December 2000 Archives

We were never much for the traditional holiday customs around the Michaels homestead when I was a lad. Going on sleigh rides, roasting chestnuts, building snowmen to the specifications of the Steve Nelson-Jack Rollins song -- all of that's kind of hard to do when the mercury never dips below 55 degrees and you're wearing Bermuda shorts. Unless there's a Christmas carol about unusually dense morning ground fog that I'm not aware of.

Still, we tried -- oh God, how we tried. Every holiday season, my sister broke out the John Denver & the Muppets Christmas album and played it until you found yourself secretly wishing that Kermit and the gang would quietly convert to Judaism. A few weeks before the big day, my dad would go out to find us a Christmas tree... and more often than not, he'd find it in the crawl space over the garage, the same place he stored our plastic, pre-assembled tree every year. And sometime during the month of December, shopping mall crowds, muzak carols and pangs of guilt for not spending near enough of my allowance money on presents would cause me to have a full-fledged Yuletide-inspired freak-out -- a Christmas conniption which would end with my denouncing the holiday as a vast conspiracy on behalf of retailers, greeting card companies and overseas wrapping paper conglomerates.

We had other traditions, too -- ones that won't wind up in some psychiatrist's notes with "recommend higher dosage" hastily scrawled next to it in the margins. We had a full and robust slate of televised holiday parades.

Parades were how we knew there even were holidays to celebrate. You could set your watch to them. If the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was rambling down Broadway, you knew it was Turkey Day. Is the Hollywood Christmas Parade marching across the TV set? Best make your way to the mall, folks -- there are only a few more shopping days left. And every January 1, the Tournament of Roses Parade was there to ring in the new year and begin again the annual cycle that led us to our next round of parades.

Floats, marching bands, incongruous grand marshals -- this is the stuff that young boys' dreams are made of.

But in recent years, none of the parade routes have wound their way across my TV set. I'm usually still shaking off the excesses of the night before by the time the last Rose Parade float has cruised down Colorado Boulevard. The Hollywood Christmas Parade? They don't even bother televising that one anymore. And now that I'm well-entrenched in adulthood, my Thanksgiving Day interests begin and end with the tartness of the cranberry sauce and whether the Lions can cover the spread -- not with how the Underdog balloon is holding up.

In a way, that's kind of a shame. Some holiday traditions you never want to outgrow -- the thrill of coming downstairs Christmas morning to a roomful of presents, the way that first bite of turkey tastes, the giddy thrill of watching some corn-fed linebacker from the Midwest knock a USC tailback into February. Why shouldn't oversized balloons, cheap floats and vainglorious Broadway production numbers in front of Macy's fall into the same category?

I decided to find out. After a decade of being relegated to also-ran status on my remote control, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade made its triumphant return to my holiday routine. That was a month ago. It's taken me a bit of time to sort through the sights, the sounds, the prolonged exposure to Katie Couric. And, a month after the last marcher dutifully trooped in front of NBC's cameras, I think I can reach one inescapable conclusion about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I suddenly remembered why I stopped watching this cavalcade of tripe.

I don't know what I was expecting to see -- some peppy show tune numbers for sure, and maybe some jovial banter between Al Roker and the gang. Or maybe I wanted something more. Maybe what I wanted was a return to a simpler time -- in my life, in the life of the rest of the world. It was a time when a handful of marching bands and some papier-mâché floats could get you in the mood for the holidays, when the sight of a block-long Mighty Mouse balloon was the best damned thing you had seen in weeks. It was a time, in other words, when the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade mattered -- not on the scale of, say, your grades in school or whether your parents were fighting or if the Federal Reserve Board was showing a bias toward raising interest rates. But when it mattered, nevertheless.

Was I expecting too much? Not if NBC's tastefully understated voice-over announcer had anything to say about it: "Today millions of people are lining the streets of New York, anticipating the arrival of the year's most spectacular event. Magnificent floats, fantastic big balloons. Hit Broadway musicals. And entertainment's biggest stars."

Indeed. Let's go to the videotape.

0:07: After Katie Couric and Matt Lauer open the show and set the scene for us, it's off to our opening number -- a musical spectacular from a group called America Sings. An ensemble for people who think jazz choir is too provocative, America Sings features 800 young people dressed in pastel sweaters -- pink, lime, turquoise and a shade of yellow not previously seen by human eyes. The group's motto, Matt Lauer tells us, is "To kids who feel they have no hope, from kids with hope to share."

I know what you, the sophisticated TeeVee reader, expects to happen now. You're waiting for me to lob a few cruel taunts in the direction of America Sings, and then we'll all have ourselves a wicked laugh at a bunch of kids whose only crime was not dressing themselves that morning.

Well, forget it. In this day and age, with the rock 'n roll and the hot rods and the vampire role-playing games, it's good to see kids engaged in an activity that doesn't make me double dead-bolt the door, load up the shotgun and punch up police dispatch on speed dial.

At least, that's what I thought before I heard them sing.

Believe in the music
Feel its power set you free
Believe in the music
I can feel it lifting, pushing, calling, guiding me
Yes, I believe in the music

Well... I believe in some music.

0:12: Al Roker is talking to David Hasselhoff, one of entertainment's biggest stars if the voice-over announcer is to be believed. "Central Park is like Disneyland," says the inexplicably popular German pop star. Only with a lot more crack, I suppose.

David Hasselhoff, by the way, is in New York to appear in the Broadway production of "Jekyll & Hyde," assuming the role formerly played by one-time Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach.

In sports, we call this "lateral movement."

0:23: Katie Couric introduces a performance from the cast of "Seussical: The Musical" thusly:

"With music that's pop, gospel, rhythm-and-bluesical, even the Grinch gives two thumbs up to Seussical."

