January 2003 Archives

So I'm watching this hostage crisis taking place in Miami on CNN. And I've come to this conclusion: When you've been taken hostage, and you are released by your captor, there is absolutely no way to preserve your dignity. You are going to look like an idiot. Guaranteed. Which totally sucks. Because it was bad enough you were terrorized, but compounding the whole deal is the fact that perhaps one of the most vulnerable moments of your life is being broadcast on national television. That poor lady.

Excerpt of an actual e-mail received by TeeVee:

MAN HUNT will debut on the Oxygen Network on Valentine's Eve (February 13 at 9:30 p.m. EST). It is an honest, raw look at the lives of single women who truly have put marriage at the top of their agenda. This is perhaps the only real and honest "reality show" out right now that addresses this issue (speaking to a large portion of the affected 48 million single women in the US).

The thing that kills me is that it's very easy for any self-identified Sensitive Feminist Commentator in America to bray about what an awful show Joe Millionaire is with its premise and its competitive gold-diggers blah-de-blah, but why hasn't anyone noticed that Oxygen is, insofar as "women's" programming goes, a misogynist's wet dream? Exhibit A, "Girls Behaving Badly," features tepid, so-called "comedy" in which women pull off such wacky pranks as selling cheeses made with imported breast milk, apparently not realizing that there's actually a thriving fetish market for that sort of thing. The whole point to this seems to be "Look at us! We're funny gals! We put people in socially awkward situations! Tee hee!"

Actual girls behaving badly are giving themselves -- or someone else -- a tattoo using only a Bic pen and the end of their electroplated belly button stud. Alternately, they're knocking over a bank, silk-screening "Valerie Solanas had a point" tees, or conducting themselves in a way that suggests they have neither knowledge of or respect for the mass-marketed demographic profiles of women. "Girls Behaving Badly," on the other hand, is all about legitimizing the idea that women are too "nice" to ever put anyone in an awkward situation by positing that women who don't play along are behaving badly and hilariously. There is absolutely nothing funny about that. Or the show, come to think of it.

Look at the rest of the programming -- it's shows about relationships, shopping, or birthin' babies. If this lineup were parodied on The Man Show, people would be foaming at the mouth over the sexist stereotyping of it all, but somehow, so long as the channel says it's "for women," these shows are somehow empowering. I love Carrie Fisher as much as the next person who marched in her kindergarten Halloween parade as Princess Leia, but having her -- or Xena, or AbFab -- does not give the channel any more cred.

Then again, I have a fundamental problem with television channels for "women," period. I have a problem with shows about women cops or women doctors or women soldiers or women in any vocation where the pitch is only three sentences away from "How does a hot woman make it in a man's field?" because these shows still make women seem like freaks for going into these professions instead of merely advance scouts for the wave of people to come. I have a problem with lineups which give the impression that women spend most of their emotional and intellectual resources on dating, dressing, decorating and procreating, because it's just another way to send the media message that women don't have a place in the "public" sphere of commerce, politics and culture because they'd rather keep house.

So where's the outcry over these channels and their programming? Why is it Joe Millionaire is somehow hailed as the epitome of knuckle-dragging sexism when the show is essentially an extended parody that skewers nearly every anti-woman idea -- from cattiness to competitive dating, from gold-digging to breadwinning -- out there? Those reality shows work because they drag those outdated ideas into the open and beat them into submission through overkill.

Given the choice between watching Evan the ersatz millionaire dealing with his princesses or watching a woman seemingly oblivious to her obvious thong-lines walking down a street as part of Girls Behaving Badly, I'll take Joe Millionaire any day. It's a lot more progressive.

I have experienced many dark, dark moments in my life, where I have made incredibly shameful decisions. The darkest moment, I confess, came late last week, when I actually wrote down the phone number to a Tony Robbins' infomercial for his five-day program to change your life called "Get the Edge."

I remember sitting on my futon, watching him be interviewed by Leeza Gibbons, and hearing a little voice in my head saying, "Hey, this guy is making a lot of sense!" And then quickly writing down the phone number.

I'd like to be able to blame booze or drugs for what I did, but to be honest, I was completely sober.

I didn't use it, thank goodness, but sadly I still have the number. It's on the last page of my hardcover copy of The Celestine Prophecies.

No wait, actually, buying The Celestine Prophecies was the darkest episode in my life. And I was drunk too. Thank God.

About a year ago, my wife and I were having serious problems. We were both in couples therapy, wondering if we were going to continue in our 14-year-long relationship. Thinking of our kids, house, cars, life -- questioning everything about how we were going to go on from where we were.

Late one night we were lying in bed side by side. Talking. Talking in quiet tones about how many things had gone wrong. How many of our plans have been forgotten. How much our lives had gone astray from the paths we'd hoped for.

We talked about life. And finally, tears in my eyes, I stared at the ceiling in the dark and I told my wife how I truly felt. I said, "I believe... you take the good. You take the bad. You take them both. And then you have... the facts of life."

We both laughed ourselves silly, and today we're happy.

Just a few final words about Sunday's Super Bowl, before ABC airs its final Alias promo, before the last whiff of burning tire wafts over from Oakland to my office, and before Shania Twain has to return her half-time show outfit to Vivid Video so that filming can resume on the 10 movies that are scheduled to be shot today...

ABC's coverage of the game itself was pretty solid, thanks in large part to the chemistry between the first-year announcing team of Al Michaels and John Madden. No longer weighted down by the forced and phony camaraderie with Boomer Esiason or the strained gimmickry of Dennis Miller, Michaels works well with Madden, playing off the ubiquitous ex-coach's bluster and adding the occasional insight to the telecast. The two of them don't distract from the game itself, at least, and that's all you can really ask for. Along with the Greg Gumbel-Phil Simms pairing over on CBS, the Michaels-Madden tandem means that viewers get above-average commentary from the top announcing crews on two of the three broadcast networks covering football. Sadly, the nation is still forced to endure the emotionless play-by-play of human replicant Joe Buck, the monotonous second-guessing of Cris Collinsworth and the forgettable utterances of Troy Aikman over on Fox, but at least we've been given a reprieve until August.

The pre-game coverage? Way too long, but there's not much we can do about that, save for turning off the TV until kickoff. Actually, we're lucky that ABC kept it to four hours this year -- we're not far from the day when the pre-game show runs for 72 hours, and we're treated to hour-long up-close-and-personal segments on the punters, game analysis incorporating old electric football sets and periodic updates from Melissa Stark on what the players had for breakfast on Saturday morning.

