March 2000 Archives

When I go to the movies, one of two things happens: I order the kid-sized popcorn and get just enough buttery-drenched goodness to leave me wanting more, or I order the standard "small," eat half the anything-but-small bag, then notice that not only does the popcorn now taste like antique styrofoam, I'm sick to my stomach.

Every time I watch Sports Night, I have the popcorn revelation all over again. Half an hour of Aaron Sorkin-scripted television is wonderful; ask him to come up with an hour-and-a-half of programming goodness each week and something suffers.

In this case, both Sports Night and Sorkin get the short end of the stick. Every article profiling the success of The West Wing notes Sorkin's habitual lateness with scripts for both shows, and a damning Washington Post profile revealed that Sorkin regards West Wing and Sports Night as, respectively, a Maserati and a Miata. Sports Night's exile to second place may stem from a variety of things -- difficulties with ABC compared to the red-carpet treatment he's getting from NBC, the urge to nurture the new baby -- but it points to one common problem in television programming today.

The problem: good television producers -- the ones producing fresh and unique programming -- are being stretched too thin. Sorkin's story is hardly unique: former critics' darling David E. Kelley is now forced to hurdle bales of second-guessing articles on his races between the sets of The Practice and Ally McBeal, which, frankly, seems to be appropriate punishment for the man who foisted Snoops on us last fall. Tom Fontana began spreading his attention between the eye-popping and visceral HBO series Oz right around Season 5 of NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street; the NBC show declined noticeably during the next three years. Chris Carter tried to nurture the spooky duo Millennium and X-Files for three years. Millennium never gelled and X-Files meandered off into incomprehensibility. Dick Wolf is famous for keeping Law and Order running on all four cylinders for a decade, but nobody talks about the rocky three-year history of New York Undercover or the even shorter runs of Players,Feds, Swift Justice or The Wright Verdicts.

Sitcom producers aren't immune: Crane/Kaufman/Bright productions clearly didn't notice that Friends took a huge dip in quality right around the time Veronica's Closet was launching, or why else would they court further disaster by offering up the pallid Jesse? Although certain newsgroup denizens would have you believe The Simpsons has been steadily declining in quality since the first episode aired, the show really didn't start showing its age until Matt Groening began working on Futurama.

In fact, the only producer in all of Hollywood who seems immune to the perils of multiple production is Aaron Spelling. This could be due to a number of things: the ability to hire very talented underlings like Darren Starr; the ability to delegate like crazy, the ability to nurture talent over a long-running franchise so it begins to run itself (this explains why nearly every long-term Melrose Place or Beverly Hills, 90210 actor directed the show for which they worked); the fact that none of Spelling's shows aim for the same level of writing or originality as Carter's, Sorkin's or Fontana's; or, perhaps, Spelling once made a deal with someone who lives in a very warm place and eschews the gold standard for another form of currency.

And no, I'm not talking about Bedouins and sheep.

To come back to my original point -- and I do have one -- too much of a good thing diminishes its overall quality. People become overextended, and lose the ability to track details, write fresh dialogue, or generate original ideas. They get overwhelmed and exhausted. They end up inflicting Jon Seda on the same people who have been loyally staying home Friday nights trying to keep the ratings up on their criminally-underwatched show. They give us two years of gobbledygook about killer bees and black gook from outer space, and a "wrap-up episode" wherein nothing makes any sense at all. They turn a formerly dynamic and well-rounded character into a dithering ninny.

Lord knows it would be easy to blame the networks -- the stupid, self-cannibalizing, fraidy-cat networks. Rather than take a risk on an unknown talent, most nets would rather go with a known quantity, carrying those awful pitches -- you know, the ones like "It's Providence, but with a multiethnic sniper squad in L.A." -- to their grimly logical conclusion. Most networks would rather go with a known name and hope to recapture lightning in a bottle than to go with an unknown with unknown results; rolling by a producer's office with a wheelbarrow of unmarked Benjanmins apparently plays as a more solid development strategy than nurturing relative unknowns (like Malcolm in the Middle creator Linwood Boomer, who until recently toiled in relative obscurity) and cultivating their shows.

We could blame the producers. Shouldn't they know when they're overextended? Shouldn't they pass up the chance to begin wearing cloaks woven from residual checks in the interest of nurturing the show what brung them? No, and here's why: producers, as a species, are not laid-back underachievers. Expecting them to pass up lucrative opportunities for a little "me time" is like expecting Jay Leno to pass up a Clinton joke. Producers will make popcorn, dammit, because that's what they like to do. And if it tastes a little stale after a while -- well, what do you want? You asked for the popcorn.

This is why I blame my fellow man. We could all happily nosh on kid-sized bags of popcorn -- one rewarding show to watch per producer -- that leave us thinking about how wonderful the popcorn tastes and how wonderful it is to eat popcorn in the first place. But no. We apparently want the big bag, and we don't care how it tastes halfway down or how it makes us feel afterward. We demand more and we tune in, thus validating the idiot network strategy of driving talent into the ground prematurely. And then we complain vociferously when the decline in quality happens.

We did this to ourselves. Now shut up about Sports Night and finish your freakin' popcorn.

It's been two weeks since Kathie Lee Gifford shocked the millions of curious onlookers who tune in just to see if she'll finally drive Regis Philbin to kill by announcing her retirement from the most inexplicably popular daytime this side of Rosie O'Donnell -- Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. And only now have we been able to pull ourselves together and end our week-long crying jag.

We're not ashamed to admit it: We're going to miss the dickens out of Kathie Lee.

Oh, it's not that we like her. Goodness, no. Five minutes into her morning cloyfest, and we're bellowing at the TV for Regis to belt her one or, by God, we're hopping the red-eye to New York and doing the deed ourselves. We hate the too-cute stories about her spawn. We hate the musical numbers and the Christmas specials and the Carnival Cruise Lines ads. We've even grown to hate her enabler, Frank -- Frank Gifford, who has committed no previous wrong against humanity, save for not strangling Howard Cosell with his own toupee when he had the chance.

And yet, we're still going to miss Kathie Lee. We're going to miss her because she's an easy punch line.

This comedy business... it's not always heart-felt guffaws and back rubs from groupies. Sometimes -- and I swear this almost never happens to me -- the wit well runs dry and you find yourself starring at a blank screen for hours trying to think up a clever way to say that Boy Meets World just isn't that good of a show.

Where does a would-be satirist such as myself turn to in this, my darkest hour of need? To the manna from heaven that is Kathie Lee Gifford -- God's greatest gift to hack comedy writers.

I would rather be locked in a piano bar with Kathie Lee Gifford then spend another minute watching Boy Meets World.

Presto. Instant funny.

Afraid that your sly references to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man might sail over your readers' heads? Don't know enough opera to make a real kick-ass Puccini riff? Are you just plain lazy? Then tap into the vein of gold ore that is the random Kathie Lee Gifford joke -- the gag writer's best friend.

Only a few human beings -- Mussolini, J. Edgar Hoover, Bill Gates, Emmanuel Lewis -- have become so universally reviled that a simple disparaging remark can reduce your audience to howls of derisive laughter. And when it comes to generating nuclear levels of unrequited hate, Kathie Lee trumps them all.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Kathie Lee.

Kathie Lee who?

Kathie Lee and six underage Guatemalan sweatshop workers.

See?

And soon, that'll all be gone. Kathie Lee Gifford jokes -- perhaps our most precious natural resource after soybeans -- will soon be as topical and with-it as Vanilla Ice putdowns. We can't help but face the future with a little fear, a little uncertainty, a little trepidation about where our next punch line will come from.

All we can say is, thank God CBS has signed Tony Danza to a sitcom deal for this fall.

(Continued from part one...)

And then James Collier grabbed the Woman with the Clipboard and began to make Dirty Love to her right there in the middle of 67th Street while singing the theme to Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Sorry. That was for cross-posting to alt.sex.erotica.teevee.

What actually happened after receiving the number 12 from the Woman with the Clipboard was I went to lunch. I needed to bulk up for the hours ahead. Also, I wanted to get indoors to warm up and feel my toes again. We were told to return at 4 o'clock and line up; I would not be late, because I would not be one of those people whose place in line would be taken by some latecomer who read the instructions on the ticket. I was an Experienced Line Person.

Somewhere between 3:30 and 4 o'clock I returned to line up only to discover that there was, in fact, a busload of Austrian tourists with special dispensation from their embassy to see Regis on line ahead of me. Or maybe they were winners of a local radio station contest or something. Whatever it was, apparently being number 12 did not, in fact, mean that I would be the twelfth person to enter the studio.

It didn't matter because I was getting in one way or another. I wasn't trained to take no for an answer.

