December 2002 Archives

I was in Philadelphia today and walking through the train station the place was plastered with ads for Comcast digital cable and their built-in PVRs. "Now your favorite shows will follow your orders" and suchlike sloganeering.

I've seen the difference between Comcast digital and my DirecTiVo. Comcast is following an all-too-common model these days, which I think I might call the Ads, Everywhere Ads Model. Or the Minority Report Model, maybe. Its digital cable guide consists of one-third actual program guide and two-thirds ads of one kind or another, mostly for the TV Guide (which is hilariously redundant) but also for, I dunno, the same crappy stuff sold by banner ads on the Web. (I've gotten so that my brain actually filters out anything banner-ad or button-ad shaped automatically. I've been to sites which use similar sizes for navigation menus and spent several minutes trying to figure out how to use them, only to find the functions hidden in something I thought was an ad and didn't look at.)

Between the ads and their use of a MEGAFONT for the elderly in the audience, you can see a list of titles which looks like this:

101 MEN'S SWM FIN...

102 THREE BEARS X...

103 MINORITY REPO...

104 PORN OR NOT? ...

105 HALLMARK PRES...

106 WHAT THE FUCK...

And it takes about nine days to scroll down. Compare and contrast with DirecTV, the program guide for which contains not a single pixel of ad content and is customizable and easy to use and -- best yet -- does not assume you are a) years old 900, b) an idiot, or c) both.

I can imagine that Comcast's PVRs are going to be equally crippled: In theory, all of your TiVo functions will be there, but your remote will have just one BIG RED BUTTON on it and the PVR menu will scroll... really... really... slowly and you'll have to hit the button when the option you want is highlighted. Meanwhile your friendly Comcast Thought Neutralizer will be happily beaming commercials for Reader's Digest and the TV Guide and the upcoming Wings marathon on your local channel and Foreman Grill Foie Gras attachments so that by the time you figure out what you wanted to do you'll find out it's call some 800 number and agree to give away your credit card and Social Security numbers so you can get cheap life insurance from Gerber.

Cable companies are like dinosaurs wandering around looking for the best place to die so their carcasses can poison the largest water supply possible. The only thing I fear is that their ad-driven model may prove irresistible to the satellite companies. Already I'm worried for TiVo; and I worry that I might have to worry about DirecTV next.

Well, we made it. Though the hustle-and-bustle, the stress, the noise might have seemed overwhelming, we soldiered through these last couple of weeks. Oh sure, at times, all the outside distractions threatened to drown out what truly matters this time of year. But you and I managed to shut out the constant clatter, to focus on the true meaning of the season until it was time to put away the presents, take down the decorations and ready ourselves for a brand new year.

Yes, we've survived another round of holiday-themed TV commercials.

It's not that television commercials are terribly pleasant any time of year. One look at the growing popularity of TiVos, ReplayTV and other devices that promise to give commercial interruptions the same treatment formerly enjoyed by out-of-favor Soviet agricultural ministers, and you can see that our collective tolerance for a few words from our sponsors has reached record lows. And it's no wonder why -- commercials tend to be grating, repetitive and patronizing. They blast forth from your TV at what seems like eight times the volume of that Will & Grace episode you've been enjoying, and they increase the incidents of accidental exposure to Carrot Top exponentially. Necessary evil or no, commercials are the bane of the television landscape, from the mightiest network to the lowliest basic cable channel.

Ah, but during the holiday season -- that's when TV ads ratchet things up from a mild bout of gastroenteritis to a full-on outbreak of intestinal flu. Why should commercials take on an especially hateful quality round about Christmas as opposed to the other 11 months of the year? Because the basic conceit of advertising -- that your life is essentially devoid of meaning and until you exchange legal tender for the service and/or product in question and that people will point and laugh at you if you fail to realize this essential truth -- finds itself at odds with the whole peace-on-earth-goodwill-toward-man jazz we fancy ourselves subscribing to during the holidays. So at the one time of year we're more likely to be thinking about other people than ourselves, advertisers have to change tacks. And that new approach can be summed up thusly -- you give your loved ones crappy presents.