No, the only major gripe with the broadcast itself is the NFL's strange decision -- after years of marching bands and Up With People performances -- to turn its championship game into Chris Berman's Rockin' Super Bowl Sunday. Rock music at half-time? Fine, though we could do without the planted teenyboppers who rush onto the field and surround the stage in an effort to simulate crowd excitement. Pop stars performing the National Anthem? No problem there, especially when Cher is left out of the mix. Celine Dion's pre-anthem warm-up performance of "God Bless America?" We've already made our feelings known about overwrought Quebecois chanteuses, but there was probably some housewife in Utah that got all teary-eyed by the histrionics, so no harm, no foul. Santana's pre-game performance? Seems a little bit much. The Goo Goo Dolls giving a pre-game performance of their own? Bonnie Raitt? Um... fellas? Wasn't there supposed to be a game or something happening at some point?

The absolute last straw occurred after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers finished their ceremonial pasting of the Oakland Raiders, when the NFL delayed the presentation of the championship trophy in favor of an on-field performance by a Bon Jovi tribute band. Hmmm? What's that now? That was actually Bon Jovi performing? Oh. My bad.

Not to tell the NFL and ABC their business, but delaying the climactic denouement of your season so that Jon Bon and Richie and those other guys who's names I didn't bother to learn in the '80s and I'm certainly not going to bother now can sing one of their little ditties merely makes a long broadcast even longer. People who have just sat through a game that was effectively over before the second half commenced just so they could see the winning team exult in their triumph will simply be irritated at the further delay. Folks who might have hung around to catch the post-Super Bowl episode of Alias will flip off the channel in disgust. And all because some would-be hipster at NFL headquarters convinced Paul Tagliabue that America is just dying to hear an encore performance by Bon Jovi when they could just as easily flip over to VH-1 and see one of the band's videos over there.

Now, this is the point where we normally run through the Super Bowl ads and heap praise upon the commercials we enjoyed while offering the substandard advertisements a hearty serving of derision and scorn. We're not doing that this time around because, frankly and candidly, it'd take us about 30 seconds to mention the good ads and roughly another week for a point-by-point analysis of the commercials that made us instinctively reach for the TiVo remote.

Advertisers of America, we ask one thing of you and one thing only: produce enough entertaining commercials for Super Bowl Sunday so that we will be amused and diverted should one or both of the teams decide to play as if they were taking mob money. You failed us, advertisers, and because of that we now hate you, the products you were advertising and, by extension, the very concept of capitalism.

So -- the best ad? That'd be the one for Reebok, with its spot featuring an amped-up linebacker menacing meek middle-manager types. Sadly, it aired some time during the third quarter, long after we had given up hope for either a close game or an entertaining afternoon of commerce. Nevertheless, the "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker" ad had the right blend of comedy and violence and, therefore, takes top honors. Step up to the window and accept your prize, Reebok. Don't be too disappointed if it looks like a Big Box of Nothing.

Those Visa Check Card spots -- one with Yao Ming, the most underrated comedic actor of his generation, and the other with the Barber brothers -- earn an honorable mention, even though the latter offering was an older commercial redubbed with Super Bowl-relevant dialogue. Budweiser's ad featuring a zebra deliberating over an instant replay while those football-playing horses stood around was worth a chuckle or two. Four out of five Vidiots approve of any advertisement in which Alias star Jennifer Garner parades around in her skivvies. And we'll never object to a commercial that prominently features monkeys, though that doesn't make Sierra Mist any less undrinkable.

That's all. The balance of the commercials were bland and forgettable. Just two days after the big event, we're straining to remember what most of them were even promoting, and didn't those companies get a lot of bang out of their advertising dollar?

There was that one with the unfulfilled employees singing a particularly dreary cover of "Rainbow Connection" -- was it an advertisement for HotJobs? For Yahoo? For some sort of booze or antidepressant? In the end, it doesn't matter -- it still made me want to open a vein. FedEx had a nice parody of "Cast Away" in its ad -- that would have been even funnier if the movie hadn't come out, like, a decade ago. Next year, maybe FedEx can lampoon "Shine" or "Pay It Forward" or "Choo-Choo and the Phillie Flash" -- those motion pictures haven't entirely faded from memory, either. Oh, and the public-service announcement that intimates teenaged girls who smoke marijuana will lose the ability to think clearly and wind up having sex with total losers? I don't want to put a dampen on the Feds' anti-dope zeal, but I spent much of my high school and college years around my fair share of stoned girls, and I can assure you -- it doesn't impair their judgment that badly.

Those ads were simply terrible. The prize for actively attempting to repel potential customers goes to Bud Light, for a series of spots as tasteless as the beer-flavored water it was promoting. While I'm for truth in advertising as much as the next guy, I'm not sure it's in Bud Light's best interest to portray its base of core customers as leering, sniggering jackasses whose only concerns in life revolve around affordably priced light beer and the width of their girlfriends' hips -- in other words, just the sort of fellows you'd want your stoned teenaged daughter to avoid if the world were anything like its portrayal in a Bush administration anti-drug ad. Even worse, the generally nasty, uncivil and sexist tone of the ads made me feel like a humorless old man, like I should start pulling up my pants to my sternum and yelling at the neighbor kids to get the hell off my lawn. I can't forgive that any more than I can forgive Anheuser-Busch for selling terrible beer. As it stands, whenever I think of Bud Light in the next year, the only thing I'll remember is that it's the brew of choice should I ever find myself needing to drink beer through a clown's ass.

Hopefully, the ensuing public revulsion -- the Bud Light ads were among the worst received, along with that Dodge commercial where the guy spits up a wad of jerky -- will force Anheuser-Busch to rethink its advertising strategy by the time the next Super Bowl rolls around. The company had better hurry -- I believe pre-game coverage for Super Bowl XXXVIII kicks off next week.

A really amazing thing happened to me recently. And I figure if I can't share it with the readers of TeeVee, who can I share it with? This article isn't about TV per se. But TV had a lot to do with what happened to me.

I used to weigh more than 300 pounds. 315 at my peak. Today I weigh about 203. I'm not the man I used to be.

Honestly, I thought I was going to be fat for the rest of my life. I'd seriously given up hope. But something happened -- a girl -- and I decided I had to change my life. I decided I didn't like the person I'd become: I had an expensive drug problem. And I was fat. I had a serious drinking problem. And I was fat. I hated my job. And I was fat. I had a tenuous-at-best grip on sanity. And by the way, did I mention I was fat?

Anyhow, to put it succinctly, my life was going down the shitter. But a girl happened, and I decided to change my life.