The Woman with the Clipboard was once again joined by the second Woman with the Clipboard and again they began to shepherd the crowd into the studio. I shuffled my feet and made little "baa" noises as we were led forward. It occurred to me that the entire line would keep moving even if instead of a studio at the end we encountered a guy with a nail gun. Even so is McDonald's kept well-stocked with hamburger.

As we made our slow way in, the number of "Is that your final answer?" jokes grew to deafening proportions. No wonder it's the holder of the World Record for Shortest Time From Conception to Cliché.

We were taken in small groups of about ten to a spot just inside the door where we could prepare to go through a metal detector. This was to protect Regis Philbin, who is, of course, of utmost importance to national defense. My Swiss Army knife was taken and placed in an envelope for me to pick up on my way out; too bad I wasted all that time with the Mossad training to leap over the audience and kill Regis with the corkscrew.

James had to go through the metal detector several times. Eventually the security guards gave up and let him through anyway. Hint to would-be Millionaire terrorists: Wear an outfit with a lot of metal buttons, eyelets, snaps, and zippers so the guards allow you through before they find the bomb in your pants. A large chromium steel vibrator will also help speed things along through embarrassment. Feign surprise: "I left that in my pocket?"

At long last we hustled into the nerve center of ABC's dominion of the airwaves. The place where it all begins. The place from which Regis has taken over the Nielsens (the week before the taping, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? took all five of the top Nielsen positions). The studio.

The studio was very small. It looked much larger on TV. At first I thought it was perhaps because of camera angles, or focal length, or TV trickery; later I discovered it was because it didn't have Regis Philbin in it. Regis would be dwarfed by a puffy Shih Tzu.

The studio floor, in case you were wondering, was made up of plexiglass panels over a sort of bowl covered in mirror fragments. Some set designer stayed up long nights taking tokes from his hookah to think this up. I hoped he considered people of my size as I bounced across the panels to my seat.

From there I surveyed the studio. It still looked small. People scurried around setting up lights and cameras and prompters. Other people shuffled family members of contestants from here to there. Two video projection screens were set up just above and behind the audience sitting in the front of the stage; I was seated to one side, behind Regis. I realized I would be spending the whole taping looking at the back of Regis' head. Thanks to Phil and his piece on the show, all I kept thinking was "Gasbag."

Eventually everyone was in their seats. The bustling began to die down. And out came the Black Comedian to warm us up.

You know the Black Comedian. You don't know this particular guy, but you know the Black Comedian: black enough to be black, but not so black as to alienate the white folk. Hip, but not too hip. Not one of the guys from Def Comedy Jam or Showtime at the Apollo. One of the guys from Uncle Tom Tonight. You know the guy. He makes a couple of jokes about how all black people look alike to whites, maybe a fried chicken joke or two, picks on the brothers in the audience, maybe says something about how white guys can't dance. You know the guy.

He gave us some guidelines for audience behavior -- I wasn't paying attention as I was too busy warming up my voice for shouting out the answers to the stupid contestants -- and then introduced us to the show's producer, Mike Davies. You might remember Davies as the pommy Brit who gave us such wonderments as So That's the Name of the Teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and Who Said Drew Carey Could Improvise?

Davies attempted to awaken us from the line-induced coma we had all slipped into. He instructed us on how to applaud and noted which rows would be visible over Regis' and the contestant's shoulders. He pointed out that since on TV the audience appears to be a thousand strong, but is in reality a tiny group of two hundred, we all needed to clap like five people. Then he told us to keep a stiff upper lip, V for Victory and all that rot, and returned us to the urban-but-not-too-urban grip of the Black Comedian. He in turn introduced the stage manager who then took us through the various Levels of Clapping so the sound guy could set the recording levels. The Clapping Levels are: small; medium; loud; and loud with hooting. Each of these Levels can be done with a slow or quick fade. Stomping of the feet was not permitted because the set would collapse.

For the record: Ten minutes of continuous clapping is exhausting.

After the clap check my arms fell off. Then they showed us a clip from a previous episode where the contestant won a million dollars. Hey, it looks just like TV. Then the Black Comedian returned and tried to excite us by giving away t-shirts. If a person could name an American sitcom with a theme song with lyrics, and the Black Comedian couldn't sing it, he would give that person a t-shirt. If he could sing it, he would give them tickets to a comedy club. This was a little like the old joke about the contest: First prize is a week in Philadelphia, second prize is two weeks.

The woman next to me won a shirt. I examined it closely. It was not the cheapest object I've ever held but I did make a note to wash my hands after the taping.

This little game of the Black Comedian's would continue during all of the breaks for the next two hours. He even ran a round "for the brothers" in which he challenged the only two black men in the audience -- a natty fellow in a suit and James -- to sing the theme song to Good Times for a shirt. The natty fellow declined but James wrinkled his brow and dredged up from the bottom of his soul the song -- and he sang it, baby.

Just so you know: James Collier is the Black Man With No Funk. But he got his shirt anyway.

At long last, it was time to introduce the Man of the Hour. The Black Comedian wound up and brought out the only man ever named after a high school, Regis Philbin!

Regis Philbin is quite diminutive. I mean, he is really little.

"Get a good look!" Regis yelled, projecting all the way to Little Italy. "It's the only time you can see me without her!"

Not only is Regis the only man ever named after a high school, he's also the only man whose entire career consists of bitching about the date what brung him.

He made a few more hilarious comments and vanished backstage again. More t-shirts were distributed by the Black Comedian. Songs were sung badly. Meanwhile, the set was readied.

Around this time I began to realize something. The realization spread upward, starting at my inner thighs, screaming as they were from the effort of holding my legs together so they wouldn't be leaning on the people sitting on either side of me. From there it moved to my butt, which was beginning to moan softly about the naugahyde-covered steel bench it was sitting on. My lumbar region chimed in, then my middle back, then my neck, and finally I realized:

Being an audience member is grueling. I had stood on line for over an hour in the rain; then I had again stood on line for almost four hours in the frigid afternoon. After that I was engaged in a ten-minute forced clap; now I was sitting here while Mr. and Mrs. Everyperson thought up sitcom theme songs for this UPN blaxploitation reject to sing in exchange for booty. And the taping itself had yet to begin.

Next time I'm pushing for the Who Wants to Climb Mount Kilimanjaro? assignment.

Still, I sat there, along with 200 other feebleminded jerks. Because, hey, it's TV. Point a camera and a microphone at any one of us and we become sheep. Sure, we could refuse to clap. We could shout out answers to the drooling contestants. We could leap up and demand that Regis make an accounting for his existence before a just and angry Jehovah. But we don't. It would take a crypto-anarchist cynic with balls of titanium to do so. Because all the people giving you orders are so sincere. And so nice. And because, hey, it's TV. We'll do anything for TV.

Just when I was thinking of popping out for a quick epidural the taping finally began. Regis came in and all of the would-be contestants were brought in to sit at their Fast Fingers consoles around the stage and finally the first actual contestant was brought in, along with his wife, who got to sit in the special Spotlight Seat.

James and I took bets on which of the Fast Fingers contestants would be first to make it to the actual game. I chose the guy who looked like Colin Quinn because looking like Colin Quinn is a sure sign of intelligence.

The first contestant was great. He was handsome and personable. He was a graduate of Annapolis, for crying out loud -- here was a guy who, I thought, could go all the way. But then he pulled two of his lifelines for an easy question, one even having to do with water. What else do they teach in the Navy, anyway? The question: Where can the world's largest supply of fresh water be found? The Antarctic ice cap, Lake Superior, Lake Victoria, or some glacier no one outside of Norway has heard of? HelLO? Antarctica is a continent, there, buddy -- it just doesn't get any bigger than that.

By using his Call a Friend lifeline, though, he answered one question I'd had about the show. On the televised show, Regis just says, "AT&T will get them on the line now," and poof! There's Big Ed live from Skokie or wherever. On the set, Regis just says, "AT&T will get them on the line now," and poof! There's Big Ed. So apparently the contestant gives out the phone number of their lifeline before they get to the set. As to whether or not someone checks to make sure they're home, I don't know. All the lifelines were home when anyone called while I was there. But Regis' prompter, which I could read from my seat, did instruct Reege to get the proper person on the phone, so perhaps sometimes the lifeline isn't there.

More amusing, however, is that Reege's prompter also instructed him on how to answer the phone. It actually read, "HI, THIS IS REGIS PHILBIN HERE." You'd think he'd have that much covered. At other times he was expected to fly without a net: Sometimes it just read, "AD-LIB INTVW" or "MAKE KATHIE LEE RFRNCE." But making a phone call he needed help with.

Our Man from Annapolis also chose to poll the audience on a question, this one asking who wrote the Janis Joplin song "Me and Bobby McGee." I had promised myself I would be the one percent to put in the wrong answer when this came up, but I liked the Man from Annapolis, and anyway this was a genuinely difficult question, and one I knew the answer to, so I answered "Kris Kristofferson" (Bobby McGee was originally a girl's name, but Janis turned it around -- I knew listening to classic rock would come in handy someday).