There's a radio commercial that's been getting some play here in the San Francisco region. It's for Office Max or Office Depot or some big-box retailer with the word "Office" figuring prominently in the title, and it features a bunch of carolers singing about how every present you ever given -- that sweater, those mittens, that Neil Diamond CD -- has been awful, that your friends and relations despise you for it, and, really, isn't it about time you gave the gift of office supplies to mark the birth of our Lord and Savior? Setting aside the fact that giving Aunt Jenny a ream of copier paper instead of a sweater doesn't, at first glance, appear to be improving matters much, the radio ad essentially preys upon our worst fears and appeals to our basest instincts. Forget that Christmastime instinct to think about the less fortunate or to let the special people in your life know how much they mean to you, the ad seems to say. Really, the holidays are about buying other people's love and affection. And you? You, my friend, are falling down on the job.

Would that a single radio spot touting the healing power of office supplies be the exception rather than the rule. It's not. Instead, you can't turn on a TV this time of year without hearing about how you're blowing -- blowing it big time! -- and only a substantial outlay of cash stands between you and the crushing guilt of knowing you're solely responsible for inflicting your loved ones with the worst Christmas in recorded history. The Grinch, Ebeneezer Scrooge, Old Man Potter, whatever studio executive greenlighted that horrible Adam Sandler animated movie -- when it comes to ruining the holidays, my man, those cats don't have nothing on you.

We could be here until next Christmas detailing the commercials that perverted, ignored or otherwise missed the point of the holidays. In the interests of time, then, we've narrowed it down to six ads, listed in descending order of odiousness, that deserve a carton of stale candy canes and a hearty helping of past-its-prime figgy pudding. Instead, we'll settle for a stocking stuffed with lumps of coal -- all the better for administering the crunchy beatings on the guilty parties.

6. Pier One Imports

Kirstie Alley, in her triumphant return to television, scares the bejeezus out of harried shoppers by hectoring them into beating feet down to the local Pier One outlet to pay top dollar for gaudy baubles and wicker-based products. Alley apparently portrays the Ghost of Bad Career Decisions Past, a racoon-eyed specter swaddled in form-concealing fabrics who materializes before downcast shoppers to show them what life would be like if she were never cast in Cheers. Apparently, life would involve appearing in terrible commercials and blocking out the sun.

The Intended Message: It's just not Christmas without wicker knickknacks and showy whigmaleeries!

The Message We Took Away: Maybe it's time to cut Shelley Long some slack.

5. Lexus

You've probably seen this ad before, since Lexus uses it every year -- happy, well-to-do couples in matching sweaters are celebrating the holidays in their vast country estate. They're hanging the diamond and gold ornaments, sipping glasses of twenty-year-old port, and eagerly awaiting the brace of goose that the servants are preparing for dinner off in the scullery -- at least, that's what they might as well be doing, for all the relevance this commercial has to my life. And just when it seems that the happy couple's perfect lives couldn't get any better, a footman dressed in silk and lace prances into the room bearing a pillow that holds a set of car keys. The woman squeals, grabs the keys, and runs to the mansion window where she espies a brand new Lexus, fitted with one of those giant novelty bows, sitting in the driveway. Cut back to the husband and wife giggling about how fortunate it is that they aren't poor and dirty.

I hate these people. I want to dance over the smoldering ruins of their once-perfect lives. And I suspect you do, too.

In fact, the only two things keeping this particularly galling paean to excess and ostentation from taking the top prize two years running are 1) a second year's worth of broadcasts has dulled the ad's assault on my sensibilities and 2) Lexus has apparently excised the part of the commercial where two contemptible parents buy a brand new Lexus for their idiot teen-aged daughter. I have little doubt that there are many, many teenagers out there with much better rides than my '91 Plymouth Acclaim -- I do not need Lexus rubbing my nose in it.

The Intended Message: All the beautiful people will be getting fine luxury automobiles this Christmas.

The Message We Took Away: When the class warfare begins, Lexus drivers will be first against the wall.

4. Circuit City

So Circuit City is running this promotion where you can stop by one of the stores and record a message of thanks to be sent to our fighting men and women. I've got no beef with that -- the troops deserve all the well wishes and thanks of a grateful nation that we can give them. In fact, if any happen to be surfing by right now -- and you know, after establishing a base camp at an undisclosed location near the Iraqi border, I'm sure the first thing our military forces will be doing is logging on to find out what me and my cohorts think about Dinotopia -- well, thanks for all you do.

Rather, my problem with the Circuit City ad is with one of the sentiments expressed during the segment in which we see a host of Circuit City patrons offering up their thanks and appreciation to the folks serving our country overseas. One of the well-wishers is a particularly dense young lady who stares unblinking into the camera and smarms, "You don't even know me, but you're risking your life to protect my freedom." Then, presumably, she hops into the Lexus her parents bought her for Christmas last year and speeds off to the soup kitchen to thank all the hungry people for reminding her how good she has it.