And it started with a television show: Survivor. When I was fat, I was obsessed with the show. And how all the contestants would lose all this weight. I'd sit there and watch all of the stuff they ate and wonder what exactly was making them lose all that weight. Doing that got me thinking about what I ate. And thinking. And thinking. And thinking... And then I decided I didn't want to be fat anymore.

It isn't easy being fat, but I'll be honest with you, it isn't easy being skinny either. Losing all that weight reveals all of these other problems. They were actually always there, unnoticed because of the larger problem. Now I'm working on those problems.

So a TV show (okay, and a girl) inspired me to save my life. It's a funny thing to admit, but it's true. I thought I was gonna be fat my whole life. And I'm not. It's ironic, when you think about it. All these years I've been carping about how there is nothing good on television. Boy, was I ever wrong.

8:03 pm: Memo to Commissioner Tagliabue

Commissioner,

Your league is riding high, with great ratings and a swell of popular affection that makes your sport the most popular one in America.

So do something about your officials.

Tonight, on football's biggest stage, your officials have continued to make fools of themselves. A bad call reversal on a Raiders touchdown. A worse review of an unreviewable call on a two-point conversion. And several other confused and odd calls.

Time to pay your referees for full-time duty and eliminate the ridiculous practice of breaking up regular officiating crews who have worked together all season and replace them with mixed-up "all-star" crews who don't know each other.

Oh, and if you can do something about creating a four-point play for the benefit of Sterling Sharpe, that'd be peachy.

--Jason Snell

6:00 pm: Greatness of the ex-Raiders

34-3.

Let the angry destruction of Oakland begin.

(If the Raiders come back, let the joyful destruction of Oakland begin.)

--Jason Snell

5:55 pm: Sting! Tell Us the Score, Man!

So we were having an argument here in world TeeVee headquarters about who was performing live and who wasn't at this year's Super Bowl halftime extravaganza. The consensus is that No Doubt and Sting were probably singing live -- or at least lip synching along to versions of their numbers they recorded as recently as yesterday's dress rehersal. Shania Twain? Milli Vanilli-action all the way. Though many of us admire her bold decision to dress up as some sort of inter-galactical space whore come to study our planet's primative sex technology.

One way to resolve these arguments in the future would be to require the halftime performers to shout out the score during their musical numbers. Maybe even change around some of the lyrics to reflect first-half action.

Just a castaway
Like the Raiders' game plan
No touchdowns there
Just a field goal

More three-and-outs
Than Al Davis can bear
Rescue Rich Gannon 'fore he falls into despair

See. That took me like 15 seconds to whip up. And I'm half in the bag.

--Philip Michaels

5:40 pm: Buy Our Crap, Jerk

Man -- nothing like an economic downturn to make the Super Bowl commercials suck wind.

As of this writing, we've played 30 minutes of football (by the time this actually gets posted, the Pro Bowl may be underway), and we've had exactly three commercials that didn't make me question the existence of a loving God. Those would be the Michael Jordan Gatorade commercial, the Tiki and Ronde Barber Visa checkcard commerical, and the Yao Ming Visa checkcard commercial.

(Is it too soon to get Yao Ming his own sitcom, incidentally? Maybe a sitcom where he's a wisecracking foreign exchange student with a fractured take on our crazy American lifestlye? You could team him up with Tony Danza, and make them a pair of mismatched roommates. We've got a lot of scientists in this country -- we can make this work.)

As for the rest of the commercials, we're talking a steady parade of life-denying idiocy and nastiness in 30-second bursts. We've seen a guy use a Dodge truck to help him upchuck his beef jerkey. We've gotten to watch a simulation of squirrel biting a dentist in a place where you really shouldn't be bitten, simulation or no. And, of course, there was the commercial where a guy drank a Bud Light through a clown's ass.

Oooh, honey. Roll that one back on the TiVo. I'm not sure the kids saw it.

I never thought I'd say this, but I really miss the Bud Bowl.

--Philip Michaels

5:20 pm: Shania Twain

I never realized that Shania Twain was actually a 1980s pop star. I know, people will claim that she's a country singer, but consider the evidence:

1) Her outfit with the huge shiny pointy lapels is leather. Or vinyl. Or something. Except for her bejeweled bra.

2) There's a guy in her band with one of those double guitars, in case he needs to switch between a six-string and twelve-string in the middle of a verse.

3) There's another guy in her band with one of those portable keyboards that look sort of like guitars. You might remember them from every video on the first two years of MTV.

4) Back on the subject of her outfit, she's wearing about seventeen white belts. It's all very Debbie Gibson.

--Monty Ashley

5:14 pm: Drink This Beer, You Boor

Over the course of this game, we've seen the beer commercial in which men fantasize about hot girls wrestling in a fountain, the one in which bikini-clad babes wander off with some seashell-wielding boor when he name-drops a beer, and the one where the man about to give the let's-be-friends speech to his woman gets the lets-include-my-roomate response.

We've seen guys wearing their dog, pouring beer in their pants, and stealing appliances stocked with bad mass-market beer.

So what is the lesson we're to take away from all this? That beer is the beverage of choice for jerks and jackballs? I'm not expecting Pierce Brosnan to knock back a Coors with raised pinky, but for the love of God, can we at least not make the relationship between alcohol and asinine conduct so obvious?

--Lisa Schmeiser

5:13 pm: Real Men Wear Particularly Ugly Shades of Orange

I'm not afraid to admit it -- I miss the old Tampa Bay Bucs uniforms.

Maybe you don't remember those old Buccaneer unis. Maybe you've successfully suppressed the memory from your brain. But the Bucs used to take the field in these creamsicle orange shirts and pants. The logo on the helmet featured a long-haired, mustachioed pirate -- dubbed Bucco Bruce by the team -- clutching a knife in his teeth and winking saucily at a dubious world.

You have to be tough if you're going to wear uniforms like that. Sadly, the Bucs began their existence losing their first 26 games. At one point, they had a streak of 13-losing seasons. Now they've switched to the pewter-and-red uniforms, and they happen to be playing in the Super Bowl.

Some people would argue that's not a coincidence. I would counter that people have never appreciated the power of creamsicle orange.

Anyhow, Bucco Bruce was retired as well. I believe he and Pat the Patriot are now sharing a home together in Miami Beach.

--Philip Michaels

4:45 pm: No, MJ! You'll Go Blind!

So there's that Gatorade commercial where Michael Jordan plays with himself, and I...

Heh. Heh. Hoo!