Finally, though, Annapolis Guy blinked. After $250,000 he hit the question asking what Newton Minow was referring to when he used the phrase "vast wasteland." James and I knew the answer was television, but then we are the vast wasteland experts.

So the Man from Annapolis left the stage. And Regis, who on the show appears to walk upstage to stand, actually walked upstage, turned and stood on two helpful footprints marked on the floor, and then spun and walked offstage. This was followed by much bustling as cameramen moved around and the Woman from Annapolis was hustled off to hug her new money. In a little while, Regis returned and stood on his mark and the taping began again. On TV, this looks as if it all happens right in a row.

During the first part of this taping I was mesmerized, not by Mr. Annapolis' performance, but by the simple mechanics of running this show. For certain shots, the two roving cameramen would move down steps, or back up, and unfold tripods, all in complete silence. The boom camera would swoop in or out. I found myself sometimes watching the studio monitors instead of the actual action; apparently, given the choice between live and Memorex, I prefer Memorex. Before a commercial break Regis' prompter would read "THROW TO BREAK." Whenever we applauded, Regis was inaudible, so we missed much of his throwing to break; we had to follow the waving stage manager with our clapping.

And before we returned from one of the breaks, the stage manager called out "SUBFLOOR!" whereupon several people rushed out from the wings. They used suction cups to remove one of the plexiglass floor panels and replace it with a nice clean one (people had been walking on the original one); then two men lifted the panel behind that one and waited. The boom camera was lowered into the opening, below the floor; in order to do this one of the roving cameramen had come over and pointed his camera at the boom camera, so the boom guy could see on the monitor that his camera didn't hit anything going in. Then Regis returned from the break and videotape started rolling; the boom camera took its shot of Regis and Mr. Annapolis from under the floor and swept upwards as the two subfloor guys moved forward, replaced the plexiglass, and ran off back into the wings -- in complete silence.

Bet you had no idea how complicated that simple-looking five second shot was.

So after the Man from Annapolis chickened out, it was time for the Fast Fingers round. And my man Colin Quinn won. Pay up, Collier, you stud.

There was an immediate break as someone had to go get Colin's friend or family and put them in the Spotlight Seat. Colin's "friend" arrived. Our friend Colin has a life partner, it seems.

Colin didn't do as well as Mr. Annapolis, despite being a Harvard Law grad. His Ask the Audience question was "Where do golfers putt?" and I gleefully entered "sand trap." Then he got stumped on the $250,000 question, even after calling a friend: "In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, what was the title character's real name?" I cannot believe anyone doesn't know this, especially not an English major-Harvard Law grad-turned actor, but there you go. (The correct answer is "Dolores.")

Another Fast Fingers round brought us Schoolmarm, a bright-eyed schoolteacher who burned through several questions before we finally ran out of time. And believe me, we couldn't wait. By the time Schoolmarm was answering Regis' questions, I had discovered the "grue" in "grueling" -- it was trying to climb up my ass.

After all of this, I had found that being a contestant on Millionaire is both easier and harder than it looks. The problem of being halfway intelligent in front of 278 trillion people vanishes in the studio; the damned show doesn't even go out live and the cameras are almost invisible. All you need to do is be halfway intelligent in front of 200 people or so, and with all the handy things to distract you -- the little computer screen, your glass of Poland Spring water, Regis Philbin's giant head -- even that can't be hard.

However, there are occasional technical glitches, and these can be cruel. The Man from Annapolis, for example, asked for his 50/50 lifeline (on the question about fresh water), whereupon the computers stopped working and he had to sit there for ten minutes contemplating his answer while the bug was worked out. Ten minutes of sweating, of waiting, of tension. Not the measly ten seconds it will appear to be on the show when it airs Sunday. During Colin's stint there was a fifteen minute pause after he gave one of his answers while various things were worked upon; no one explained why there was the pause, but there it was. Poor Colin was stuck twisting in the wind of Mr. Philbin.

There is one final ignominy. After the taping is through, any questions Regis flubbed have to be re-recorded. Apparently never having heard of looping, the stage manager then has to go get Regis and the contestant -- who has, by now, slunk off with his tail between his legs -- and have them recreate the scene where Regis reads the question. So when Regis is reading the question about Lolita on the show, the Colin sitting there is not the Colin who has to answer that question, but the Colin who already whiffed the question and lost his chance at a million dollars.

And as if returning to the scene of your defeat isn't humiliating enough, right after he reads the question again Regis takes great pleasure in bellowing out, "WRONG!" right in your face. Because, after all, he's been dying to do that all night. All season, in fact.

The show was over. The retakes were finished. Regis thanked us and disappeared like a whack-a-mole. The contestants went off to sleep with their new-found wealth. The Fast Fingers people drifted off, their shot at fame and fortune swirling around the ABC bowl. The Black Comedian tossed away his last t-shirt. I picked up my knife as we were ushered out into the night.

And I returned to my corner of the TeeVee stable and began to write, my only company the clicking of my keyboard. And Collier's mad howling over his t-shirt victory.

You might think, since I write for TeeVee, that I am deeply connected with the television industry. That I frequent sound stages across Hollywood and New York. That I hobnob with grips and other key people, hang around the lunch buffet with directors, take meetings with executive producers, interview stars. You might think that I am privy to all the secrets of the Land we call TV.

You might think that. You'd be wrong, though. The fact is, here in the stable of TeeVee, I don't even rate my own stall. Whenever anything comes up -- invites to Whose Line Is It, Anyway? tapings, free dinners with Emeril, bottles of Moet et Chandon from Norman, gilt-edged tickets to the Odd Man Out Sixth Episode Black Tie Gala, whatever -- after Phil takes what he wants, and Mach Schnell gets his piece, and so on down through the ranks, even down to Boychuk; after everyone else has had their drink, the trickle-down evaporates before it gets to me and I count myself lucky if I only have to muck out Collier's cell.

Therefore when my mother-in-law managed to figure out how to use the Web to finagle tickets to be part of the audience for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire I jumped at the chance. At worst, I'd get a TeeVee piece out of it, and how else would I ever catch up with Phil's record of 8,276 published columns? (Aside from killing him and eating his heart.)

Of course, they made me take Collier.

So I found myself standing in the rain on West 67th Street outside the ABC studios at 3:30 in the afternoon. The tickets, which are covered with a surprising amount of verbiage conveying amazingly little information, asked that I arrive at least 1 1/2 hours before taping began. Taping began at 5 o'clock. I might not be high on the TeeVee totem pole but I can do basic math: 5 o'clock minus 1-1/2 hours equals 3:30. Rain optional.

There were a few people milling around outside but not much of a line. This, I thought, was a good sign. I waited patiently to speak with the official-looking black woman with the clipboard. The Woman with the Clipboard, by the way, is one of the best jobs one can get, because once you are the Woman with the Clipboard you can yell at people indiscriminately. That was how I overheard that the short line I was on was just to get my ticket numbered.

Numbered? Yes. It seems just having a ticket was not enough. The black Woman with the Clipboard explained in stentorian tones: The studio was built before anyone thought Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would be popular. Therefore they got a cheap set and a secondhand host with a few miles on him. Cheap sets don't come with actual seats. Cheap sets come with benches. Therefore the number of people in the audience varies from 150 to 200 bodies depending on butt size. If we had "tiny hiney," she said, she could fit more people.

Just considering the small crowd I arrived with, we did not have tiny hiney. We might, in fact, have been possessed of the biggest butts ever seen on national television.

The black Woman with the Clipboard took my ticket and wrote a number on it: 220. This did not bode well for our hero. I asked when she had started numbering tickets.

"I come out at exactly 2:30," she told me, "And there are always people on line already."

Apparently I cannot do simple math. 5 o'clock minus 1 1/2 hours equals 2:30 or earlier.

After getting our tickets numbered, we would-be audience members were asked to go away for a while and come back at 4 o'clock, when we would be admitted in the order of our numbers. If, by some chance, people were not there when their numbers were called, then those of us with astronomically large numbers might be admitted instead.

More simple math: 220 people on line ahead of me minus a maximum of 200 people in the studio equals 20 people who had to have some sort of horrible accident in order for me to see Regis. Hey, this was New York -- anything could happen. So at 4:00 I got on line and waited.

I wasn't the only idiot, either. There were at least fifty people on line behind me. Eventually the Woman with the Clipboard was joined by another Woman with the Clipboard and the two of them began to herd the line into the building. It rapidly became clear that I had as much chance of getting into the show as Howard Stern has of getting into a convent.