Yes, missy -- none of this has anything to do with standing up for an ideal or serving the greater good or defending a democracy that, while imperfect, is better than any other form of government going today. No -- it's all about you. You and your freedom to be a self-centered ass. That sincere expression of thanks will surely provide comfort from the lousy pay, imminent threat of bodily harm, and sneering contempt that the intellectual elite regularly showers upon our fighting men and women.

It doesn't? Oh. Um... how about a GameBoy?

The Intended Message: Next to sending a message to the troops, the most patriotic thing you can do this holiday season is to buy a mess of consumer electronics goods.

The Message We Took Away: God, people suck.

3. Those damned diamond commercials

So this guy and this gal are walking in this stone courtyard. The ornate buildings and fancy fountains lead me to conclude this is supposed to be Rome or, at least, some other exotic European locale, though for all I know, they're visiting the State Capitol in Trenton, New Jersey. Anyhow, the guy suddenly starts hooting and hollering and generally making a spectacle of himself. "I love this woman," he screams at the top of his lungs, as passersby avert their eyes and his mortified lady friend frantically tries to find the nearest hole to crawl into and hide. Having been summarily shushed, our hero whips out a diamond so large, it must have taken the slave laborers weeks to completely unearth it. The woman, who up until now had been regarding her beloved with a "Did you just fart?" look, suddenly couldn't be happier with her life partner and coos her love and devotion as she nuzzles her swain.

I may actually hate this couple more than the pair of fops from the Lexus commercial.

There are many, many horrible advertisements urging you to shower your loved one with expensive jewels -- a personal favorite is the one where a simpering man explains to his newborn baby that since his wife gave him the greatest present of all (unprotected sexual intercourse?), he's going to get his wife a rock big enough to require its own system of tresses and supports -- this one may be the most wretched. Let's ignore the fact that the hero of our story probably dropped a fair amount of coin to fly himself and his special lady to Rome or Prague or Trenton or wherever the hell they are. Let's ignore that his sincere-if-unsettling expression of love and devotion is met with shame and indifference by his main squeeze. Instead, let us focus on the central theme of this particular ad -- telling her "I love you" is all well and good, fellas, but if you really want to cinch the deal with the gold-digging hussy, best to pony up for a diamond or two. It's enough to make you want to give away your earthly possessions and flee to the nearest monastery.

And how effective are these ads, when I can spell out in great detail all the repugnant things I've seen, but I can't for the life of me identify who the commercial is supposed to be for? Satan, I'm guessing, but I'm probably wrong.

The Intended Message: Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

The Message We Took Away: They also apparently enjoy a close, personal relationship with scoundrels and greedheads.

2. Radio Shack

Say what you will about the soulless demimondes in the diamond commercials or the nameless corporation that wasted their advertising budget -- at least those nitwits appreciate their present and the blood money used to purchase it. Not so in the recent ad for Radio Shack in which several individuals receive DVD players for Christmas only to find, in a heartbreakingly tragic twist worthy of Dickens, that the thoughtless oafs who gave them the gifts didn't stop at Radio Shack for adapters and cables. Unable to connect their DVD players to their television sets, the main characters in this little morality play do what anyone might in a similar situation -- they break down sobbing in tantrums worthy of five-year-olds while an especially maudlin cover of "Blue Christmas" plays in the background. The gift-givers stand by looking stricken, as you would too if you just blew a lot of money on a fancy electronic gadget instead of just spending a couple of bucks on a Hardee's gift certificate only to find out that you're the jerk responsible for ruining Christmas.

Sadly, the commercial ends before we find out how the problem is resolved. I like to think, if the commercial bears any resemblance to real life, that the assorted gift-givers -- saddened that their loved ones have been reduced to bawling by their thoughtless present of adapter-free DVD players -- head straight to Radio Shack to pick up the necessary accessories. Then, they return home and use the newly purchased cables to strangle the ungrateful bastards.

Radio Shack is named in the ensuing wrongful death suit.

The Intended Message: Before you give that DVD player, make sure you've purchased the necessary accessories from your friends at Radio Shack!

The Message We Took Away: Why even bother buying anyone presents if this is the reception you can expect?

