backed up by facts but makes an eerie amount of sense when you think about it:

He's a robot controlled by a pack of squirrels.

And squirrels that don't quite have the controls down yet. Forbes was talking to Sam and/or Cokie -- I've stopped being able to tell them apart -- and blinking up a storm and yet he managed to seem oddly disconnected. Not only were the words that came out of his mouth totally pre-packaged -- it's well-known that squirrels can't think on their feet -- but he would occasionally list slightly to the side when the squirrel responsible for his inner-ear would become distracted by George Stephanopolous' thick head of nesting hair.

This theory also explains why he always looks like he's got nuts hidden in his cheeks.

Not that I'm unsympathetic. Squirrel-controlled robot or no, the ability to calmly stare into the eerie, unblinking eye of national television coverage would leave me a nervous wreck, too. But I'm not running for president. I'm not trying to convince anybody to let me keep my sweaty, twitching finger on the nuclear button. I, basically, am not trying to talk enough people in to trusting me long enough for me to get into office and start the Glorious Squirrel Revolution.

Unlike Forbes, I'm not failing at it, either.

The best strategy for Forbes at this point is probably to simply admit the truth and come out of the, um, little hole in the tree. He should play it up, even -- hold a nationally televised press conference wherein his head opens up and Napoleon and Snowball, the two head squirrels, emerge to greet a phalanx of cameras. They could wave, say they want to get on with the business of the country, then duck back inside.

And that would be the end of it. Poof! The American people have had much worse things inhabit the Oval Office than a pack of squirrels and we would undoubtedly find the honesty refreshing.

Plus, squirrels are cute. Spaced-out multi-millionaires with delusions of global domination are creepy. Guess which comes across better on TV?