I've paused the tape. There's a mad glint in Katie's eyes, the same kind of glow that wild animals get just after you've got them cornered and right before you stuff them in a sack. For a moment -- just a moment -- it looks like she's about to leap in front of a marching band, with the hopes that the subsequent injuries will prove to be fatal.

Fortunately, for millions of Today viewers, Katie is unable to free herself from her restraining belt.

This, incidentally, is the longest that any writer has gone in describing "Seussical: The Musical" without using the words "troubled," "disastrous" or "shitstorm." And when you see the muscular young lads dancing around Horton the Elephant in leather pants, you suddenly understand why theater critic thesauri are getting such a workout.

0:30: For a better understanding of the parade route -- a parade which we have yet to see a minute of, by the way -- NBC cuts to a computerized, three-dimensional rendering of New York City. We learn that the parade will head down Broadway to 42nd Street to Herald Square.

For those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of Manhattan thoroughfares, that's pretty much a straight-shot. Yeah, you have to veer a little bit when you hit 42nd Street, but it's not like there's zigs and zags and dog leg lefts. The point is, Matt Lauer could have taken a magic marker and drawn a straight line down a piece of paper, and it would have been as accurate and informative as NBC's computerized map. I mean, the money the network spent whipping out that graphic could have been used to hire two, maybe three more writers for Cursed.

Which is why I'm glad they went with the computer graphic, I'm saying.

0:32: "There are people here who came to this parade three-quarters of a century ago," Al Roker declares. And if they spent any of that time watching NBC's coverage, they still haven't seen any of the actual parade.

0:39: As Al Roker interviews John Ritter -- "one of television's most popular stars," the avuncular weatherman says, leaving out the important qualifier "if you happen to think it's still 1980" -- the temperature has dropped dramatically. According to the graphic in the corner of the screen, what was once a chilly 32 degrees is now a frigid 28. Visions of the parade broadcast team being trapped in absolute-zero conditions dance happily in my brain. One minute, they're happily introducing musical performances from the cast of "Suessical," the next they're making like a Chilean soccer team, hollowing out the Bullwinkle balloon to find shelter from the elements and drawing straws to see who gets eaten when supplies run out.

If I'm Al Roker, I'm plotting my escape routes now.

0:52: Cheryl Ladd is on my TV singing "Sun in the Morning" from "Annie Get Your Gun." I'm starting to question the veracity of the announcer's claim that "entertainment's biggest stars" have descended en masse onto the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route.

I can't vouch for the musical groups. I've never heard of Kenny Chesney, LFO or Mikaila, but then again, the bands I listen to have long since broken up, retired, or died. But when the top stars you can get are Emeril Lagasse and the aforementioned David Hasselhoff, you have officially moved off of the B-List and into the Yellow Pages.

1:00: The arrival of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes signals that NBC will begin covering the parade itself. I've suddenly realized that if you cut the commercials, eighty-six the elaborate dance numbers, and dispense with the too-hot-for-TV John Ritter interview, coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade would last about 12 minutes.

1:01: The Lincoln High School marching band from Sioux Falls, South Dakota strides by. Band, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer inform us, is the largest youth activity in South Dakota. Sioux Falls is clearly no longer the hot spot it was in my day.

1:06: We're watching a dance team made up of, in the words of Matt Lauer, "499 girls and one very lucky young man." As we leave Matt to his active fantasy world, it's worth noting that the dance team sports the same kind of lime, pink and yellow sweaters worn by the kids from America Sings. So either there's a focus group somewhere that's determined pastels are endearing and non-threatening, or there was a horrible rumble somewhere along the parade route and 500 members of America Sings are going home bruised, bloodied and sweaterless.

It's also worth noting that the dance team is strutting its stuff to music from the Broadway production of "Pippin." Coupled with the declaration that John Ritter is one of TV's most popular stars, this is making me think that perhaps it is still 1980.

1:11: No pastel sweaters for the Dallas Tap Dazzlers, a team of 20 tap-dancing grandmothers who choose to wear black fishnet stockings and hot pants instead.

"A bountiful harvest," says Matt Lauer, who's thankfully talking about the upcoming float and not the tap-dancing grandmothers. But we have to double-check these things since moments ago, the Today host referred to the Mickey Mouse balloon as "a buffed-up big boy."

Little wonder that Katie Couric appears nervous and on edge.

1:16: Harkening back to my days as a tow-headed, freckle-faced youngster, I seem to recall that the Macy's Parade balloons had some correlation to the popular cartoons of the day. Bullwinkle and Mighty Mouse, Snoopy and Dennis the Menace, maybe even the occasional Smurf.

That appears to have changed in the ensuing decade and a half since the Thanksgiving parade was a regular fixture on my holiday calendar. Oh, there are still cartoon characters floating above the skies of Manhattan -- mostly from shows I'm too old to know about or too self-conscious to admit that I've watched. But a large percentage of the new balloons are now devoted to brand name products and corporate mascots.

Because nothing says "Happy Holidays" like an inflatable version of the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee.

Take Green Dog. No, really... take him, preferably as far away from me as you can. And who is Green Dog, you might ask?

"He's not a hound dog, he's no bird dog, but he's well on his way to becoming top dog," says Katie Couric, whom we must remember is a serious network newswoman and not at a cue card-reading shill. "Meet Green Dog, a new parade personality with a fun job. His name is on a new brand of kidswear. His motto is 'Bold Dog, New Tricks,' and his answer to everything is 'Wowzers.'"

That's Green Dog, kiddies. Ask for it by name at your friendly neighborhood Macy's. Be sure to grab mom and dad's credit card, too. Wowzers!

1:19: As the Sesame Street float rolls by -- sadly, for Katie Couric, with no product to whore -- Matt Lauer informs the viewing audience that Al Roker will be appearing in an upcoming episode of the children's program "in a role he was born to play."