Oh God... it's going to be a long afternoon.

--Philip Michaels

4:22 pm: Invest the Money Wisely, Oz

Just saw the Osbournes' Pepsi Twist commercial. They sure enjoyed a good, long run, huh?

--Philip Michaels

4:12 pm: Okay, Now I Can Nap

No sooner do I post to complain about the commercials than I get to see the Matrix preview in all its glory. Quick, someone, give me something else to complain about! I have the power!

--Lisa Schmeiser

4:10 pm: Veritas: The Terrible Show

When I saw the commercial for Veritas: The Quest, I responded just like everybody else: I shuddered at the idea of such an obviously horrible series being inflicted on the viewing public. I also wondered about this "Super Monday" concept. Apparently the Super Bowl is so important that it not only turns Sunday into a holiday, it turns the Monday after it into a holiday-by-association. Like with Easter.

But about Veritas (or, I guess, The Quest. I'm not sure yet how it will be abbreviated). the description from the official site contains the following phrases:

"a hyper-intelligent but rebellious teenager still mourning the death of his renowned archeologist mother"

" Solomon is really head of the Veritas (Latin for "truth") Foundation, whose agenda is to seek the truth behind the mysteries of history and civilization and to protect its secrets at all costs."

"a journey that will lead to the unlocking of universal mysteries and, hopefully, bring him and his emotionally estranged father back together. "

"a fabled vessel that contains a key to the puzzle of how civilization really may have evolved."

So. You've got the Veritas organization, which has two goals: uncover mysteries and protect secrets. To the untrained eye, those may seem contradictory, so let's hope the untrained eye is distracted by the relationship between young Nikko Zond and his estranged father Solomon. And his dead mother, who I expect will be making an appearance as early as the fourth episode, because there are certain similarities to Alias if you look closely.

There's also an enemy group, which I hope has a name that translates to "lies". According to the hype machine that writes these sites, it's both a "mysterious brotherhood" and a "nefarious organization". I didn't know "nefarious" was still a word. I thought it got phased out of the language when people stopped getting tied to railroad tracks.

--Monty Ashley

4:08 pm: Tempo, Frenchy!

Not to pile on Celine Dion -- well, OK, this is entirely about piling on Celine Dion -- but she has historically performed the worst renditions of "God Bless America" in recorded history (And while we're on the subject, when did Celine Dion become the de facto singer of patriotic songs? No other Canadians are available to sing American standards? What about Anne Murray? Gordon Lightfoot? Crash Test Dummies?).

Back when Major League Baseball mandated that teams play "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch, the Oakland Athletics used Celine Dion's recording of the song -- a lurching, screeching rendition that changes tempo about seven times and begins in a key that only dogs can hear. I mean, it was fun on one level to watch thousands of self-conscious Oakland A's fans try to sing along while Celine shrieked her love for a country that she visits occasionally.

Thankfully, the Celine Dion "God Bless America" recording has been banished from Oakland A's games. Would that I could say the same about Celine Dion at Super Bowls.

--Philip Michaels

3:55 pm: When Are The Good Commercials Coming?

Since my knowledge of football is largely limited to saying things like, "Punt? Fumble? First down?" I watch the Superbowl for the commercials.

And unless they break out that new Matrix preview toot-sweet, I'm going to begin fidgeting and whining. So far, we've seen a Quiznos commercial that did not lure me into the sandwich eatery. Rather, it's convinced me that I never, ever want to eat somewhere that hires pantless men willing to starve their parakeets for nine bucks an hour.

Maaaaa-trix! Maaaaa-trix! Maaaaa-trix!

--Lisa Schmeiser

3:40 pm: Kind of Blue

For me, the highlight of the pregame show -- besides the realization that Celine Dion's long absence from the public eye has apparently made the Canadian chantuese batty -- was when ABC ran its Alias promo. In case you missed it, the promo featured Jennifer Garner, the show's very pretty star, and the many pretty outfits she's worn over the last year and a half.

Why was this a highlight over, say, that Bruce Willis movie promo where he single-handedly saves Africa from evil guerillas? Because when the Alias promo aired, I got to hear Jason Snell say repeatedly and fervently, "Show her in the plastic blue dress. The plastic blue dress. Dear God in heaven, show the plastic blue dress!"

And yes -- they showed the plastic blue dress. And I suspect Jason's reaction to that will surpass anything else that happens in the game today.

--Philip Michaels

3:40 pm: My Car Will Go On

I have to believe that I'm not the only man in America who just envisioned Celine Dion plowing her Chrysler full-speed into a telephone pole, and cracked a smile.

--Steve Lutz

3:34 pm: More Gratuitous Military Displays

It was bad when they had the armed forces demonstrating game plays for the bored ESPN talking heads. It was somewhat worse when Penn and Teller appropriated the U.S. Marines to guard their Superbowl predictions. But now -- with the airplanes flying overhead after the Dixie Chicks sing -- we've reached the apex of gratuitous military displays. Short of the Raider Nation nuking Tampa after the game, there's no place else to go with the football-related displays of military might.

--Lisa Schmeiser

3:32 pm: God Bless, uh, Canada

LWith all those American divas this great country is responsible for (Britney, Christina, Fat Ass Lopez, Whitney, Mariah, Axl Rose), they get repulsive Canadian-Frog Celine Dion to sing "'God Bless America"?

--Peter Ko

3:28 pm: OW!

My ears are burning. Is someone talking about me?

No, it's just Celine Dion singing.

--Jason Snell

2:49 pm: Santana!

Carlos Santana is currently performing, along with the help of Beyonce Knowles, Michelle Branch, and a million dancers. I have two thoughts:

1) I saw the Who in that stadium. And I can therefore say pretty confidently that most of the stadium is completely unable to make out what's going on down on the stage.

2) When exactly did Busby Berkeley-style production numbers become associated with football?

--Monty Ashley

2:25 pm: My Ball is Cheesy and Molding

Excitement mounts in the Lutz household, as preparations are made for the annual Super Bowl binge on the most unhealthy food imaginable. Yesterday, Martha Stewart saw fit to broadcast a show devoted to "football food", and my wife took it to heart. As I type this, she is molding a massive lump of spreadable cheese into the shape of a football, periodically calling me over to judge whether it's suitably football-like, and all the while giggling to herself over the ridiculousness of it all. Lord, I love her.

Other artery-clogging highlights on the menu include buffalo wings, chili, and the fifth food group, beer. If you do hear an explosion during the game, it may just be the sound of methane escaping from Chula Vista.