1. Jaguar

By far, the worst commercial of this past holiday season -- and quite possibly, the most soul-crushingly sinister 30-second spot to appear on television ever -- comes to us from the Handmaidens of Evil at Jaguar. In case you've missed it, a husband and wife are out for a drive in their high-end luxury automobile. All of a sudden, a Jaguar pulls up next to them -- it's sporting the same kind of oversized bow featured in the Lexus commercial. (I wonder if the same company manufactures those oversized bows, or if you have to go to a retailer who specializes in Jaguar-specific bows? "Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am, this oversized bow only attaches to BMWs... you want a Jaguar-compatible bow, you have to go to JagBow World off Route 79.") Then, another Jaguar with another oversized bow pulls up. And another. And another still. Soon, the husband and wife are surrounded by Jaguars and oversized bows and happy couples. Everyone got a Jaguar for Christmas! Except them. And, judging by the look the husband receives, this turn of events is quite unacceptable to Wifey.

"Hurry," the announcer urges the audience as the wife fixes her husband with the "Where's my Jaguar, putz?" stare -- "you don't want to be the only person on your block to be without a Jaguar this Christmas. The judging eyes, the pursed lips, the unkind words, and the slamming doors -- all this can be avoided if only you buy a Jaguar. Dip into the kids' college fund. Take out a second mortgage. Sell your blood if you have to. But don't, under any circumstances, tempt the wrath of your significant other by going Jaguar-free this Christmas. I'm only telling you for your own good, buddy -- I've seen this destroy too many other good men."

Or words to that extent.

I don't think I need to go into any great detail about what makes this a terrible ad. All the life-denying elements we've already discussed are here in glorious detail -- the shocking ingratitude of the Radio Shack commercial, the crass consumerism of the diamond ad, the appalling self-centeredness of that twerp in the Circuit City spot, those thrice-damned oversized bows.

So what makes this the worst ad of the bunch?

Because, as of this writing, it's still on the air.

The Intended Message: Buy your wife a Jaguar, putz.

The Message We Took Away: Screw you, Jaguar.

Maybe it's because I'm a pessimist, or because I secretly believe that television programming executives' jobs are so miserable, they're forced to turn to sadistic hijinks, like announcing the cancellation of good shows mid-season, just to get their kicks, but I have a hard time psyching myself up to watch more Farscape at this point.

"Come and watch a number of well-crafted episodes that rush toward a cliff-hanger ... which will never be resolved."

"Spend a handful of Friday nights thrilling to the experience of a smart, funny and occasionally breathtaking experience ... and then plummet to the depths of despair as you realize you're one hour closer to the end!"

"Invest your time and attention in a great series ... which will be cut off mid-story arc by a merciless channel."

See the internal conflict here? I love Farscape. I want to watch. But I don't want to be sucked in, only to spend the last episode rocking back and forth and muttering, "Cruel bastard SciFi Channel" over and over. I've watched Judd Apatow series. I've watched Thieves. I've been down the road of heartbreak and unjust cancellations.

If I were guaranteed the chance to watch every week, and then call a SciFi Channel executive and say, "Hi, there! I'm a well-educated woman with a lot of disposable income and I just love watching Farscape! You sure you want to lose me as a viewer?" -- then I wouldn't even need to write this. If I could have that exchange, where tormented, conflicted people on the other end began gnashing their teeth at the prospect of losing my interest, where I could push these people closer to renewing Farscape for the one lousy year it needs to wrap up ... then, then I'd watch with nary a qualm.

I'd like to say "you're welcome" to the seven kind Firefly fans who wrote in to thank me for my piece on Joss Whedon's cancelled Fox series, despite the fact that my review appeared only after the show got the axe.

Whedon says he's going to do his best to find a new home to keep the show alive; that's admirable, but you've got to wonder if any network really wants a dented and pre-owned sci-fi show, even if it is from the people who make Buffy.

Then again, I could see it as a great fit for UPN, which still desperately needs a companion either for Enterprise or Buffy or both. And you've got to think that Firefly would do better if it got a lead-in from other genre shows, rather than 7:30 airings of Seinfeld and Frasier on various Fox affiliates. Less likely would be the WB or Sci-Fi, especially since Sci-Fi has already cancelled its own comparable series, Farscape, and re-focused on less spacey topics.

In any event, here's hoping Firefly flies again, somehow, somewhere -- at least on DVD, if nowhere else.