"What?" says my wife, not missing a beat. "As a mordantly obese weatherman?"

Could I love her any more?

1:34: A float's passing by -- I'm not sure for what company, but it's touting some sort of preservation theme. The float, we discover, represents the beauty of our planet and the need to preserve our natural resources.

By gathering them all up and using them to build gas-powered parade floats, presumably.

1:38: Forget what I said earlier about the modern-day Macy's parade balloons being little more than puppets dancing on the strings of their cruel corporate masters. The Ask Jeeves balloon is on the TV. And who among us doesn't harbor warm childhood memories of cuddling up with their plush Ask Jeeves doll and putting on the Ask Jeeves pajamas and reading the book where Curious George logs on to Ask Jeeves to find out where he can buy bananas online?

You mean you don't harbor those memories either? Oh.

Either Katie Couric or Matt Lauer -- I've lost the will to distinguish between the two of them at this point -- informs the viewing public that Ask Jeeves receives four million questions a day. Tough, hard-hitting questions like, "Hey Jeeves, how's your profit margin?" and "Jeeves, why is it that the loose coins in my couch cushions are worth more than your stock?"

1:41: I finally recognize one of the musical groups making an appearance on NBC's telecast. Aboard the Animal Planet float -- with a tie-in to NBC's "Crocodile Hunter" special, natch -- is the latest one-hit wonder, the Baha Men.

That my wife doesn't know who the Baha Men are just means I haven't taken her to enough sporting events. The Baha Men sing "Who Let the Dogs Out," the early 21st century equivalent to "We Will Rock You" and "Rock and Roll Part One." All you need to know about "Who Let The Dogs Out" is that the lyrics go like this:

Who let the dogs out?
(woof, woof)

Now repeat that about a million times or until you're forced to drive a large ice pick into your eardrums, relaxing only when the blood and brain fluid seep out like sweet, red wine.

1:50: Two floats, appearing one after the other, have me convinced that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is organized by folks with a heightened sense of irony and self-parody. Either that, or they're just drunk.

First, there's the Macy's float that celebrates Native American art and culture -- a fine Thanksgiving-related notion. At least, that's what I thought until I noticed most of the people wearing the elaborate headdresses and war paint were white guys.

Oh well. It's the thought that counts. Thanks for all the land, Injuns!

The next float, sponsored by the good men and women of Jell-O, features Jo Dee Messina, another one of those pop stars who could walk up to me in broad daylight, slap me across the face and still need a "Hello, My Name Is" tag for me to pick her out of a police line-up. She's singing an inoffensive little ditty called "Dare to Dream." Surrounded by children dressed as fruit toppings.

I worry that the impact of that last sentence fragment may not have come across, so I'll repeat. Children. Dressed. As. Fruit toppings. While a woman sings about following your bliss and pursuing your dreams. They can always dream about getting their dignity back, I suppose.

I mean, really -- aren't there child labor laws against this sort of thing?

1:52: As a horde of clowns swarm in front of Herald Square, giving an entire nation a case of the heebie jeebies, Matt Lauer remarks, "I'd say they all graduated magna cum looney."

I think this is important to keep in mind whenever you see Matt Lauer interviewing top newsmakers.

1:57: Hey, it's the M&M float! And who's that riding atop it? Why, it's rapper Eminem! He and the Red M&M are sharing a bottle of malt liquor and making leering comments about their hoes and getting ready to kick the crap out of some...

Wait. I must be turning giddy from all the holiday excitement. That's not Eminem at all. Instead it's Innosense, an all-girl band that makes the Spice Girls sound like Nina Simone. Because, after all, why should boy bands have all the banal fun?

2:00: Two hours into this thing, and the mercury has climbed to 30 degrees. The prospects of the Today crew freezing to death on my watch are rapidly dimming.

Worst Thanksgiving ever.

2:06: A high school band marches past NBC's cameras. It is not playing a song about following your dreams. It is not accompanied by children dressed as fruit toppings. Which really ruins the holiday spirit for me, honestly.

"After three Tournament of Roses parades, two inaugural parades and 12 state championships, it's no wonder three governors have declared this band the pride of Nevada," Katie Couric says.

Nevada, it should be pointed out, also has a legalized brothel.

2:37: And here's where I lose it.

My undoing was the float sponsored by Redi-Whip. No, it wasn't because the float was surrounded by children dressed like dollops of non-dairy whipped cream... though it very well could have been. No, the blame falls squarely on the young shoulders of Aaron Carter, boy singer, and his stirring rendition of "I Want Candy."

Aaron Carter is the younger brother of one of the singers in those dreary boy bands -- 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys, those kids who sing about the Ultimate Cheeseburger at Jack in the Box. It makes no never-mind to me.

(Incidentally, if you're a fan of one of these dreary boy bands or any of the other musicians that I've libeled in this piece, and you're busily drafting an e-mail denouncing me as a dullard for not appreciating the finer points of empty, joyless pop, save your effort. No e-mail -- not even the spam I get alerting me to great deals on inkjet printer toner -- could interest me less. Let's just pretend that you've sent the e-mail, and that I'm destroyed emotionally, and that I now concede that INSERT NAME OF CRAPTASTIC POP SINGER/BAND HERE has made the greatest contributions to music since Bach. 'Kay?)

I mention that Aaron Carter is the younger brother of a boy band singer for two reasons. One, it confirms my suspicion that somewhere outside of Orlando, Florida, music producers are breeding free-range pop singers. And two, since the older brother won't be scanning his scalp for gray hairs any time soon, that means young Aaron Carter looks not so much like a pop star as he does a singing fetus.

This is not a minor consideration, given the fact that the Rockin' Embryo is performing "I Want Candy." In case you're not familiar with the song, it is not a plaintive cry for mom to buy him some gumdrops or a couple of Hershey bars. Instead, it's a song about sexual longing -- nothing dirty, mind you, but not the sort of thing to be sung by someone still in his mom's third trimester.