"Do you think I'll make it in?" a guy behind me asked the second Woman with the Clipboard.

"What number do you have?"

"Two-thirty."

She looked dubious.

"Has it ever gotten up that high before?" he pleaded with her.

"Nope," she replied, and returned to her job of hollering at people.

Eventually the smallish group that was left gave up hope of getting in. A woman began chanting, "T-SHIRTS! T-SHIRTS!" and the rest of us took up the refrain.

"I DON'T HAVE T-SHIRTS," the second Woman with the Clipboard bellowed, "AND I DO NOT WANT A RIOT."

We all shut up.

Then we were offered the chance to sit in a room off the sound stage, where we wouldn't be in the audience and wouldn't be allowed to vote during the Ask the Audience Lifeline but where we could watch the show on monitors. This, to me, sounded like my living room, only farther away from my bathroom. They couldn't fit too many people even in this shoddy manner, but they would try. In a sudden showing of New Yorker hospitality, we pushed forward a couple on their honeymoon from St. Louis who had ticket numbers 876 and 877 or thereabouts.

Then the Woman with the Clipboard gave out non-guaranteed tickets for the next week's taping and we all went home.

Armed with my new knowledge I was determined to secure a fantastic seat for myself at the next taping. I arrived at 12:30. I was fifth on line. Apparently more than just Vidiots are in need of lives. The people ahead of me, and some who showed up just after I did, were all survivors of the previous line I had stood on. We were all thrilled that it was not raining.

It was, however, chilly. Not outright cold, but that cold that sneaks up on you, so you start out standing there thinking, Gee, it's not that cold, and then two hours later you realize you haven't felt your feet in fifteen minutes. Soon we were considering starting a fire, but of course we were standing on the cleanest street in New York City. There wasn't even a homeless guy we could get smoldering.

There we stood for many hours. When you stand on line for a long time, you go through several stages of psychosis. First, people start making friends with you. I don't want to sound egotistical, but the fact remains that I am better than most people and am not interested in their puny little lives. For one thing, everyone else was there because of their slavish devotion to the Idiot Box. I was there to gain insight and report back on it. As these Line People talked to me, as the skinny chicks from ABC came out and smoked and looked upon us with contempt, as the Manhattan dog walkers skipped by barely concealing their feelings of superiority, I wanted to shout: I AM NOT A FANBOY, I'M A FARKING JOURNALIST!

Luckily, I had minions with me, so I was able to steal away to a nearby Starbucks and support the capitalist pig-dog money machine while they held my place in line. During these sojourns I bumped into enough famous people that if I'd made one more trip for another cup of chai I would be forced to use boldface like a gossip column. Mariska Hargitay was seen jogging on the Upper West Side with her new beau. Sorry about that mean TeeVee article I wrote, Mar. Linda Fiorentino caught a brew at a local Starbucks -- loved you in "Dogma"! Sarah Wallace, you're the best local news reporter I've seen today. Liam Neeson was in a bit of a hurry. But you were great in "Excalibur," Neesie. Henry Gibson is still breathing. Henry, man, excellent turn in "Magnolia." (I didn't see Henry Gibson, actually, but the world needs more Henry Gibson references.)

The next stage of line psychosis involves hallucinating. You think you see the Woman with the Clipboard coming, but she's not really there. Your head snaps up every time someone walks by the front of the line.

In the next stage you and the other Line People begin to circulate myths about Those in Charge. They're going to start numbering the tickets at a hundred because a busload of Austrian tourists has special dispensation from their embassy to see Regis. They're going to cancel today's taping. They're going to throw tear gas grenades. They're going to hand out hundred-dollar bills.

During the next and final stage of line psychosis you start fantasizing about what evils you'll commit if the Woman with the Clipboard shows up one minute late.

She showed up fifteen minutes late and blamed the traffic. I was too numb to carry out my nefarious plan, though, and anyway the line psychosis dissipated as she numbered my ticket. I was number 12 after the other people in line and those in my party were tallied.

I was on my way to see Regis.

Continued in part two...

My television world has gone topsy-turvy. No longer do I watch shows on their network-designated nights. No longer do I watch commercials (except when they're zipping by at high speed). No longer do I fret about having enough videotape ready to record my favorite shows.

At this point, the savvier TeeVee readers out there will have anticipated what I'm going to say next: that I've bought a TiVo -- one of these new little gadgets that they're calling Personal Video Recorders (PVRs). And, my friends, I will never go back to watching television the old way. Never, ever.

First, a little explanation for what these PVRs are. They're essentially little television computers. Inside them are a bunch of chips and a gigantic hard drive. You plug in your cable, your satellite box, and the like into the TiVo, and then attach the TiVo to your television set. TiVo records programs, not to a videotape, but to the TiVo hard drive. (It uses the same sort of digital video technology that DVD uses, but it stores to a rewriteable hard drive rather than a read-only DVD disc.)

When I bought the TiVo box -- a stereo-component-sized item actually called the Philips Personal TV Receiver -- I honestly felt that this kind of technology would never really hit the mainstream, at least not for a long time. That's because while this is cool technology, it's pretty hard to describe the benefits. (Not that I won't try to explain it to you.)

But now that I've had the TiVo for a few months, I've changed my opinion. The PVR is going to be everywhere, and it's going to be everywhere much faster than you think. It'll be attached to DVD players. It'll be built into television sets. And within a year or two, every digital cable box and satellite receiver being manufactured will have one inside it.

So let me explain to you, as best I can, why I am now a card-carrying disciple of the Church of TiVo.

Play back and record at the same time. This is perhaps the most poorly communicated feature of TiVo, but it's the best one, too. With TiVo, you can watch a prerecorded program at the same time that TiVo is recording something else. If you're a compulsive VCR time-shifter, you could always watch everything on tape -- but you'd need a second VCR in order to do what TiVo does, namely the ability to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Wednesday evening while you're recording The West Wing for later.

This is incredibly freeing, because it means you don't have to worry about what's being broadcast by the networks at any given time -- if you want to record it, you do, and TiVo will grab it. But you can watch whatever you like, whenever you like, regardless.

Pause live TV. Ads for TiVo and its competitors (ReplayTV and the new enhanced WebTV) make a big deal about this, as well they should. But it takes a while to sink in: if you're watching something (not recording it, but just watching it live) and you get a phone call or have to go to the bathroom, you just hit the pause button on the remote as if you were watching a recording. TiVo stops the action and keeps recording the live program. When you're ready to roll again -- up to 30 minutes later -- you can press the play button and begin watching where you left off. TiVo keeps recording ahead of you. When you get to a commercial break, you can fast-forward just as if you were watching a recording. When you finally catch up to the live signal, TiVo drops you back into the action.

Talk about liberating. I pause a football game, take the dog for a walk, and come back to pick up the game right where I left off. By the time I've reached the middle of the 3rd quarter, I've sped through commercials and the halftime show and am back in sync with the live game.

Selective deletion. It's a feature that's hard to sell, but being able to selectively delete programs off the TiVo hard drive is one of the things that makes me a believer.

On a videotape, everything you record goes on a long strand of tape, one show after the other. On TiVo, everything is located on a hard drive, which can be erased and rewritten at any time. This means you don't have to search around on TiVo to find where the beginning of Friends is -- you just go to the Now Showing menu, click down to Friends and press play.

But it gets better. Because once you're done with Friends, you delete it from TiVo -- and that 30 minutes of space is freed up to be used elsewhere. That's not something that would really work on a VCR, because Friends might be wedged between two shows you haven't watched yet... say The West Wing and Frasier.

If you're like me, you end up recording over things you don't want to record over, or building a library of unlabeled videotapes containing a bunch of things you've already seen and a few shows you haven't gotten around to yet. Then you forget what shows are where, give up, and record over it all.

With TiVo, you just pick a show to watch, watch it, and delete it. The space on the hard drive gets put back into the pool for any new show to use.

A smart interface. I used to own a gadget called VideoGuide. VideoGuide was a precursor of TiVo that let you see an on-screen program guide and select programs you'd like to record. (When it came time to record the shows, VideoGuide would use an infrared signal to turn on your VCR, turn it to the right channel, and begin recording the show.)

VideoGuide wasn't bad. The on-screen program guide on my satellite box isn't bad. But TiVo's on-screen guide is fantastic. It shows you everything that's currently on (with descriptions), and you can also peer into the future to see what's going to be on later. Want to record something that's on at 3 a.m. tomorrow? Press a button and TiVo will record that show.

As a satellite TV subscriber, I also like TiVo because it's unified my TV viewing life. My satellite box is connected to the TiVo (TiVo controls it remotely via a serial cable), but so is the cable that carries all my local channels. TiVo takes both sources of programming and integrates them, so I don't have to keep switching between satellite channels and local channels. They're all in one place.