What with TiVo, a million cable stations, a DVD player, and the occasional foray out of my apartment, I don't spend as much time aimlessly flipping through the channels as I used to. Luckily for me, though, I was recently stranded in a hotel room with only five channels, so I was able to catch up on the latest terrible syndicated television: Adventure, Inc. starring Michael Biehn.

Michael Biehn? From Terminator, Abyss, and Aliens? Well, yes. His IMDB profile since then features some pretty bad movies, most notably "Megiddo: The Omega Code 2." He also appears to have been one of the basketball players in "Grease," but I'm not sure if I believe that. Anyway, Adventure, Inc. is produced by James Cameron's ex-wife, Gale Anne Hurd. So it looks like she got Biehn in the divorce settlement.

Adventure, Inc. is the story of a "treasure hunter" named Judson Cross. It's based vaguely on the real life of a guy named Barry Cross, but I guess "Barry" wasn't a silly enough name for television. But since this show is based on Barry's exploits, it's clearly the heir to 1982's Bring 'Em Back Alive, which starred Bruce Boxleitner as wild game hunter Frank Buck. That show also starred Boxleitner's "Tron" costar, Cindy Morgan. She was also Lacey Underall in Caddyshack. Biehn's costar is a woman named Karen Cliche, and I am far too cultured to make fun of her last name and how it applies to this show. I will note that she used to be on a show called Vampire High, which I can not believe I never saw.

The third member of the ensemble is Jesse Nilsson, who you have no chance of recognizing. Even if you happened upon his brief appearance in "Teenage Space Vampires," he's clearly just here as a good-looking kid to take off his shirt, because Biehn is getting kind of old for that sort of thing. The three stars live on a boat (like the guys on Riptide! Or one of the brothers on Simon and Simon! I think it was Rick!) and sail around the world to scenic yet inexpensive locations to do what Judson refers to as "marine archaeology". And because this is Television Archaeology, that means we've got a companion for Tia Carrere's Relic Hunter. Or possibly a replacement, if Ms. Carrere's star vehicle has been cancelled. It's hard to tell with these syndicated shows. In any event, they search for altars, magic items, and all sorts of Indiana Jones-style gewgaws. Along the way, they rely heavily on terrible puns -- while Judson is engaged on a fistfight while rappelling down a cliff, his sidekicks say things like "he's at the end of his rope," and when Judson wins, he says "first you're up, then you're down."

The main difference between Adventure, Inc. and Relic Hunter, aside from the fact that it will be a cold day in hell before Playboy asks Michael Biehn to pose nude, is that this time out, there's explicit magic going on. Tia Carrere occasionally had to deal with a Greek ashtray that glowed when no one looked at it, but Adventure, Inc. bases whole episodes on ghosts from the Vietnam War or bad guys who live for generations by injecting themselves with Extract of Mummy. If you don't believe me, feel free to look at the show's official web site.

But it's not all ancient temples with wacky booby traps and creepy guys named "Excellency." These guys are high-tech! Which means, of course, that they occasionally have to break into "secure installations," which they do with a proper respect for tradition. Speaking of which, does that trick where you spray aerosol into a room to reveal the hidden lasers really work? Because it's been done so much, you'd think the security force would just install something to detect whatever it is the hero is spraying into the air.

Because this is that kind of show, albeit a syndicated version made on the cheap, there are stunts, so fans of jeeps going over cliffs and blowing up won't be disappointed. And really, who isn't a fan of jeeps going over cliffs and blowing up? The only difference between this show and Fastlane is a few million dollars per episode. And the articles in Entertainment Weekly. And, I guess, the fact that Michael Biehn is old enough to be the father of everyone on Fastlane.

As Cross, Biehn doesn't make a very good archaeologist; he's prone to leaving priceless altars in the caves where the Mayans left them, giving "It's where it belongs" as an excuse. What kind of talk is that? As an Action Archaeologist, isn't it his job to take things from where they belong, then hand them over to creepy guys from the government so they can languish in a warehouse somewhere? How will future generations of warehouse workers find employment? He's just being irresponsible.

Naturally, as soon as I got home from the hotel, I made sure that I set a TiVo Season Pass for Adventure, Inc. It's not what the professional television critics call "good," but it's more entertaining that a hundred "Man Who Saved Christmas"es.

You know what would be great? If, right before the final episode of Joe Millionaire, the plumber guy suddenly inherited millions of dollars from a forgotten uncle. Then he really would be a millionaire!