That appalling sight -- a pre-fabricated, pre-teen pop singer turning a perfectly good song into a jingle for a pre-fabricated paste that doubles as a dessert topping and household spackle -- proved to be all I could take from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I fast-forwarded, past the Barney balloon, past Andrea MacCardle singing a funkified version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," past the arrival of Santa Claus and his vow to deliver Macy's-purchased presents to all the good boys and girls. Then I set the tape on fire so it couldn't poison future generations.

That's what the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has always been: shameless and relentless cross-promotion wrapped up with a holiday ribbon, a three-hour full-court press for moving product. If I didn't recognize it back in my grammar school days, it's either because I was too young or too dense. Balloons change. B-list celebrities come and go. Pop bands and Broadway shows fade into obscurity. But the Macy's Parade continues, marching forward to the steady drumbeat of commerce. It's an empty exercise, bursting with holiday imagery but lacking any holiday spirit or sentiment. The Macy's Parade has as much to do with the holidays as those white guys in headdresses had to do with Native American art and culture. It would be better for all concerned if the parade were to march straight into the Hudson River, its cacophony and drivel drowned out by the icy waters.

Hey! A full-fledged holiday freak-out! Check off another time-honored holiday tradition that I observed this year.

Now, as the year 2000 draws to a close, I figure it's time to revive the tradition. And looking back on my lists from 1995 and 1996, I can say with certainty that The X-Files, my favorite show of both those years, is not on this list at all. Neither are other list-makers from the mid-'90s like Frasier, ER, and Friends. Times have changed.

Will this article be the beginning of an avalanche of end-of-year favorites lists? I don't know. But in any event, I figure it's a good way to see the year 2000 to a close and fill some valuable everyone's-gone-for-the-holidays space on the web site. Onward!

10. Good Eats, Food Network. Never in a million years would I expect that there would be a show on the Food Network that would eclipse Iron Chef as my favorite. And yet, here we are. Alton Brown's funny, pop-culture-literate, and (most importantly of all) accessible cooking show is the best example of how-to information on the air today. Brown manages to do what all the other hosts can't: check his ego at the door and inspire his audience to get out of their La-Z-Boys and cook the same good food he's cooking.

I have recommended Good Eats to numerous friends and family members, just as it was recommended to me by our own Chris Rywalt. Many of them have been skeptical at first; but after watching a few episodes, not one of them has been disappointed.

9. Now and Again, cancelled by CBS. This genre-busting romantic adventure about a man who's run over by a train only to be reborn in the genetically-engineered body of a young man was romantic, exciting, funny, and apparently not quite popular enough for CBS' tastes. And so, despite an impressive ensemble cast and the deft touch of Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron, Now and Again got run over by its own subway train last summer. It was struck down before its prime, and all of us have lost what could have been a cozy longtime companion.

8. Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The WB. Oh, the trauma of creating a best-of list at the end of a calendar year, when the cycles of television production run from fall to spring! How to judge Buffy, which has come off last year's weak collection of episodes with a much stronger run this fall? And Angel, which by the end of its first season was humming right along, but seems to have gotten a bit lost in its own plot machinations this fall?

In any event, Joss Whedon's pair of Vampire-themed action series are both still winners, even if Buffy is no longer my clear favorite TV series, as it was a year ago. Though it's showing its age, Buffy is still consistently good and capable of hitting one completely out of the park on occasion, as in last winter's mostly-silent "Hush." Angel is dark and brooding and new, and has almost as much of an upside as Buffy had, what with its conflicted undead lead character.

In the end, I can't separate the two. They're both good shows. But Buffy is on the way down, I fear. Angel just might be on the way up.

7. Ed, NBC. It's a rare example of a show that has lived up to its hype, this quirky hourlong comedy produced by David Letterman's production company. Incorrectly billed as a Northern Exposure clone, Ed is sweet without being sappy, funny without being overbearing, and poignant without being manipulative. Ed's (Tom Cavanagh) mating dance with high-school teacher Carol (Julie Bowen) could have become tiresome quickly, but the show's writers have managed to sidestep the will-they-or-won't-they trap so far. After only a handful of episodes, it's clear: Ed is the real deal.

6. Futurama, Fox. For years, we've been burying The Simpsons, claiming it's not as funny as it used to be. And you know what? It's not. But it's still damned funny. The thing is, Futurama is funnier. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen have managed to combine the goofy humor and pop-culture references of The Simpsons with a futuristic setting that allows for a much broader canvas for goofy plot situations. The Simpsons is a landmark TV show -- perhaps the best TV comedy ever created. But in the year 2000, Futurama was just plain funnier.

5. The West Wing, NBC. No, it's not realistic. It's a liberal fantasy, and sometimes the arguments the show makes fly in the face of reality. And yet Aaron Sorkin's snappy dialogue, well-drawn characters, and the mystique of the White House that exists today despite all that's happened there lately, all mix together to create something special. You couldn't re-create The West Wing if you tried, and believe me, they're gearing up the cloning machines right now.

Want to bet me that West Wing won't end until Jeb Bartlet concludes his second term in office? West Wing is a two-termer all the way.

4. Malcolm in the Middle, Fox. It's the funniest show on TV today. Why Fox held it back to midseason is anyone's guess, but Malcolm is a huge hit, and deservedly so. Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston hold the show together as the heads of the loony family of four boys. Frankie Muniz is great as Malcolm, even if his voice is getting a bit deep lately. And cute as a button Eric Per Sullivan is rapidly becoming the star of the show as Dewey, Malcolm's little brother. If you missed the episode where Dewey and his dad constructed an entire Lego city (which Dewey ruled as a far-from-benevolent dictator), you missed one of the funniest half-hours of the year.