--Steve Lutz

2:16 pm: Chris Berman Sends Women Into Labor

So we're now up to the point in the pre-show where Chris Berman is busy interviewing Sherice Brown in Alameda. Sherice is quite pregnant -- with twins, no less -- and in an effort to jack up the dramatic potential of the SuperBowl, the interview largely focuses on the possibility of this woman going into labor while her husband beats up the Bucs this afternoon.

When asked what will happen if she should, over the course of the next few hours, go into labor, get herself into the hospital, and deliver the children, Sherice answered, "He'll come home to three great surprises." Three? She's expecting twins. What is this third surprise?

Maybe the surprise is that Chris Berman's voice sends women into labor. Can you imagine how this will affect maternity wards all over the country?

--Lisa Schmeiser

2:06 pm: And Now Let's Go to Brent Musberger, Strapped to a Warhead

So on ESPN's pre-pre-pre-game show, there was a segment where Sean Salisbury and his cohorts were aboard the USS John C. Stennis, using Navy personnel to illustrate important strategic points that may or may not come up in today's contest. Then, on the ABC pre-game show, Mike Tirico and crew were broadcasting from the USS Pueblo.

Good thing there's no impending global conflict that would require the use of warships. Otherwise, the ESPN-ABC empire might look silly using the ships as background sets.

--Philip Michaels

2:00 pm: Yay, Pre-show!

Unlike some people, I'm now passionately in love with the very idea of the pregame show. For one, the opening credits indicate that the people responsible for cobbling together this spectacle have decided that Iron Chef is their aesthetic inspiration, and it's hard not to adore any show which features men in capes shrieking at live seafood.

My previous high-water mark for football-related entertainment was the halftime show for the 2001 Thanksgiving game, between who-cares? and i-have-no-idea. The show featured some alleged diva -- I have no idea whom, as all the fake-baked, emaciated belters all run together after a while -- singing about peace and fellowship while the Dallas cowgirls undulated suggestively around a chorus of children, all in the name of charity.

Today, I can only hope that the Dixie Chicks and John Madden bring us a message of peace, fellowship, and more flesh on display than the producers of Sabado Gigante can even dream of. Viva wretched and irrelevant excess! Pre-show, I love you!

--Lisa Schmeiser

1:47 pm: And It's Tampa by a Touch-Goal!

So they're wrapping up ESPN's pregame show and as usual, the anchors are all making predictions. Every single one of them picks the Bucs, but that's not the important thing. The important thing is that one of the picks, by former receiver Sterling Sharpe, is Bucs 13, Raiders 9, in overtime.

Now, I realize several of you may not be football fans. But let me explain this to you: in the NFL, the first team to score wins. There are no four-point plays in existence in the NFL. You can only win by two, three, or six points in overtime.

Except in Sterling Sharpe's world, apparently. So let me say this: if the Bucs do indeed win by four in OT, it will be the greatest Super Bowl in the history of the planet Sharpe.

--Jason Snell

1:42 pm: More Picking on Stuart Scott

I'm less interested in what the talking heads on the ESPN pre-game show are saying than what they're wearing. This is in part because there's only so much bellowing any one man can do before I tune out automatically, but mostly because it's fun to play Joan Rivers on the couch. I can't pick on the uniforms, I haven't had a chance to comment on the Raider Nation's attire, but the anchors are sitting ducks.

Frankly, most of the men look good. The Screaming Sharpe Brothers can wear suits. It's whenever anyone attempts to accesorize that we enter the danger zone, where Stuart Scott is waiting for us.

Those sunglasses? Not at all aerodynamic. You could hang laundry off the earpieces and not muffle one boo-yah!; you could use the glasses as emergency handrails for anyone lurching across the desk.

Next time, Stuart, stick with the classic RayBans.

--Lisa Schmeiser

1:33 pm: No pregame for me, thanks

I turned on ABC's pregame show, and immediately got to see Penn & Teller in the middle of a shrieking Times Square crowd. Then there were some giggling sports buffoons, led by Chris Berman. Then we got to see Celine Dion getting her hair done.

Then I decided I'd rather watch the Junkyard Wars episode on my Tivo. I'm sure I'll get plenty of foolishness during the game itself.

--Monty Ashley

1:32 pm: Super Sunday

Noon: Wake up. Hung over after long night of Dungeons & Dragons. Gain measure of cheer from lack of interest in professional sports.

1:30: Have three bowls of Corn Flakes. Make it four -- milk does a body good.

4:30: Burn CD with Yahoo's Super Collapse and MAME plus several early '80s arcade games. Karnov rules!

Recall Vidiot Super Bowl blog. Gain measure of cheer from exalted geekiness.

--Chris Rywalt

1:07 pm: Stuart Scott, Call Your Optometrist

Okay, I can't get over this. Stuart Scott is anchoring (yes, present-tense -- I'm watching on TiVo, okay?) a national sports broadcast while wearing reflective sunglasses. What's the story there? Off-camera fistfight with Andrea Kremer gave him a black eye? Maybe a lunatic in the crowd insists on aiming a laser pointer in the baron of Boo-Yah's eye? Or perhaps he's just drunk -- given how odd his standard delivery of package intros is, how would we know the difference?

Visine, Stuart. It gets the red out.

--Jason Snell

12:10 pm: Pre-Pre-Pre-Pre... What, There's a Game?

Super Bowl Sunday can be busy. We're having a few people over to watch the game -- that would be Vidiots Philip Michaels, Lisa Schmeiser, and Gregg Wrenn -- and so that means we need to clean up our house and get ready for company.

Thank goodness there's television for me while I'm waiting. Three hours of NFL Countdown on ESPN -- normally my favorite pre-game program. But today, Chris Berman and Steve Young have been bivouacked out by ABC, so the hosts are Stuart Scott (mysteriously wearing polarized shades while anchoring -- too cool for us, Mr. Boo-Yah?) and Suzy Kolber. A few demerits there. Plus, egomaniac Sterling Sharpe's brother, the egomaniacal Shannon Sharpe. Stop yelling at the camera! We can hear you! That's what the microphone is for.

Fortunately, after these three hours on ESPN, we get to move over to ABC for three more. Only six hours of preview? Come on, ABC. Didn't Fox do 20 hours of pre-game last year?

--Jason Snell

11:25 am: Please, Carrot -- Don't Hurt 'Em

So I'm watching one of the myriad Super Bowl preview shows airing over on ESPN this morning because I'm all about the preparation, because all this information I gather up helps me watch the big game on a completely different level, because... um... because...