But TiVo's interface goes beyond the program guide. It's got a friendly series of menus that step you through the various tasks you can use TiVo to perform -- you can pick programs to record, see what's coming up in your recording schedule, look at the list of programs currently ready for viewing on the TiVo hard drive... even search for a program by its name and find when it's going to be on next.

Season passes. Taking the friendly interface concept a little further, with TiVo you can do more than set individual shows to record -- you can tell TiVo to record a show whenever it's on. After a few weeks with TiVo, ours was set up to record every single show we watched faithfully. That '70s Show moves to a different time slot? No problem -- TiVo knows the entire television schedule (downloaded via a toll-free telephone call in the middle of the night) and will follow your shows wherever they go.

Sometimes there are hitches -- what happens if two shows you watch are on the same night? TiVo has to pick one, and you need to check to see it's picked the right one. It'd be nice if you could tell TiVo not to record reruns. But in general, once TiVo knows what you want to record on a regular basis, your TV viewing life becomes a lot easier. All you need to do is look at the menu of shows TiVo has recorded, and pick what you want to watch.

TiVo's Suggestions. Perhaps the weirdest thing about TiVo can be found on its included remote control -- two buttons, one showing a thumbs pointing up, the other with a thumb pointing down. As you watch shows (or even simply select them in the program guide), you can press these buttons to make your pleasure or displeasure known to TiVo.

TiVo then uses your likes and dislikes to extrapolate what sorts of shows you like to watch. Then, when you're not watching TV, it fills up its hard drive with items it thinks you might want to see. (This is extra space being filled up -- these "suggested" shows never over-write shows you've specifically requested.) In my case, this means there are usually a few episodes of The Simpsons and NewsRadio on my TiVo in case I want to watch them.

The TiVo remote. Finally, I've got to say a few words about the TiVo remote: It's cool. There, I said it. This contoured, space-age clicker fits easily in your hand. It looks neat. It's got well-labeled buttons, including an almost Nintendo-style directional button that you use to navigate TiVo's various menu options. It's the best remote control I've ever used.

Upgradeability. TiVo is, at its core, a computer. It's upgradeable. In fact, TiVo has already announced several updates for this year, including the ability to press a button during ads for upcoming TV shows and have TiVo automatically record the advertised shows. New features are added during the device's overnight phone call, so they're basically transparent.

And there you have it: one man's journey into the new frontier of TV. I no longer watch live shows other than sporting events. I no longer watch most shows on the days they're aired. For my favorites, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I usually don't start watching them until a half hour after they've started, so that I can be assured that I can watch the whole thing without sitting through the commercials.

I no longer live in a world where "Must See TV" exists on a particular night. I pick shows that I want to see, be they on the networks, cable, or simply on local stations. I watch them whenever I'm in the mood. Prime Time has ceased to have any meaning to me. I am no longer controlled by the television; I control it.

I love my TiVo. You want to take it away from me? You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Our society is diseased. Today's exemplum: The Howard Stern Show, although probably not in the way that you're thinking.

A young woman, a gymnast, arrives at the WXRK studio in New York where Stern does his radio show in full view of the cameras of E!. She wants Howard to buy her a pair of breast implants because her natural breasts are so small.

If you're not a regular watcher or listener of Stern's show this might seem odd to you. But it isn't; Howard regularly has women perform tricks, or tell sob stories, or otherwise grovel before him in the hopes that he will have pity on them and buy them breast implants. This is all part of Howard Stern's long-range statistical study on what, exactly to the cent, everyone's price is.

In the studio with the gymnast, Howard goes though his usual schtick: "You're cute, you're really cute, lemme see your breasts." As always happens on Howard's show -- because his universe is more entertaining than yours or mine -- the young woman complies.

But here something strange happens. Howard tells her, "You know, you don't need implants." This is akin to Pope John Paul II telling you, "Maybe you should consider an abortion."

"I'm tired of looking like a boy," she replies, apparently unaware of the precedent-shattering nature of Stern's previous sentence. (The stock market is still reeling.)

But Howard goes on. She has a great body, he says, and indeed she does -- she's a gymnast, after all, all muscular curves. She has a beautiful face. She is, in short, an incredibly beautiful woman; or, in Howard's vocabulary, a hot chick. Her breasts, which are an A cup, fit perfectly with her athletic physique.

Howard calls in his big guns, the guys in his entourage. Ralph and Gary and Stuttering John. And they are all stunned by this woman.

Now, these are guys who have seen models, actresses, porn stars, strippers, hookers -- all manner of women whose job it is to be beautiful or sexy in one way or another. Frequently these women are naked. And these guys -- Ralph especially -- are inordinately cruel to these women. They pick on their every defect. Every fold, every wrinkle, every sag, line, mark, zit, frizz, stubble, or deposit of fat is fodder for their incredibly nasty comments. Women who have thought themselves to be the most gorgeous woman on Earth have come away in tears from a session with these guys and Ralph's laser pointer. He uses a laser pointer, for God's sake!

But the guys are all bowled over by her. They all agree, the gymnast does not need implants. She is, in fact, a hot chick, even unmodified.

And yet she persists. She wants bigger breasts.

So Howard Stern, in order for her to earn the gift of bigger breasts, comes up with something for her to do, something in theory humiliating, like walking around New York City with tampons taped to her forehead. (If Howard thinks this is humiliation, he should live my life for a while.)

She does this. Howard has pity on her and calls her back to the studio after only a short stroll. Then he has her play "Who Wants to Be a Turkish Millionaire?", where he asks her three questions and, if she answers them correctly, she gets the implants, even though Howard feels she doesn't need them. Her lifeline: If she can't answer a question, she can just take off all her clothes, and it will be as if she answered the question correctly.

The first question is "What does KKK stand for?" "Ku Klux Klan," she answers.

(These questions might seem easy, but considering that the average Stern guest makes a paper bag of wet mice look like Mycroft Holmes, they are actually quite difficult.)

The second question is "What is the freezing point of water?" Without hesitation she replies, "32 degrees. Fahrenheit."

She is one question away from her free implants. And suddenly, Gary, Stern's producer, jumps in.

Again, I should point out that, as Howard Stern's producer, Gary has seen more women naked than anyone but Stern himself and Hugh Hefner. There are veteran gynecologists who have seen fewer vulvas than Gary.

And Gary jumps in with the question, "What year was the Magna Carta signed?"

I consider myself of above-average intelligence with above-average fact retention. I play along at home with Jeopardy! and holler epithets at the idiots playing the game. I am smart. And even I have no idea when the Magna Carta was signed. 1213? 1640? Last week? No clue.¹ It's clear, then, that although this girl is the Stephen Hawking of Stern guests, she is going to have to get naked on this one. And she does. And she is, in a word, glorious.

She is so beautiful Howard Stern -- Howard Stern! -- is banging his head against his microphone. She is so beautiful Gary had to see her naked, Gary who can see hundreds of naked women just by stepping out of his office.

This is validation. This is validation with a capital V. You cannot ask for more than this. For these troglodytes, these deviants, these drooling hunchbacked connoisseurs of the female form to find you so attractive, when they have torn down and rejected and stamped "Grade ZZZ" on the cellulite-addled asses of the self-selected members of the Most Beautiful herd -- this is as rock-solid proof as anyone could ever hope to find that you are, in fact, and in no uncertain terms, one Incredibly Hot Mama.

And yet, and yet, and yet -- and yet she still wants bigger breasts.

I cannot imagine what trauma occurred in this woman's life to cause her to think this way. I cannot dream of what twisted thing must have happened to her in her youth to make her feel thus. I cannot believe she really thinks she needs implants. What man used her so cruelly? What boyfriend's offhand remark did this? What guy's telltale glance? What locker-room taunting?

I do not know. I cannot fathom this. I can only say that a society which would cause a woman to feel this way is diseased. There is something terribly, terribly wrong here.

And for once, it's not Howard Stern's fault.

---

1. Turns out it was 1215. My first guess of 1213 was not far off after all. I'm a farking genius!

On Sunday, Fox broadcast the second annual TV Guide Awards. In the audience was 39-year-old Tina Taylor, whom TV Guide editors had chosen as America's #1 TV Fan.

Surely Ms. Taylor appears to be a good choice. Her children are, she thinks, just like those she sees on programs like Full House and Everybody Loves Raymond. She thinks her mother-in-law is just like Ray Romano's TV mother. She has a 52-inch TV in her family room in addition to five other TVs; she owns five VCRs and a DVD player. And, "The TV is on 24 hours a day practically because my kids are at the house," she says.

24 hours a day practically. That's a lot of TV. Ms. Taylor herself watches news in the morning before plunking her kids down in front of the Cartoon Network, where they sit all day. At night, the whole family spends hours watching sitcoms and game shows. No word on whether everyone falls asleep to the TV leaving it on overnight, but given that the TV is on 24 hours a day practically, it's a good guess that this is, in fact, the case.