3. Stargate: SG-1, Syndicated. I have written about this show's merits before, so I'll try to avoid repeating myself too much. The true inheritor of Star Trek's legacy, Stargate is the best science fiction show on the air today. Full of adventure, excitement, a great set of lead characters, and an ongoing story that's not particularly difficult to get into or follow, Stargate is the show on the air today that I most look forward to watching.

2. Survivor, CBS. Our emotions have cooled now, just as the air temperature has cooled. But the fact is, every Wednesday of this summer I was glued to the TV set to watch the latest installment in this brilliantly conceived and even-more-brilliantly-executed game show... the best game show of all time. Sure, Survivor: The Australian Outback will probably suck. But so what? You can't take those 13 weeks of great TV away from me. If Richard Hatch wasn't the TV star of the year, I don't know who was. Love it or hate it, Survivor is a television landmark. Personally, I loved it.

1. Freaks and Geeks, cancelled by NBC. Gone but not quite forgotten, it's worth mentioning this show one last time before it passes completely into the realm of the dead. I recently watched the show's entire 17-episode run again on the Fox Family Channel, and was even more impressed by it than I was during the original, fractured run on NBC. Of all the shows about life as an adolescent, only Freaks and Geeks gets it exactly, painfully right. It was clearly the best show on the air in the year 2000, and let's give it one last bit of applause, because it ain't ever coming back.

Thanks a lot, NBC.

It's a very select few who actually witness history. Sure, 20 years down the road, there will be five million people who say they were standing right there when Tiger Woods smacked a 240-yard six iron out of a sand trap, over water and onto the 18th green to win golf's Triple Crown. Yet it will be easy to tell the 5,000 or so that were actually within spitting range. The sights, sounds and smells of perfection will be ingrained so deeply in their minds, they won't just be telling the story, they'll be reliving it.

Watching the television movie "The Langoliers" is much like watching Tiger Woods dominate golf. It is now ingrained so deeply in my soul, I fear the experience has been burned into my DNA and will forever haunt my unfortunate progeny until natural selection steps in and puts and end to our accursed suffering.

Based on a fairly goofy Stephen King novella, "The Langoliers" originally disgraced the ABC television network back in 1995. It has recently popped up repeatedly on the Sci-Fi Channel, apparently transferred there in a special magnetic field container since the rancorous stench of failure and decay that permeates every frame of this monstrosity must devour normal plastic videotape boxes like so much 18-molar sulfuric acid.

To be honest, TV critics salivate over opportunities such as "The Langoliers" like a fat man at a fudge convention. After all, there are only so many columns to write about how spunky Ally's new man is. Every now and then we like to sink our teeth into a steaming heap of awful and have at it. Thankfully, "The Langoliers" is an all-you-can-eat buffet of wretchedness.

The story centers on a commercial airliner bound for Boston. Midway through the flight, the people on the plane who were asleep wake up to find everybody else gone. They land the plane in Bangor, Maine, only to discover they're the only people left on Earth. Something is wrong with this Earth, though: matches don't work, electricity is funny, food tastes weird, etc.

Now, if this were Delta Airlines, nobody would even bat an eyelash, but seeing as it's some fictitious company that apparently flies from Los Angeles to Boston via Maine, these circumstances raise some suspicions.

It turns out the plane has traveled through some kind of time warp and everyone who was awake when it happened died instantly. Our intrepid little band is trapped in yesterday's Earth and something's out to get them. Yep, you guessed it, the Langoliers.

Back when I first read the short story, I was hoping the Langoliers would turn out to be some Old Money Northeastern aristocrats, maybe a Rockefeller or Morgan cousin, that threw demonic cannibal orgies at their Hamptons estate. No such luck, but while the printed version is far from King's best work, it's not half bad either. Unfortunately, the movie has a long way to go to be half bad.

Then again, while watching "The Langoliers" was a torturous endeavor at best, I did learn a few things:

• Meego is not the most embarrassing role of Bronson Pinchot's career.
• Stephen King is apparently letting Mesopatamian Hallmark card writers adapt his books for television.
• There really is such a thing as a low-rent Corey Feldman.

Among the plane's survivors are a blind girl, a British SAS soldier, a punk rocker teenage girl, a whelp of a teen boy with seriously nerdish leanings and freeloading pilot hitching a ride back to Boston. Pinchot plays Craig Toomy, a psychotic junior executive. Quantum Leap's Dean Stockwell is some kind of nervous guy and Patricia Wettig -- you'd know her if you saw her -- is probably portraying some kind of female, that much I'm relatively sure of.

Why all the confusion? Let's put it mildly and just say that of all the actors that appear in this film, Stephen King is by far the best.

Forget mildly. The truth is that every single actor in "The Langoliers" believes that subtlety is a new type of Lexus. This isn't just ham-fisted scenery chewing, this is flat-out grazing. Wettig, who does for acting what Ebola does for blood pressure, can't even manage a convincing sleep let alone emotion that doesn't make Regis look like Steven Wright.

The eight-year old blind girl knows two facial expressions: vacuous and drooling. In the fine tradition of supernatural thrillers, she is "gifted." A telepath who also knows what's going to happen to the group, she spends the last half-hour in a semi-conscious trance, yet still looks more awake than when she's up and walking around.

Why is it that being disabled in the movies automatically makes you the most obnoxious human being within a fifty-mile radius? Can the Confucian haikus, sister: you're blind, not Shaolin. If I'm trapped in a life-or-death battle within the folds of space-time, the last thing I need is some junior Krishna cub scout waxing iambic about love, honor and Pikachu.

The crown jewel of the whole miserable affair is Pinchot. The erstwhile alien baby-sitter makes going on a murderous rampage positively hilarious: he's trying his darndest to be criminally insane, but dammit, he's just so cute and cuddly. Pinchot's scenes with the vision of the evil father that has tormented him his entire life make one wonder if he rehearsed them with a sock puppet.