Because I lead an incredibly dull interior life, and watching highlights from Super Bowl XVIII beats doing chores, OK?

Anyhow, it's a commercial break, one of those 1-800-CALL-ATT commercials starring your friend and mine, Carrot Top. Now, in the past, we've had a few laughs at the expense of Carrot Top and his fairly elusive appeal. And the reason we point at Carrot Top and laugh is quite simple -- he is unbelievably awful at his chosen professional. Just a glimpse of him is enough to start a stampede toward the remote in the Michaels household. If any friends and colleagues happen to feel differently, fear of society's just rebuke has apparently persuaded them to keep their opinion to themselves. To date, Mr. Top's best on-camera performances -- "The Roast" episode of The Larry Sanders Show and a recent Scrubs episode -- have played off the fact that the American viewing public largely finds him unpleasant. His work in the AT&T commercials make prior efforts by the frenetically displeasing David Arquette look like the sort of the thing James Lipton hyperventilates over on Inside the Actors Studio. And despite all of this -- the catcalls, the pleas for mercy, the oversized hooks appearing to drag him off the stage -- all the evidence suggests that Carrot Top continues to take the money instead of crumbling into a heap of self-recriminations and penitence.

So you can imagine how I felt this morning when the latest Carrot Top ad appeared on my TV. I tried to turn away to something more appealing -- an infomercial, say, or the Snuff-Film Channel or even Fox -- when I happened to notice something about the freakish prop comic. For the commercial -- which ties into AT&T's sponsorship of the upcoming NBA All-Star Game -- Carrot Top is clad in a basketball uniform. Which is how I discovered that he's fairly muscular. One might even say that Carrot Top has spent a good deal of time in the gym. One could further deduce -- and believe me, I'm not really going out on a limb here -- that Carrot Top could beat me up and do so with relative ease.

I realize that the same thing could be said for a majority of people in this and any number of countries. Then again, I don't regularly give that majority of people a reason to want to beat me senseless, since I don't spend time defaming them and their particularly hackneyed brand of comedy.

So that's it -- no more making fun of Carrot Top. It's not that he's an easy target and that poking fun at him is a cheap joke of the "Kathie Lee Gifford at the sweatshop variety." It's not because I have bigger fish to fry or loftier goals to pursue. It's simply that the only thing I can imagine worse than having Carrot Top turn one of my internal organs into a comedic prop for his standup act would be to have my widow explain the reason for my untimely demise. "Phil?" she'd say sadly. "Oh, Carrot Top beat the crap out of him."

It's the same reason I don't make fun of Joe Piscopo any more, incidentally.

--Philip Michaels

8:49 am: Señor Seabass

Why is it that I have the sinking suspicion that the most commonly heard phrase around town this week was, "This way to the donkey show, Señor Janikowski"?

--Philip Michaels

4:29 am: Preparation

The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of success in the NFL. There are players who spend their entire careers trying and failing to get there. In preparation for this game, enough weight has been lifted to sink an aircraft carrier, and the complexity of the game plans would put a DNA molecule to shame.

Therefore, it pleases me to know that right now, at 4:00 am before the big game, members of both teams are crawling back to their hotels after a hard night of getting drunk in Tijuana.

--Monty Ashley

3:19 am: Explosive Football Action!

Good morning, and happy Super Bowl Sunday from sunny San Diego!

That?s right, unlike the other Vidiots -- most of whom fled this podunk burg for cities with more street cred, such as Barstow -- I?m reporting to you from Ground Zero. I call it that because this afternoon the eyes of the whole nation will be focused on America?s Finest City®. And because there?s a good chance that various parts of San Diego will explode today.

You see, in addition to there being some sort of big sporting event going on here, San Diego is home to a couple of major military bases. I reckon those Al Qaeda nutcases may have noticed that fact, especially since a few of the guys that flew into the World Trade Center lived here for several months previous to September 11. And you may have heard that it?s not exactly difficult to sneak into this country from Mexico. That tomato on your cheeseburger didn?t pick itself, you know.

So during today?s coverage of the game, you might want to keep an eye out for suspiciously large-scale, inappropriately timed fireworks displays. And be sure to listen for that sound you hear in Bugs Bunny cartoons when the plane or rocket he?s in is plummeting madly towards Earth. Extra bonus points to you if you spot Osama up in the bleachers. Seems like that fucker would be a Raiders fan.

I actually gave some thought to being somewhere else today, preferably someplace outside the blast radius, but my sense of duty as a reporter is too strong. As part of that duty, last night I conducted a whirlwind tour of all of San Diego?s foremost strip clubs, searching for wildly partying Muslims. Evidently, one of the tenets of Islam is that suicide bombers must prepare for their upcoming meeting with Allah by having silicone titties waggled in their faces. I assume this is done to get them warmed up for the thousands of virgins that await them in the afterlife. Either that, or they expect the thousands of virgins to all look like the toothless Afghani hags shown on CNN, so they want one last glimpse of some decent tail.

At any rate, I didn?t locate any suspicious looking characters during my research. I did locate a suspicious looking hair on my $3.99 fish and chips platter at Li?l Honeys Gentleman?s Club & Grille, but I strongly doubt that it was plotting to blow up the Super Bowl.

Don't worry, though. Even without the thrilling spectacle of terrorist attack, there will still be plenty of interesting things to watch for during the broadcast of today?s game. One of the teams involved is the Oakland Raiders, and that means excitement. Raider fans are a very dedicated and lively bunch that really gets into the spirit of football. That?s why every time they come to town there are at least five stabbings in the stands. I think you?ll discover that nothing gets you into the game like the sight of ten grown men dressed as members of GWAR beating the stuffin?s out of an elderly Floridian.

Also thanks largely to the presence of the Raiders and their hordes of still-loyal Los Angeles supporters, today you?ll be given the rare opportunity to see history in the making. Remember this as the camera pans across the assembled throng at Qualcomm stadium: you are seeing more black people than have ever before been in San Diego at one time. The 2000 census lists the African-American population of San Diego at 5.8%, but I?m pretty sure the percent sign was put on there by accident. Yet today, for one shining moment, we are diverse. Dr. King would be proud.

Don?t forget the halftime show! This year, when the second quarter draws to a close, you have a few options. You can stick with ABC and enjoy the musical stylings of Shania Twain, No Doubt, and Sting. Or, if you?re not a fan of bland, by-numbers pop, you can tune to NBC, where you?ll be treated to the bland, by-numbers comedy of the Saturday Night Live Halftime Special. Or you could just slather the extra sauce from your buffalo wings all over your genitals, which should prove both more interesting and less irritating than either of the other two choices.