Despite this, the TV Guide editors found Ms. Taylor had a life, too. They say, "What was appealing about Tina is that she has a balanced view of TV. She has a life and fits it into her life." Although, we should note, Ms. Taylor does not read books and usually only reads, well, TV Guide.

Indeed, it sounds as if we have a winner in Ms. Tina Taylor.

But we beg to differ. The TV Guide editors missed. They did not find America's True #1 TV Fan. They did not find her because TV Guide found their #1 fan by interviewing people in shopping malls and viewing videos sent in by hopeful contestants. The True #1 TV Fan has no time for such diversions. She spends all her time at home, watching TV.

TeeVee caught up with Ms. Rosaria Jimenez in her one-bedroom apartment on 123rd Street in New York City. According to her account -- and the neighbors back her up on this -- she has not left her apartment in 20 years, not since Hello, Larry was on.

"I just couldn't take that show," she told us.

Of course, 20 years ago she was capable of leaving her apartment. These days, however, she doubts that she'll ever see the outdoors again. Ms. Jimenez weighs just under 842 pounds.

"I blame it on the Twinkies," she explains. "That and the fact that I don't get up from the sofa more than once a day. If it weren't for the TV in the bathroom, I don't know what I'd do."

Unlike other people who claim to love TV, Rosaria doesn't have a fancy TV, or a lot of VCRs, or a DVD player. She doesn't even have cable. All she has is one console set with a pair of rabbit ears and an old black and white set for the toilet. She owns no shoes, only two house dresses, and has not bathed since viewing the second episode of Charlie Hoover in 1991. Ms. Jimenez recalls, "I just felt so dirty after seeing Sam Kinison in a Fox sitcom, I didn't even worry about being electrocuted, I had to shower."

We visited Rosaria in her apartment. She keeps the shades drawn and the windows shut. She sits on her sofa, moving very little -- stifling the occasional belch, scratching at the large patch of Candida albicans flourishing on her left thigh, unwrapping a Chocodile with one hand. It is difficult to get her attention as she is riveted to the TV screen. She doesn't channel surf, of course, having no remote control. Rosaria just chooses the channel she wants to watch once during the day when she gets up for her daily trip to the bathroom. On days when she doesn't get up, she just sticks with the channel from the day before.

And yet Rosaria Jimenez' life, circumscribed as it sounds, is rich and full. Once a week her Friends drop by. She sees her doctor on ER. The boys in NYPD Blue stop in to check up on her every so often. Like many other people, she wants to be a millionaire. And then there is her husband.

Seamus Jimenez isn't around much during the day. He spends most of his time working as a janitorial engineer at Fordham University, where his main responsibility is to paint the cast-iron fence surrounding the Rose Hill campus. It is almost two miles long. "When I reach where I started," Mr. Jimenez explains, "I find I have to start over again anyway, so I just keep on going."

We finally caught up with Seamus in the bedroom one night where he was reading a magazine titled Ebony Humpers. We asked him what he thought of his wife's obsession.

"Rosaria, her heart's good," Seamus told us. "She's always been very good to me. She loves that TV, though, don't she? Yes, she does. But she's got a good heart."

Probably dangerously enlarged, too, we noted.

"You don't know from enlarged," Seamus replied, holding up a particular spread in his magazine.

Mr. Jimenez cooks for Rosaria when he can, buys her groceries, and, most importantly, pays the electric bill for her TV. Rosaria, meanwhile, shows her love for her husband by devotion to such family shows as Touched by an Angel and Dharma & Greg.

We talked to Rosaria about her husband, her seven grown children, her life, loves, hopes, dreams, and ambitions. But more than that, we talked to her about TV. We'd reproduce the interview here except, well, most of it wasn't very interesting. Here's a sample exchange:

TeeVee: What makes you think you're really qualified to be America's True #1 TV Fan?

Rosaria Jimenez: Hush, Odd Man Out is on.

Another example:

TV: How does it make you feel when....

RJ: [whacks interviewer in head with handy broomstick]

Just one more for flavor:

TV: Sociologically speaking, television can be said to be a unifying force for our times. Since its inception, TV has provided a gathering point for the many disparate and far-flung threads of American society. It has helped give us a common language, a shared metaphor if you will, enabling vastly different people with unrelated cultural backgrounds and experiences to communicate across gulfs of custom and tradition. Although TV frequently fails to illustrate the realities of living in the American republic, it has however formed a conjunct basis from which all of us as a people extend our expectations of American life. It is this collective myth which could be argued to be the greatest of the contributions of the technology of television to our culture. As the most TV-saturated person on the planet, how do you feel about this?

RJ: It reminds me of something Richard Buckminster Fuller said in regard to the harmonizing influence of broadcast media such as television and radio. One of his anecdotes, which was related in great detail by Chuck Norris' character on last week's Walker, Texas Ranger, might be illustrative here. As told by Cordell Walker, Fuller was.... Hang on, Drew Carey is on.

TV: But would you....

RJ: [whacks interviewer in head with handy broomstick]

So Rosaria Jimenez has strong views about TV. Not just an idle viewer, she is involved. She is concerned. And she is watching. And watching. Always watching.

Ms. Rosaria Jimenez, we at TeeVee salute you. In truth, you are America's True #1 TV Fan, truly.

If there's one thing we Americans don't get enough of these days, besides trivial annoyances like exercise, education and leaders worth a damn, it is celebrities. These hard-working people, some of whom are famous and revered for reasons even they don't understand, have had to work extremely hard to overcome the harsh obstacles life has thrown at them such as flawless skin, strong chins and five percent body fat. Yet these people are barely ever on television anymore.

My God, people -- E! only has 24 hours a day to devote to celebrities! Laurin Sydney on CNN is given only 30 minutes for Showbiz Today. And if you total up all the various syndicated entertainment news shows, you don't get much more than an additional eight or nine hours a day.

That's why I'm grateful for that ultimate melding of celebrity scintillation and broadcast technology. No, not The New Hollywood Squares. I'm talking about celebrity sports events.

After all, it's not enough that we pay to see these people entertain us, that they invite us into their houses for Barbara Walters' specials and that we voluntarily spend $10.50 for the chance to eat a cheeseburger under the watchful gaze of the toupees from "Hudson Hawk." No, to really get in touch with our famous demigods, we must watch them humiliate themselves on the fields of pseudo-play.

Plus, watching them crash and burn in the "Famous TV Dogs" category on Celebrity Jeopardy.

Take the recent Celebrity Winter Sports Invitational, which featured such notably famous luminaries as Steven Rockefeller Jr. and Ingo Rademacher. Ingo Rademacher? Yes, the Ingo Rademacher. Of the Charleston Rademachers.

The Invitational was a fund-raiser for some pissant environmental cause that couldn't do better than Jean Claude Van Damme as its biggest name. The Sierra Club this wasn't. Of course, it also had the Paul Mitchell hair care products guy, John Paul DeJauria. And while he might be able to tease, curl and highlight with the best of them, his chief athletic credential seems to be that he resembles Richard Marcinko.

Oh dear. I seem to have compared one of this nation's fiercest warriors to a hair dresser. I'm sorry, Commander Marcinko. Please don't kill me.

Among the sports the alleged celebrities competed in was snowshoe racing. Let me tell you, you've never seen snowshoe racing until you've seen Bobby Kennedy, Jr. snowshoe racing. There were also two versions of skiing -- slalom and cross-country. Yes, take the fingernail-gnawing excitement of Olympic cross-country skiing and combine it with amateurs who are desperately out of shape. It's still boring, just a lot slower.

Richard Dean Anderson, as it turns out, is a pretty decent downhill skier. If by decent you mean being able to get down the mountain without screwing the pooch in a spectacular heap that reminds viewers of the opening of Wide World of Sports. Unfortunately, MacGyver won the slalom event with just himself and a standard pair of skis. Duct tape, gum wrappers, and shoe strings were lying all over the place -- yet he'd rather rely on skill than construct a pair of hover skis.

Sadly, celebrity sports don't dominate the TV like they used to. Back in the good old days there was Battle of the Network Stars, which did nothing if not prove that even famous people don't look good in skintight jogging shorts. For some reason, stars like Mindy Cohn actually believed they could make it through events like the obstacle course. Yet every time they hit the climbing wall, it was the same story: Collapsing in a pile of athletic ineptitude, tears streaming down their faces as nightmares of elementary school dodge-ball trauma came flooding back.

Golf is another frequent celebrity pastime, and if you think watching pros toodling around the links for hours is boring, try following an Ian Ziering/Jason Priestly duo thorough 18 holes. Maybe boring isn't the right word. After all, a celebrity using his driver on a narrow par five is one of the most exciting moments in sports... at least for those standing downrange.