And then the woman he picked could be horribly scarred in the acid mines, so she's no longer the beautiful gold-digger he thought she was. And then Joe Millionaire could reveal that he's not really a man, but secretly a cross-dressing woman. And then the acid-scarred floozie could pull off her rubber mask revealing that she's actually a space alien. But before Joe could collect his inheritance, they'd have to spend a night in a haunted house. But then it could turn out that the ghosts were really just Old Mister McReedy, the owner of the abandoned amusement park. But when the police come to drag him off, he could reveal that he's really Joe's supposedly-dead uncle.

And so on. With any luck, they could start the Astonishing Twist Endings five minutes into the first episode.

It's safe to say that the Sci-Fi channel's Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, currently midway through its two-week, 20-hour run, is a big deal for its host channel. After spending millions of dollars and a year's worth of marketing on this miniseries, it's time to see whether the American public is interested in seeking out the Sci-Fi channel and devoting two weeks of viewing to a story about UFOs and pesky gray aliens.

First there's the title. Although the series was created by, executive produced by, and written entirely by "Dante's Peak" screenwriter Leslie Bohem, the biggest investment Sci-Fi made in its quest for a channel-defining event was in getting Steven Spielberg to put his name above the title. How involved was Spielberg in Steven Spielberg Presents Taken? It's hard to say, but quite a bit less than he was in Band of Brothers would probably be a good guess. Still, Sci-Fi makes a point of uttering the Great Director's name at every opportunity, despite the fact that Taken's full title can easily be misread as being about the day a thief ruined young Steve Spielberg's chanukah.

And somehow I doubt that so many people would be excited by the 20 hours Sci-Fi is serving up if it were called Leslie Bohem Presents Taken.

In any event, titles and hype can only go so far. Once the reels are unspooling, all that's left is the work on the screen. And in large part, Taken isn't bad. Not that it's good, mind you, but it's not bad. This story is told across a large canvas, as you might expect from a 20-hour miniseries. In this case, the canvas is the last half of the 20th century. It's a tale of a couple of families, and how their lives are impacted by those selfsame pesky gray aliens.

If that description sounds a bit familiar, it should. Taken is, in many ways, not much different from NBC's two recent miniseries, The 60s and The 70s, both of which were about families growing and changing in the tumult of historical events. Taken is pretty much the same, except over five different decades and with a lot more alien anal probing.

That Taken tends to remind you of an NBC miniseries is no accident. Despite the presence of the aliens -- who are, at least as the story begins, mostly off-screen -- this is a decidedly mainstream miniseries. It's about lonely, mistreated wives; cruel and (sometimes) ambitious husbands; and troubled sibling relationships -- all set amid the turmoil of historical events from World War II to today.

Taken's scant science fictional element is nothing even the least sci-fi-savvy viewer hasn't seen before, what with its collection of flying saucers and big-eyed gray beasties. And that's no mistake. Taken may have been more than a year in coming to the screen, but in the past year the Sci-Fi channel has already started steering its channel into mainstream waters. Seeking out a larger, more demographically fit, and more female audience, the channel has de-emphasized outer space shows (goodbye, Farscape, and don't let Babylon 5 hit your ass on the way out the airlock) and pumped up the supernatural and down-to-earth.

Taken plays right into Sci-Fi's cards, providing a science-fictiony twist while staying close enough to home to attract mainstream TV viewers. Girl meets boy (who happens to be an escaped alien from Roswell, but disguised in the form of dreamy Eric Close), gives birth to creepy-yet-nice alien hybrid with psychic powers. Evil military-industrial complex captures dreamy alien's spacecraft and creates conspiracy to use alien technology for its own uses. Meanwhile, a disgruntled World War II hero and his family are repeatedly abducted by those gray guys, running metal tubes up their noses and presumably other orifices.

Why are the aliens here? What do they want? Why are they abducting these poor saps and torturing them? There are no answers, although presumably Taken will reveal more by the time it finishes than The X-Files ever did. And presumably, given the scant amount of screen time these aliens get, they will turn out to be doing good, and not evil, by taking our World War II flying ace into the skies and filling his colon with alieny goodness.

No, Taken isn't bad. But it's not really science fiction, either. It's a mainstream piece of entertainment that leverages the public's knowledge of the modern mythology of the space alien in order to tell the stories of a few families torn apart and brought together, sometimes all at once, by the tribulations of the 20th century. That's not a bad idea, per se. But sometimes while watching Taken you've got to wonder if it might not be better if they just took the aliens out of it altogether.