He does, however, deliver the golden moment of "The Langoliers" when he's beaten to a bloody pulp by a toaster.

The film's dialogue flows like it was translated from its original Sumerian by first-graders and caresses the ear like Fran Drescher with a hacking cough. One almost expects it was lifted straight from a Godzilla movie, although the lip sync is much better.

One scene on the runway is a particular gem. The gang is trying to refuel the plane and get the hell out because they know something bad is about to happen.

"Hear that? It sounds bad." They all cock their heads. I hear nothing but the far-away screams of my last remaining brain cells begging me to spare them. The group looks out toward the hills. There's nothing there.

"Hear that? It sounds bad closer." They look at the hills again. Same shot. Nothing there.

"Oh my God! It's coming right for us!"

On and on it went. There were at least a dozen long shots of the mountains, each more innocuous than the last. That's because they were all the same shot. Could the producers only afford one piece of stock footage?

It's not like they saved money on screenwriters to pour into the special effects. The climactic scene, which features pieces of the Bangor airport disappearing into space, could have been done on an Etch-a-Sketch. As for the Langoliers themselves, four words:

Milk Duds with attitudes.

Yes folks, being witness to history isn't always fanfare and fireworks. For those of us who have seen "The Langoliers," the burden of watching what qualifies as some of the worst television of the past fifty years is heavy indeed. Yet I accept the responsibility and am posting this piece about an irrelevant five-year old movie not as a review but as a warning to the rest of Hollywood, for those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.

In the tradition of Freaks and Geeks and Frank's Place, this fall's best new series won't be renewed for next year. Another great drama, whisked away with the storyline at its most meaty, and right as I'm forming emotional attachments to all the characters. But, strangely enough, this time I'm willing to let the series end.

If you haven't caught Presidential Election 2000 yet, you'd better tune in quick (check your local listings, or just randomly tune to any channel). The writing is rapier sharp, the cast is passionate, and you should see the character development from day to day. One moment a character is smug and self-assured, the next he's shell-shocked and fighting mad. True, the next time you tune in, the characters might have reversed themselves, but you're so sold on the roller-coaster plot, that you actually buy their reactions--if not always their motivations.

The plot of Presidential Election 2000 is lightning fast, so once you tune in, you can't skip a day, lest you be forced into reading the recaps in Soap Opera Di--er, Newsweek. New twists and turns occur daily, sometimes hourly, always followed by characters' brilliantly-scripted reactions. (Occasionally, though, the dialogue shows signs of clumsiness, such as when all the Republican characters are assigned a set of stock phrases --"Judicial Activism", "Changing the Rules After the Game Has Ended", "Constitutional Crisis" -- and made to repeat them endlessly, apparently for fear that the viewers won't otherwise get it.) The writing is especially sharp in scenes involving press conferences and judicial decisions, where characters often seem on the giddy edge of complete breakdown, barely able to restrain themselves from open hostility or despair.

The lead characters are admittedly somewhat flawed in their execution, which led to early-series tuneout; Al Gore, who polarizes viewers Richard Hatch-style, is a weak link in the cast. Despite a truly amazing story arc, his character comes off as wooden and virtually unchanged throughout the series, failing to convey the passion of his plight or conviction. George W. Bush, on the other hand, really puts everything he's got into his role as a cocky bastard. Possessing the most pointed smirk since Larry Hagman, he evokes an immediate, almost visceral reaction from the viewer. Unfortunately, he's absent from many episodes, ceding his lines to an impressive supporting cast, most notably James Baker. Baker is a vicious marvel; after slogging through such moderate hits as Bush Presidency 1988-1992, Baker is on full throttle here, consistently delivering fierce, compelling speeches, as when he deliciously calls a George W. Bush setback "sad for our nation--sad for our democracy." So completely does he seethe with barely-checked rage, you halfway expect his head to come off. With his calculated, spiteful language, Baker plays nothing short of a saint or Satan role in the drama. (A complete turnaround from his role as Buck Strickland on Fox's King of the Hill.)

Other impressive players include Bernard Shaw and Jeff Greenfield, who make Dennis Miller's color commentary seem slate-gray. Jeff Greenfield leads viewers through self-described 'nightmare' or 'doomsday' scenarios like a giddy schoolboy showing off a Gila Monster. He smiles brightly while noting that, "If this election was an amusement park ride, it would be shut down due to safety concerns," and that, "I'm not predicting rioting in the streets... yet." Shaw doesn't pack quite the punch of Greenfield, but his urgent delivery gives even more life to the rest of the cast, as when he describes Baker as "bristling with contempt and controlled anger."

Just as we occasionally (well, once) tuned into the Geena Davis Show to catch a glimpse of Freaks and Geeks alumnus John Francis Daley, we'll no doubt see some of our favorite Presidential Election 2000 players in the near future. Greenfield will no doubt turn up in mid-season replacements like "Senate Bill 482" and "Assistant Housing Secretary Confirmation Hearing", and it seems likely that at least one of the principals will return for the inevitable sequel in a few years. (Didn't anyone watch AfterM*A*S*H?) However, none of their work will likely ever live up to this dramatic masterpiece, and, quite honestly, that's fine by me.

Syndicated television is a cornucopia of fun. What other genre provides such a thorough survey of Vancouver or New Zealand? None. What other class of television show could turn someone named Hudson Leick into a hot tamale? None. What other milieu could produce a show about an undead Goth that drove rabid comic-book fans to call for its cancellation? Not a one. Syndicated television is a class unto itself.