And of course, you can always look forward to great new commercials for the three American companies that aren't yet bankrupt. The economy being what it is, ABC had to invoke NAFTA and import some commercials from nearby Mexico in order to fill all the ad slots. Among the more noteworthy spots is a new one for ?¡Yo Soy Cola!? which features Christina Aguilera as she portrays different styles of tramp through the last four decades. Es muy hot!

Oh, and there?s also supposed to be a pretty good football game going on. If you?re interested in that sort of thing.

--Steve Lutz

1:00 am: Watch Me: Super Sunday Edition

What? You're not planning on watching Super Bowl XXXVII today? Are you some sort of communist or enemy combatant?

That last one isn't a rhetorical question, incidentally. Mr. Ashcroft would like to know.

The facts of Sunday are these: the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will play in Super Bowl XXXVII from San Diego tomorrow. ABC's coverage of the game proper begins at 3 p.m. PT (though, by the time the player introductions, ceremonial coin flips and Dixie Chick renditions of our national anthem are wrapped up, kickoff will be closer to 3:30 p.m.). For those of you who can't get enough up-close-and-personal segments with offensive linemen, ABC's four-hour Pregame Show goes on the air at 11 a.m. PT.

(And, just in case you have plans to completely ignore your family today, CBS offers some pre-Super Bowl College Basketball with Michigan taking on Michigan State at 10 a.m. PT followed by the fourth round of the Phoenix Open at noon. ABC precedes its Super Bowl coverage at 9 a.m. PT with the Senior Skins Game featuring Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Hale Irwin. Aging golfers competing for tip money in a made-for-TV golf contest? I guess that's why they call it Super Sunday.)

Some of you will have none of this. The moment you saw the words "Super Bowl" followed by that string of roman numerals, you were already mentally planning which Web site to surf over to next -- some of you may be gone already. And that's a shame. Because while we don't understand why you'd forego a day of bone-crushing tackles, circus catches, and onion dip and we believe you should be mocked savagely for your iconoclastic behavior, we still want to help. Here's what you can watch instead as Oakland Raider fans plot out their swath of destruction through a city near you:

• A&E: Murder, She Wrote marathon, 4 p.m. - 4 a.m.
  
• AMC: Audrey Hepburn marathon: Funny Face, 1 p.m; Breakfast at Tiffany's, 3:10 p.m.; Sabrina, 5:35 p.m.; My Fair Lady, 8 p.m.
  
• Animal Planet: The Pet Psychic Marathon, 11 a.m. - 1 a.m.
  
• Bravo: Gay Weddings, 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.
  
• Disney: Stanley marathon (I have no clue, either, folks), 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.
  
• E!: The E! True Hollywood Story: Rock Hudson, 6 p.m.; The E! True Hollywood Story: Doris Day, 8 p.m.
  
• Food Network: Two Fat Ladies marathon, 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.
  
• Fox Movie Channel: Planet of the Apes marathon; All damn day, you damn dirty apes!
  
• FX: Die Hard with a Vengenance, 3 p.m.; Grumpy Old Men, 6 p.m.; Grumpier Old Men, 8 p.m.
  
• Lifetime: Degree of Guilt (a four-hour made-for-TV movie with Daphne Zuniga and Sharon Lawrence? Goodbye, Super Bowl!), 4 p.m.
  
• MTV: The Osbournes marathon, 3 p.m. - 7 p.m.
  
• Oxygen: Lace (Now I don't want to get picky here, but when we did the Watch Me for New Year's Eve, Oxygen was showing this five-and-a-half hour miniseries then, too -- does the network not actually own any other programming?), 6:30 p.m.
  
• Sundance Channel: Anatomy of a Scene marathon, 3 p.m. - 8 p.m.
  
• TBS: City of Angels, 2:30 p.m. PT; Stepmom, 5 p.m.
  
• TNN: Star Trek IV, 3 p.m.; Star Trek V, 6 p.m.
  
• TNT: Gettysburg (all six hours of it), 12 p.m.; Gone with the Wind (all five hours of that), 6 p.m.
  
• USA: Dirty Dancing (No one makes Baby watch the Super Bowl!), 5:30 p.m.
  
• VH-1: Divas Las Vegas, 6 p.m.; Shania Twain: In Her Own Words, 7 p.m.
  

--Philip Michaels

So does it make me a geek that I totally spent considerable time and effort to program the Itchy and Scratchy theme song as the ring tone for my cell phone? And furthermore, does it compound my geekiness that I've actually tracked down the theme song to The A-Team and am, at this very moment, programming it into my Nokia? Does that make me a geek or merely disturbed?

And what if somehow, by chance, I kinda sorta came across the theme song for The Facts of Life. Just by happenstance. I wasn't looking for it. It just sort of fell in my lap. Out of the blue. By accident. Through no fault of my own.

What if that happened? And I kinda sorta programmed the theme song from The Facts of Life into my phone? Just out of mere curiosity? Y'know, just to hear what it would sound like?

And what if when I played the theme song from The Facts of Life on my phone, it sounded really cool? And I kinda kept it as my permanent ring tone? And that sometimes, I call myself, just to hear the song.

Would that be weird or what?

You know, I was very nearly on Gimme a Break! The youngest daughter, Sam, was actually a son in the pilot script, and I was on the short list of potential Sams. Then they decided (quite correctly I think) that the friction between the gruff old widower and his children made more sense if the kids were all girls. And now you know something you never wanted to know about Gimme a Break!

So since we very nearly worked together, I suppose I should feel particularly bad about Nell Carter's passing. But I really don't. While she was clearly a talented singer and comedienne (as evidenced by her star turn in "Modern Problems"), on Gimme a Break! she always annoyed and somewhat frightened me. Had I been cast on the show, Sam would probably have cried a lot and spent much of his time trying to stay out of Nell's way for fear of being trampled and/or eaten.

In her AP obit, she's quoted as saying "I did have my episode with drugs.... I was able to have a good career while I was doing terrible things to myself." I like that. It's hardly a condemnation of drug use. "Drugs do terrible things to you, but hey, they didn't keep me from starring in an inexplicably successful sitcom. Come to think of it, why did I ever quit?"

I gather her drug of choice was not Dexadrine.

And here I was just sitting down to write virtually the same article as Phil...