But then we wouldn't be watching Steven Spielberg Presents Taken on the Sci-Fi Channel, would we? We'd be watching Aaron Spelling Presents the 20th Century on the History Channel. And what would be the fun in that?

I enjoy watching sports, and it doesn't really matter what sport it is. I have a particular fondness for baseball, but I'll watch some football or basketball if it's on. I've seen more than my share of tennis, and I may be the only person who's willing to watch golf even though I don't play it myself. I've even watched some goofy non-sports like Slamball, which boils basketball down to its most crowd-pleasing aspect: the part where the mascot comes out and dunks off a trampoline. It's a great sport, if you don't mind watching the competitors frequently collide in mid-air and fall fifteen feet onto their spines.

But what I can't stand is shows about sports. It used to be that I'd happily watch SportsCenter for hours on end, even though it was the same hour repeated over and over again. That may have had something to do with not having had TiVo, so nothing else was on at 3 a.m. As recent as last week, I had a Pardon the Interruption Season Pass. But now I can only take about thirty seconds of any given sports commentary before I start twitching.

Partly, it's the desperate attempt to be hip. Not that I have a leg to stand on from which to point fingers at people feigning hipness, but is it strictly necessary for every single commentator, sportscaster, columnist, and sideline reporter to have their own catchy nicknames for every team and player? I'd be perfectly willing to enjoy, say, ESPN.com's Tuesday Morning Quarterback but I honestly can't be bothered to remember which team is "Jersey/B" and which team is the "Mouflons". And even if I did successfully commit to memory the Gregg Easterbrook glossary, that would do me no good anywhere else.

And then there's the desperate attempt of suit-wearing sports anchors to sound cool, by which I mean "black", by which I mean "Stuart Scott, shut the hell up. Dawg." If you're so obscure that I don't understand more than one word of ten, that doesn't mean you're the new Lord Buckley; it means you're somebody from whom I have just changed the channel.

So from now on, I'm going to stick to watching ESPN2 semi-sports. Like Timbersports, which are sometimes called "Lumberjack Challenges." You know the ones I'm talking about, there's the hotsaw, and the one where they have to stand on ledges they've jammed into notches in the tree so they're standing twenty feet off the ground while swinging axes around. And the bit where both lumberjacks are on a floating log, and they run in place while trying to make the other guy slip.

My favorite fake ESPN2 sport is the World's Strongest Man show. There's no fooling around there. You don't need instant replay to figure out which guy dragged a train farther. There's no appeals to the judge: you either lifted the huge boulder or you didn't. And those guys are great sports. In fact, they're the only good sports I've ever seen taking part in any athletic endeavor of any kind. When one huge Swedish guy is trying to hoist a massive tree-trunk over his head, every other competitor is cheering him on. Admittedly, weightlifters' "cheers" tend to sound a lot like "shouting obscenities at each other", but they really do seem to want each other to put forth their best effort. You don't see that in the cutthroat world of Slamball, I can tell you that.

All I want from my sports is something mildly diverting on the television while I do something else. I don't want to remember the difference between "da bomb" and "da bomb-diggity". I don't want to remember which athlete is which commentator's favorite. For that matter, I don't really want to remember the difference between a Left Wing, a Swingman, and a Slashing Cutter. I don't want to sit through endless speeches about how Shaquille O'Neal's return will turn the Lakers from a team that can't win on the road to an unbeatable juggernaut of mad skillz. I just want to watch the occasional sporting event.

The worst part is the halftime segments where a studio full of jackasses competes to be the most annoying. Right now, Terry Bradshaw is in the lead.

I am about to write a sentence that has never before been written in the history of mankind:

Something funny happened during last week's episode of Yes, Dear.

Before you make the perfectly understandable assumption that I've gone off my medication, I should assure you that I'm talking about funny-peculiar here. I must admit, however, that the most funny-peculiar thing about this episode was that I actually thought it was kind of funny-ha-ha.

Let me explain. I don't watch Yes, Dear very often. I consider it just another in a long line of shows that hope to cash in by recycling 40-year old scripts and populating them with refugees from other crappy, failed sitcoms that were trying to do the same thing. Monday's episode was no different in that respect, being the umpteenth retelling of the "bickering parents show up for baby's birth" plot.

What was unique about Yes, Dear's rendition of this old chestnut was that they staged it as an installment of TLC's A Baby Story, complete with all the documentary-style trappings that show entails. The episode began with the cast gathering excitedly on the couch to watch the airing of a television show; coincidentally, this was something that real people all over the nation were not doing at that very moment. The characters exposited a bit about how they had been chosen to be featured on A Baby Story, made a couple of profoundly lame jokes, and then transitioned into the show-within-a-show.