If actors can compete in sports, why can't athletes have their own category at the Oscars or Grammys? Perhaps the Oregon Shakespeare Festival could have a celebrity "Hamlet": Albert Belle as the doomed prince, Bonnie Blair as the Queen, and Don Zimmer as Polonius. Just like MTV's "Rock n' Jock" events, which reduce actual athletic talent to mere afterthought, maybe the play could be rewritten to take advantage of an athlete's experience.

"To dong or not to dong, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to hit for average or suffer the slings and arrows of repeated strikeouts..."

Yes, with their long and glorious history, it's apparent that, for whatever unfathomable reasons that lurk in the darkest recesses of the human mind, people actually do care how fast David Chokachi can sprint 50 yards in snowshoes.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before we see ESPN-C, the celebrity sports channel. And right after that, a new line of celebrity sports cards.

Jason Bateman
Bats: Right
Throws: Right
Plays: Teenage rascals with hearts of gold.

Ted McGinley
TDs: 14
INTs: 7
Shows cancelled: 12

It could be worse, I suppose. At least they aren't playing Magic.

Darva Conger has taken over my life.

It's been almost a month since Conger -- a registered nurse, an Air Force veteran and a big tease so far as the multimillionaires of this country are concerned -- appeared on a Fox February sweeps special where she was auctioned off, antebellum South-style, to stand-up comedian Rick Rockwell. Tastefully married by a justice of the peace before several million of their closest friends, these two total strangers soon departed on their honeymoon, presumably to live happily after ever until death did them part... or at least until common sense kicked in.

No sooner than the happy couple's return from the Bahamas did reports start to surface that maybe Rick Rockwell wasn't quite the catch we all presumed him to be. And while man should never tear asunder what God has brought together, apparently that admonition doesn't hold true for made-for-TV marriages. Conger announced she was putting the kibosh on her marriage to Rockwell -- a decision she apparently arrived at moments after sealing their union with a kiss.

And that would presumably be that. The Fates would have the sense to punch Conger's and Rockwell's 15 Minutes of Fame timecards, Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher would clear some space for their new roommates in the Hotel Obscurity and we the public would move on until the next round of bread and circuses came our way.

Only Conger's still here. And like an uninvited party guest who barges in the door, drinks all of your premium beer, double-dips her tortilla chips in the salsa and drops Triscuit crumbs all over your sofa, she shows no sign of leaving any time soon.

Conger has since embarked on a multi-talk-show publicity tour to rehabilitate her image in the eyes of a public that, until six weeks ago, was blissfully unaware of her existence. She went on Good Morning America, Today and 20/20 to tell a breathless nation that just because she agreed to marry a stranger whose main attributes appeared to be a net worth topping $2 million and his decision to pick her out of a line-up of 49 other aspiring courtesans, that didn't necessarily make her a money-grubbing whore. Why, she had no intention of all of ever marrying Rockwell -- the contest title "Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire?" being too subtle and nuanced for our Darva. Really, she just went on the show for shits and giggles.

Great. Fine. We believe you, Darva. Now shut up and go home.

But Darva won't shut up. Darva won't go home. And that's why, last week at the grocery store, I had a full-on Darva Conger-induced meltdown.

There I was, in the express lane, trying to rationalize whether multiple bottles of the same lo-cal Italian salad dressing count as one item or two, when I looked up at the magazine rack and came face-to-face with The Great Wall of Darva. Darva on the cover of People magazine next to her beady-eyed bridegroom. Darva peeking out from the corner of Newsweek, relegating the race to decide the next leader of the Free World to "In Other News..." status. Darva gracing the front pages of our nation's most esteemed periodicals, the National Enquirer and the Star. And, of course, Darva on the front of Martha Stewart Living showing how to make a stylish place mat out of your pre-nuptial agreement.

OK, I'm kidding about that last one. Still, everywhere you look these days -- respected newsweeklies, lurid tabloids, whatever you want to call People -- it's nothing but Darva, Darva, Darva!

I'm even starting to have nightmares now. Darva and me, locked in the Twenty-One isolation booth while a leering Chuck Woolery exhorts us to "feed your need for Greed!" "I take you to be my lawfully wedded millionaire," Darva coos to me as she rifles through my wallet. And as I vainly try to scream for help, Justice of the Peace Regis Philbin keeps asking, "Is that your final answer?"

Did I mention I'm naked in the dream?

If I'm visited by Darva-induced night terrors, I can only imagine how badly Sandy Grushow has been sleeping lately. Grushow is the chairman of Fox Television Entertainment Group and a man who, in a matter of days, saw a ratings bonanza meltdown into the mother of all cluster-fucks. First, rumors swirl that the multimillionaire Fox raffled off may just be a multi-thousandaire. Then, lax background checks fail to turn up the restraining order against Rockwell (Who Wants To Be Physically Threatened By A Multimillionaire?). And now, one annulment and plenty of egg on the face later, it turns out that Conger may not have actually been a veteran of the Gulf War as she claimed, unless San Antonio, Texas was our last line of defense against Saddam's crack Republican Guard troops.

What do you do if you're Sandy Grushow, and this public relations fiasco is starting to take a chunk out of your ad revenue? Simple. You announce you're quitting reality specials cold turkey.

"They're gone; they're over," Grushow told reporters, no doubt after subordinates had taken away his belt and shoelaces and hidden all the serrated butter knives in the Fox commissary.

If this sounds familiar, it's only because Grushow basically said the same thing two months ago. At the annual mid-season press junket in January, Grushow conceded that reality specials were ruining his network. Force-fed a steady diet of "When Animals Attack" and "World's Scariest Police Chases," viewers stopped tuning in to Fox -- at least, the viewers that advertisers like to reach did. The result? Fox's fall schedule tanked, and executives at the House That Rupert Built started to realize that they'd gone to the reality well once too often.

Back in January, Grushow assured everybody that Fox was through with the reality genre... at least until it could burn off the last few specials it had in the can. One of those was "Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire?" and what do you want to bet that Grushow wishes today he would have told the bartender to cut him off sooner?

Ah well. Live and learn.

So now, Grushow wants us to know, Fox is serious. Looking for titillating sleaze? Look somewhere else, punk. Want to gape at the latest televised freak show? Take a hike, son, Fox is all about the quality now. Want to watch a network pander to the lowest-common denominator? Try UPN. We're fresh out of crap here.

Or, in the words of Grushow, you can turn on Fox now, confident you won't have to watch "anything that is exploitative, that reeks of desperation, anything that's merely out for ratings."

So hit the bricks, David E. Kelley. Your reign of terror is over.

Kidding again. Sorry. What Grushow has in mind is those thrown-together festivals of found footage -- "When Pets Go Bad," "Secrets of the Alien Autopsy," et al. -- that have that distinctive Fox odor about them. Or, to put things even more plainly, most of the Thursday and Friday night line-ups.

Is Fox serious this time around? Its track-record does not inspire confidence. And keep in mind that as Grushow was entering Fox into a 12-step program for recovering reality-show addicts, the network was showing footage of Robbie Knievel jumping his motorcycle onto a moving freight train.

Because that stuff's pure Peabody Award material.

I'm not trying to dump on Fox here. It has a maverick, adventurous gene that the other networks sorely lack. More often than not Fox takes risks that would make the likes of NBC and CBS weak-kneed with fear. And that willingness to throw the dice has paid off with a clutch of hits -- The Simpsons, The X-Files, Malcolm in the Middle -- that no one else in the business would have touched. Even when those gambles don't pay off -- Action and Harsh Realm this year, for instance -- at least Fox fails in new and interesting ways instead of giving Tony Danza his umpteenth chance to carry a sitcom.

But that same daring also causes Fox to do profoundly stupid things. Two years ago, the network was all set to air footage of prison riots before grown-ups came back into the meeting room and restored order. Some Fox executives wanted to crash a 747 in the middle of the desert, for no other reason than it's fun to break stuff. And now the "Millionaire" fiasco. Anyone who can't see the inherent danger in (and inevitable outcry from) marrying off people sight unseen on national TV shouldn't be allowed to operate a pair of scissors, let alone a TV network.

Maybe Fox has learned its lesson. But more likely it hasn't, and a couple of months from now, Grushow will again fall prostrate before reporters, vowing that Fox will never again staple sausage links to a man's pants and lock him in the same room with a pack of ravenous wolverines. But at least, for the moment anyway, someone went and knocked a little sense into the head of a particularly dimwitted TV network. That's no reason to close banks and government offices for a day, but you take your little victories where you can.

Now if we can only find some way to get Darva Conger off my TV. Because that wolverine idea is looking real tempting.