And the blow-dried head of this class is Kevin Sorbo. Known to a group of ardent fans as that guy who occasionally hangs with Xena, a smaller group as Hercules, and a still smaller group as Kull the Conqueror, Sorbo is the human embodiment of a comic-book hero. Consider the chiseled jaw! Gaze on the blue eyes, unclouded by abstract thought! Note well the flowing locks -- since hacked into a haircut Dirk Benedict would remember from the 1970s -- and the superhero physique! Kevin Sorbo deserves to be barking italicized commands in all-caps on page 18 of an Image imprint, but since he's human, he has to make do with syndicated television.

And what wonderfully bad television it is. For those of you who are free of the syndicated monkey on your back, let me explain the wonder of Andromeda. Majel Barrett is still pawing through Gene Roddenberry's grocery lists and stringing together the results as shows the Great Bird created before flying off into the great beyond. One of these shows is Andromeda. The credits are straight out of Galaxy Quest: dreadfully sincere shots of assorted cast members waving firearms about or tapping on space-age powerbooks while "Kevin Sorbo as Captain Ethan Hunt" and "Laura Bertram as Trance Gemini" scrolls on by.

The fun doesn't stop at the credits. No, it continues through the ensemble cast. There's a smart-assed cyberpunk, a thickly furred alien sage, a space savant in a spandex catsuit, a philosophy-spouting badass in chain mail and the frowsy would-be captain of the Andromeda. There's also our man Sorbo as the moral and tactical captain of the craft, and a woman who plays an avatar of the sentient ship herself; the two of them enjoy the kind of relationship normally seen only in computer labs when the sysadmin hasn't been outside in a while. The folks studying pop culture at Bowling Green could wring a doctoral dissertation out of all the post-human themes in the series, especially since the chain-mail badass was weaned on Thus Spake Zarathustra.

But we're not here to write a dissertation on the pursuit of an intergalactic representative democracy as engendered by a group of humanoid freaks. We're here to talk about Sorbo's infinite capacity for playing ideologues who stepped from the pages of a Silver Age comic. Some actors inhabit their characters by adopting new accents and adjusting their body language. Sorbo shuns that extreme work ethic and sticks with what he knows: two all-purpose facial expressions.

When Captain Ethan Hunt firms his jaw and fixes his eyes on some point in the middle distance, you begin cheering for him. You miscreants he's addressing -- drop your anarchic agenda and heed his words! Bekka: get a hot-oil treatment for that mess on your head, and shape up or learn first-hand the hard caress of space's cruel vacuum! You there, you galactic wormholes! Can't you just stop giving our boy such a hard time with that whole space-time continuum thing? Whatever the dire situation, all Sorbo really has to do is clench his jaw and train his eyes on some landmark in the distance. It works wonderfully.

When the gravity of the weekly plot gets to be too much, Sorbo busts out trademark look #2: the self-deprecating smirk. It's an expression that's as ambiguous as the Mona Lisa's smile. Watch him smirk in any situation -- well, actually any situation where someone is expressing an epistemological conviction -- and you will wonder, "Is he smiling because he agrees? Because he's moved by the fervor of their nihilistic doctrine? Because he's a big fan of deontological ethics? Or because he really can't process big words?"

It could be because every once in a while Sorbo looks down at a script and thinks, "I'm supposed to be eating a kibble casserole while holding forth on the evils of a harsh penal system. Few people will pick up on the modern-day parallels, so I might as well suck it up and wait for the paycheck." You can't very well draw a paycheck while laughing hysterically over whatever the writers have cooked up for the week, so perhaps smirking is his way of letting go.

Or perhaps smirking is what he does when he's trying to convey irony. We'll never know. Our Kevin may be a man of infinite depths -- or of limited facial expressions. Take your pick. Whatever the reasons for his minimalist acting style, the net results read like X-Men -- not the flashy mess with two of London's finest actors running herd on assorted supermodels and B-listers, but the comic series in the 1980s before Wolverine discovered his affinity for Nipponese culture and Storm went off the deep end. Imagine the X-Men back in the day when they were still wearing yellow-and-black uniforms. Now imagine them standing around, listening to Professor Xavier carry on about the Badoon. And think about Kevin Sorbo, standing there between Cyclops and Nightcrawler, listening to the battle plans and smirking slightly before going out to kick some alien lizard ass.

He fits right in, doesn't he? That's our Sorbo -- a comic-book hero for the small screen. Thank you, syndicated television: our cornucopia runneth over.

Every holiday season, we must tell the story. We must recount its universal truths and the role they play in our lives. We need to spend time reflecting on the story and what it means to each and every one of us, especially as a new century dawns. And we must pass on the story to younger generations, so that they, too, may be guided by its timeless testament on behalf of unconditional love.

Yes, we must once again tell the story -- the wondrous story of the "Star Wars" Christmas special.

Surely you recall the "Star Wars" Christmas special. Even if you didn't see it -- and if everyone who claims to have watched it actually saw the one and only broadcast, it would have got better ratings than the moon landing -- you've at least heard the story of a director named George, the greedy studio executives looking to cash in on a summer blockbuster and the holiday-themed abortion they joined forces to produce.

No? Well, in brief, then: Han Solo and Chewbacca are trying to get back to Chewie's home planet in time for the big Life Day celebration -- sort of a Christmas for Wookies who don't recognize the birth of Our Savior. Meanwhile, Chewie's family -- his wife, Malla; his son, Lumpy; and his old man, Itchy -- pass the time waiting for him and Han by watching "Star Wars" cartoons and clowning about with special celebrity guests Art Carney and Harvey Korman. And at some point, Bea Arthur comes out and sings a song to all the latex monsters in the canteen at Mos Eisley spaceport -- a career decision that no doubt haunted the former Maude star until the day she died.

Hmmm? Bea Arthur's not dead yet? C'mon, guys -- you sure about that?