Now here's the weird part. Within the environment of the documentary format, the jokes suddenly became less groan-inducing. In fact, I caught myself laughing out loud a couple of times, something I do more frequently while having my teeth drilled than during the average Yes, Dear installment.

Initially I thought that the writing staff had gotten hold of some good peyote and, when they came out of their stupor, discovered that they had accidentally written a funny script. But after a few minutes, I realized what had really happened: A Baby Story has no laugh track, so during that portion of the show, the laugh track had been banished.

Now obviously I've seen sitcoms without laugh tracks before, but this was an interesting case. Between Baby Story segments the show would transition back to the cast sitting on the couch watching the show. During these interludes the laugh track would return, and my intense disdain for the show would instantly snap back into place. Seeing sequential scenes both with and without canned laughter made it obvious that the writing in the two types of segments was equally uninspired. But what seemed like pure offal while the laugh track was chortling away merrily somehow turned tolerable as soon as it went away.

This got me thinking. At the moment I consider Scrubs to be the funniest thing on network prime time. Scrubs, of course, has no laugh track. So in comparing the relative quality of sitcoms, it's conceivable that I weigh Scrubs more heavily simply because the laugh track isn't there to annoy me. Is it possible that Scrubs is just as fetid and unpleasant as the nightly shovelful of dung offered up by The WB, but I've been duped into thinking it's better because it doesn't break up its dialogue with prerecorded guffaws?

Then I remembered Watching Ellie. And Hidden Hills. And the dozen or so other shows that have shunned the laugh track specifically because they thought it would somehow legitimize the fecal stew they'd cooked up for their scripts. And I recalled how tedious M*A*S*H became after its laugh track was trimmed down because the producers, after nearly a decade of making jokes about war, decided that war wasn't actually very funny after all. Obviously, the mere absence of the laugh track is not a guarantee of entertaining television.

So why, then, did the quality of Yes, Dear seem to improve so dramatically when the laughter stopped? I toyed with the idea that maybe it was just me. Recently, I took one of those Internet psychology tests, the results of which stated that I have many of the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. At the time, I naturally assumed that the test had simply detected the fact that I am better than everyone else.

But maybe there was some truth to it. After all, I have in the past dismissed bands, movies, or TV shows exclusively on the basis that they're popular. Perhaps I have a subconscious aversion to comedy that other people, even prerecorded ones, think is funny. My id has simply decided that it's just way too cool for that mainstream shit, as if to say, "I was into Yes, Dear before it was cool, but now it seems like they've just sold out." Good lord, am I some sort of comedy elitist, like one of those Frasier pricks?

This conclusion, however, seemed to imply that I am somehow flawed, so I dismissed it out of hand.

I finally settled on the explanation that there is a fine line between comedy and condescension, and the laugh track forcibly drags the viewer over it. The problem with applying a laugh track to Yes, Dear is that the show has all the subtlety of a turd in the company water cooler. You would have to have been pithed to not realize when one of its blatantly obvious punch-lines has been dropped on you. So the added presence of canned laughter is like having somebody elbowing you in the ribs for half an hour and saying, "Look! He was all excited about putting the baby's crib together, but when he opened the box thousands of tiny parts fell out! Isn't that fucking hilarious?!"

All of which forces me to ask the question, how many dismally bad comedies could have been half-decent comedies, if only they had resisted the urge to remind their audience that the stuff was supposed to be funny?

The answer, I suppose, is moot. A rotten egg is still a rotten egg, even if it once had the potential to be a tasty ham and cheese omelet.

We got a letter from George Gray the other day. Yes, the one we called "an example of the ultimate physical manifestation of pure evil" and named our Worst Host award after. But give George credit: he didn't pull a Boutsikaris on us:

"Thanks for my award... it was a really funny article about just how much I sucked on Junkyard Wars. Sure, a bit 'lonely virgin who lives in his mom's basement and hates the world,' but I'm sure I'm not the first one to say that. Seriously, you've got a cool site, and I laughed my ass off when a friend of mine showed me the story on the George Gray Award..."

Aw, we don't hate the world, George...

(For the record, the nicest celebrity who has ever written to us after we ripped them is Gary Kroeger. He deserves some sort of award named after him. You know, the good kind.)