So I hear from some Homicide fan or another that Clark Johnson, who played Meldrick, and Toni Lewis, who played Stivers, are tending bar at Kooper's, a bar that's across from the building best known as the Homicide stationhouse on March 7th for a Mardi Gras party. Cool! If only I could be in Baltimore that night....

Then I hear that Jon Seda (Falsone) and Callie Thorne (Ballard) might also show up. Well, so much for a perfect evening.

Some fans (myself included) had some fun in the Homicide newsgroup speculating about which props we'd want if we could have anything from the show. It was all fun and games until people started claiming Kellerman's jeans and locks of Kay Howard's hair.

Then I started hearing rumors of a sale of Homicide props and wardrobe; I figured some public daydreaming had led to a rumor with some serious legs. But finally we get confirmation that the sale's for real and it starts on Thursday.

The sick thing is, I find myself sitting at home trying to puzzle out a way I could conceivably get Thursday, Friday, and Monday off and scrape together the money to fly from Minneapolis to Baltimore and supplement that money with money to buy what amounts to used clothing or office furniture simply because it appeared on a TV show that I love.

C'mon, I could have Meldrick's desk for merely $25! Oh wait, it's a big old ugly metal desk and I'd need a U-Haul and.... Or maybe the table, complete with handcuffs, from The Box.

Okay, it's just not feasible. So I bypass the idea of flying down and save my money. Instead, I decide to track down someone who will be in Baltimore and have them buy stuff for me. I post a plea to the Homicide newsgroup, asking someone who's going there to buy me something, anything.

But the risks, the risks...I hope to God no one buys me a pair of Falsone's pants or something. Oh, make me puke.

And how do I explain to my friends and family that I'm basically asking total strangers to buy me "something, anything of Beau's" even if it means I pay $20 (plus shipping) for a shirt with genuine sweatstains from a Baldwin brother?

But is it so wrong that I want Beau's leather jacket? The stuffed giraffe? One of Meldrick's hats? Frank's suspenders? Bayliss' Rubik's Cube? One of Kay's jackets? One of Munch's ties? One of Kellerman's empties? A framed photo of Adena Watson? A trenchcoat, anybody's trenchcoat....

The sick thing is, I could sit here and name countless props or articles of clothing. Really. You don't want to know how long my list of "things it'd be cool to have" is.

Now perhaps I begin to understand what compels fans to turn their living rooms into the bridge of the Enterprise. I have visions of Gee's desk in my office, perhaps some of those old filing cabinets and desk lamps in the corner of my living room. I'd have Godzilla on top of the fridge in my kitchen -- I mean, in my "coffee room." If only NBC hadn't claimed the big white board....

It's just a damned TV show. I gotta get over it. (But c'mon -- you know you want one of Meldrick's hats.)

So I ain't goin' to Baltimore to buy used clothing from Homicide. Nope. And not even to meet Clark Johnson. I shall be strong.

Trip ain't worth it from this far out, not even for Meldrick's brim. (Besides, demand for Meldrick's hats will be enormous -- I can feel it. There'll be carnage, I'm tellin' you. Carnage which will turn friends against each other. Carnage and ridiculous, eBay-style prices. )

Instead, maybe I'll save my money up to buy a custom Ford van like the one on The A-Team. Or for a trip to Hawaii to tour the sites that have appeared on Magnum, P.I.

Or maybe something non-TV related. Maybe.

That's when I get the e-mail from someone who is going to the sale and has offered to try and get something for me. Danger, danger, danger!

Well, perhaps just a little something....

(Editor's Note: After this story was written, Laurel Krahn received the good news: for $1, someone had bought her a tie worn by Daniel Baldwin.)

First, the good news about Grapevine, which debuted on CBS Monday night and will run for the next six weeks: It knocks Ladies Man off the air, thus saving America the sight of Alfred Molina further humiliating himself for the sake of a paycheck.

And the bad news? The bad news is that compared to Grapevine, Ladies Man looks like an Emmy contender.

Grapevine is bad -- so incoherently bad that the moment the show ends you're phoning up friends and colleagues asking to know, begging to know if they also saw the train wreck, just to convince yourself that someone hadn't rewired your cable box to pick up signals from Mars. So hateful are the characters parading across the screen, so inane the series of pops and whistles emanating from their mouths that you spend the show's 30-minute run time bargaining with your God to replace the awful people, replace them with... well, anything. Dead air. That "Wassup" commercial for Budweiser that makes my inner ear bleed. Musty Costello reruns. Anything.

But the soulless beautiful people prattle on, mouthing contrived, unnatural witticisms patched together by a roomful of chimpanzees. And nothing you can do -- the screaming and the angry phone calls to Les Moonves and the pleas for divine intervention -- can make them cease their chatter. So your brain does the only thing it can to defend itself. It shuts down for the next few hours, preventing you from performing any higher mental functions.

That's a great response to generate if you're trying to boost membership in your doomsday cult. But it's not such a good idea if you run a TV network and you want people to watch when your programs come on instead of run screaming to the nearest library.

Sadly for CBS, Grapevine could be the newest weapon in the fight against illiteracy. Read a book, the pro-literacy groups will say, or we'll make you watch Kristy Swanson act.

You remember Kristy Swanson, right? She starred in the movie version of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which is sort of like saying David Soul starred in the TV version of Casablanca. Well, Kristy's back in Grapevine, as Susan, a cruise director who fancies herself something of a whiz at fixing her friends' romantic woes. Her specialty? Talking to the camera in long, excruciating Real World-like soliloquies.

Now, the savvy TV viewer reads that and thinks, "Oh Lord. That tired, old device? Can there be anything more annoying and labored than having one of your characters break the fourth wall and talk directly into the camera?"

Yeah. How about having all the characters do it?

That's right. Grapevine probes the very deep thoughts of all its characters by having each and every one of them stare straight into the camera lens and talk to you, the home viewer. In fact, this is how the show chooses to introduce its cast -- with a series of rapid-fire cuts to a new talking head you've just met happily jabbering about a subject you neither know nor care about.

That strategy guides the entire approach taken by Grapevine, which eschews the tradition of coherent narrative in favor of jumping around from one disjointed scene to the next, leaving the home viewer gasping for breath and struggling to keep up with the Byzantine plot machinations unfolding on screen. Give Grapevine credit, at least, for challenging the stale conventions of the sitcom. But man, did they have to do it so badly?

One minute Kristy Swanson is trying to fix up a friend of hers at a trendy night spot. And then the next, he's mauling her in a grocery store, before she runs into the brother of her best friend, who happens to have a crush on her -- the best friend, I mean, not the brother -- and so Kristy and the brother go out on a date, angering her best friend. But it's OK, because within a few minutes, the brother and Kristy Swanson have broken up. By this time, of course, the best friend is now dating a soon-to-be divorced woman who designs ugly lamps. But a girl that was dating the lawyer friend of both the best friend and Kristy Swanson now wants to date the best friend and may be running off to a weekend with him in New York. And of course, that upsets Kristy Swanson, who decides that she's in love with the best friend, which is OK because the lamp designer who he had designs on is now dating his brother and...

Who are you people? Don't you have jobs? What the hell are you people talking about? Goddammit, quit talking to the camera!

Sorry. My brain was suddenly flooded by serotonin. I'm all better now.

If Grapevine sounds familiar, it's only because the exact same show with the exact same title aired on CBS for six glorious weeks in the summer of 1992. CBS decided to bring the show out of mothballs because... well, because you people are idiots, that's why. If Touched By An Angel and Walker: Texas Ranger can carve out sizable audiences, then what's to stop people from giving drek like Grapevine a look-see?

Interestingly enough, actor Steven Eckholdt appears in both versions, starring as the best friend's brother in Grapevine Classic and earning a promotion to the role of best friend in the minty-fresh new version of Grapevine. Why bring that up? No reason, except it does make you wonder what kind of atrocities Eckholdt must have committed in a past life to get stuck with the same turkey twice in an eight-year span. I mean, what did the guy do? Pull the wings off of butterflies? Run over nuns in his Buick? What?

Still, if TV networks are so bereft of ideas that they're desperate enough to re-animate previous failures, think of the horrific cast of shows from eight years ago that could soon be headed our way. Anyone for a Y2K-edition of Major Dad? How's about a Drexel's Class: 2000 with the thawed-out corpse of Dabney Coleman? Or The Hat Squad. The first time The Hat Squad aired, it was... really... bad.

In fairness, though, there was one moment in Grapevine's premiere that made me chuckle. In one of his monologues to the camera, the doomed Steven Eckholdt is telling the audience about his contemptible brother, a sportscaster named "Thumper."

"What do you do when you're handsome, rich, and full of crap?" Eckholdt asks rhetorically.

"Thank God for television," the brother says.

Yes. Only not after this show.