Anyway, there's more songs and clowning and "Star Wars" stock footage and appearances by Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, who must not have had very good agents at the time. And then, to cap off the show, Harrison Ford -- the biggest box office draw of the 1990s -- arrives on the scene with Chewbacca and proceeds to give a moving speech about the true meaning of the holidays... to a bunch of people dolled up to look like giant, monstrous Chia pets.

It's really not very good.

So not very good, in fact, that George Lucas has made sure that the "Star Wars" Christmas special will never emerge from its lead-lined holding chamber miles beneath the Earth's surface. Which is pretty impressive. I mean, sure, Lucas is a powerful Hollywood player and all, but even with all his plenipotence, "Howard the Duck" still pops up on cable every now and again.

And that's a damned shame, really. Because they don't make holiday specials like the "Star Wars" Christmas spectacular anymore. No, really, they don't -- I think George Lucas had a law passed.

Indeed, they don't hardly make any holiday specials anymore -- not ones that don't feature Kathie Lee Gifford crooning to her offspring, at any rate. And we, as a nation, are poorer because of it.

The holiday specials of yesteryear were more than just idle programming to file the airwaves between the all-important November sweeps and the January football bowl games. They were glimpses into our national psyche, parables that helped us sort out life's important lessons. "How The Grinch Stole Christmas?" A fiery denunciation of holiday consumerism run amok. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?" A seminal fable about the importance of being true to yourself. And "Rudolph's Shiny New Year" was... well, an unnecessary sequel. But "The Year Without a Santa Claus" gave us Heat Miser. Heat Miser! That's like discovering electricity and inventing the printing press just to pick up the spare.

In contrast, what do the holiday specials of the here and now have to offer? Kathie Lee's dreadful caterwauling. Marketing vehicles for pre-packaged toy franchises. Not a goddamn Heat Miser to be found.

Bea Arthur must be turning over in her grave.

Maybe it's too late. Maybe this really is a cynical age that has turned its back on the simple homilies that can be found in holiday specials. But I'm not willing to give up just yet. Here's a few ideas to revive the moribund holiday special genre. Oh sure, they may not rise to the creative apogee of a "Smurfs Christmas Special" or the sublime richness of "A Very Brady Christmas." But they do have that certain quality that's essential for any festive holiday programming -- the ability to generate revenue on a per-annum basis, allowing producers to easily recoup their initial investment.

Oh, and warmth. They also have warmth.

The Year They Cancelled Halloween. When a shopping mall owner (Fran Drescher) decides to set up Christmas displays and decorations in mid-September, disoriented consumers completely forget to celebrate Halloween, causing a kindly old candy maker (Wilford Brimley) to go out of business and driving angry neighborhood kids (Mary-Kate Olsen, Jonathan Lipnicki, Ralph Macchio) to burn down the mall.

It's Ramadan, Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown can't understand why new classmate Akeem (voice of Spike Lee) refuses to have any food or water during the day until Schroeder explains to him the true meaning of the Muslim calendar.

A Very Regis Christmas. Why should Kathie Lee have all the fun? Regis Philbin (Regis Philbin) and his wife, Joy (Joy Philbin), serve up some holiday cheer with music, fun and laughter with the help of special guests Aaron Neville (Aaron Neville), Loni Anderson (Loni Anderson) and the Backstreet Boys ('N Sync). Also popping by for a cup of egg nog and a hearty carol is Frank Gifford (Frank Gifford): "I just couldn't take another Christmas Special with you-know-who," he tells a beaming Regis. And there won't be a dry eye in the house after Regis' musical tribute to the late, great Bea Arthur.

Really, I think she's dead, fellas. Can we get one of the interns to check this out, maybe?

Three Wise Men. And so it came to pass that three visitors from the east (Vince Vaughn, Cheech Marin, Gallagher) followed a star to Bethlehem where they beheld the newborn Christ... but not before solving the Caper of the Missing Myrrh and busting up a kidnapping ring masterminded by King Herod (John Forsythe).

When Holidays Turn Deadly. Jonathan Frakes ("Alien Autopsy") hosts this Fox special that teaches the holidays' true meaning... of pain and horror, that is! See home video footage of an unsuspecting father getting impaled on his Christmas tree! Watch as a dreidel spins out of control at a Hanukkah celebration and puts someone's eye out! And Kwanzaa festivities turn deadly when we release ravenous wolverines into a crowded room!

Judah Macabee Is Coming to Town. Rankin & Bass -- the Gilbert & Sullivan of stop-motion animation -- make their triumphant return to holiday specials. An animated dreidel (voice of Tony Randall) tells the story of how Judah (voice of Ted McGinley) and his magical menorah Sparkly (voice of Harvey Fierstein) outsmart grumpy King Antiochus (voice of Pat Buchanan) and deliver toys to all the good boys and girls.

It's a Wonderful Network. Distraught over losing his job at a major TV network, programming whiz Warren (Bob Balaban) is about to jump off the George Washington Bridge when an angel (Lea Thompson) appears to show him what the world would be like if he had never been born. Warren sees that Jonathan Silverman (Marc Price) would be a penniless beggar, that Brooke Shields (Kirstie Alley) and Andre Agassi (Judd Nelson) would still be together, and that Homicide would still be on the air. Warren jumps off the bridge.

We Wish You a Merry Smackdown. The Rock learns the true meaning of Christmas when the expensive present he bought Stone Cold Steve Austin fails to impress, but the simple gift of human kindness is what really touches the wrestler's heart. Then, Stone Cold hits the Rock over the head with a chair and runs him over with a forklift.

The Life Day Spectacular. George Lucas returns to the scene of the crime as Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and Han Solo (Mark Hamill) learn the true meaning of the made-up Wookie holiday. "Happy Life Day, pal," says Han, his voice choking with emotion. "Gwwaarrrr!" Chewie replies to his openly weeping friend.

Bea Arthur would have wanted it that way.