However, I was going to suggest that they do Joes Millionaire, wherein several nubile young contestants spend a couple of weeks shoveling cow chips for an equal number of "millionaires." The kicker is that only one is an actual millionaire; the others are simply shitbag construction workers or equally lowly life forms. (HINT: The real millionaire might be the one with the sunken chest who picks his nose publicly and smells vaguely of bleu cheese.) Each bachelorette is free to pursue any of the males, whether she decides to follow her heart or follow her feminine genetic programming to spend, spend, spend. At the end, each lady must be paired with one and only one dude; if two are after the same guy, the dispute is settled through topless dung wrestling. The gal who ends up with the dude with the dough wins... sort of.

I also think the guys should all be required to legally change their name to Joe Millionaire. That would be cool.

By now, it is almost a certainty that Joe Millionaire will return to the airwaves after the series wraps up its initial seven-episode run on Fox -- it's too successful not to come back. An estimated 18.6 million people watched the January 6 premiere, with 17.5 million of those viewers returning for another round of punishment last week. (Presumably, the other 1.1 million were still busy scrubbing vigorously to wash the shame away) More important to Fox, Joe Millionaire notched the highest-rated debut for any network series this year among viewers ages 18-to-34, which means two things: (1) Joe Millionaire is helping Fox make inroads with the most coveted demographic among advertisers and (2) the Founding Fathers probably knew what they were doing when they decided that you had to turn 35 before you could run for president.

Besides, the return of Joe Millionaire would irritate TV critics and social commentators beyond the limits of rational thought, and wouldn't it stand to figure that driving critics to the point of madness is behind a lot of the programming decisions at Fox?

Fox Executive: Say, TV critics, would it bother you terribly if we were to broadcast a two hours of winos and bums fighting over table scraps?

TV Critics: Of course it would!

Fox Executive: Hmmm... how about a reality show in which losing contestants were sold off to international slave rings?

TV Critics: Any decent person would be outraged!

Fox Executive: I see. So I guess you'd feel the same way about a special in which the privileged elite of society are given a chance to hunt the poor and disenfranchised for sport?

TV Critics: What kind of inhuman monster would delight in such a thing?

Fox Executive: Great! Because you'll be seeing all three on Fox this February, just in time for sweeps!

TV Critics: [Incoherent sputtering]

Fox Executive: Oh, and we're giving David E. Kelley another series.

TV Critics: Gaaaaaah! Our chests!

Of course, there's a major roadblock to bringing Joe Millionaire back for a second season of laying waste to the shared values and mores that served us perfectly well for the past millennium or so. And that difficulty is that while it's pretty easy to find 20 women equal parts gullible and delusional enough to believe that a handsome multimillionaire will be so desperate for love that he'd turn to a reality show to find his trophy bride the first time out the gate, it's a harder trick to pull off when everyone knows what you're up to. Pretend for a second that you're a demographically appealing single female, and Fox calls you up to invite you to hang out at a European chateau with a dashing young man. "Oh, and he's worth millions," the Fox people say in the same tone of voice they use to tell you how riveting this week's installment of Boston Public is going to be. I mean, no one is thick enough to fall for that trick twice -- not even Elimidate contestants.

So if Fox is going to keep this cash cow churning out a field's worth of bullshit, it's going to take some creativity, a bold innovation or two, a willingness not just to copy but to refine and maybe even perfect. Is Fox up to the task? Since this is the network that still airs an hour of Cops every week, I think we have the answer to our question.

And since the network may be short an idea or six, here's some possibilities for how I'd rejigger Joe Millionaire for a second go-round. Let's just call this my gift to Fox -- no need for millions of dollars in royalty payments or tearful phone calls of gratitude from Rupert Murdoch. The fully paid services of Joe Millionaire butler Paul Hogan around the Michaels homestead will be thanks enough.

Joe Something-aire: This time around, Fox isn't kidding when it says the lucky bachelor is worth 50 million -- it just isn't saying 50 million of what currency. Is it 50 million Australian dollars? Or 50 million Thai baht? Or perhaps a combination of pesos, krona, dinars and Swiss francs. Audiences will thrill as this new Joe Millionaire tries to find his soul mate and as his bride-to-be discovers if her would-be swain is worth 50 million British pounds (roughly $80,180,534.69 in U.S. currency) or 50 million South Korean Won (a not nearly so impressive $42,369.30). Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill stars as the butler.

Joe Paper Millionaire: There's no empty-skulled construction worker pulling a fast one over a score of young lovelies in this sequel. Instead, our latest millionaire bachelor amassed his wealth as a dot-com executive in the go-go nineties. Unfortunately, those millions are locked up in options our bachelor won't be able to exercise until the final episode -- so by the time he selects a bride, his fortune may not be worth the paper it's printed on. As the gold-digging beauties compete for our bachelor's love through a series of romantic challenges, a stock ticker at the bottom of the screen gives viewers a running update on his dwindling net worth. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos hosts, as the American viewing public learns whether Joe Paper Millionaire finds true love or is reduced to selling his blood in order to afford groceries.

Jacques Millionaire: The lovelorn bachelor really is worth millions in this installment, but he also happens to be a boorish Frenchman in desperate need of a green card. Will Jacques be able to choke down his sneering contempt for Americans in order to live happily ever after as a permanent resident within our borders? Will the promise of a lavish lifestyle be enough to convince his potential paramours to overlook the churlish insults, the obsession with Jerry Lewis movies and particularly pungent cheeses, and the eccentric tendency to end dates by quickly surrendering and offering to collaborate with his conquerors? And just what is butler Mickey Rourke up to with that fifth of bourbon? All these answers and more will be revealed in the show's finale, featuring a surprise ending in which INS agents burst into the chateau and arrest the winner for violating U.S. immigration laws. Jacques cuts a deal with the feds for complete immunity in exchange for his testimony.

Joe Millionaire Outtakes: With just seven episodes, clearly Fox has more Joe Millionaire footage than it knows what to do with. So why not turn the repurposed footage into an entirely new series? Fox could show hour after hour of the 20 contestants saying catty things about one another, squealing about how they feel like they're living a fairy tale, and thinking up elaborate ways to fudge their age. There must be hours of footage of Evan Marriott doing captivating things like breathing through his open mouth and yammering on about his inner torment over living a lie. And Fox could probably wring two full episodes from all the unused Alex McLeod footage excised from the show after the network realized it had hired an emotionless block of oak to host the program.

Joe Mammary-illionaire: A young man inherits a chateau in the San Fernando Valley, which he soon discovers is home to a dozen surgically endowed blondes. With the help of butler Ron Jeremy, he works his way thr...

I'm sorry. This is the plot for the adult video knock-off of Joe Millionaire. Perhaps it would be best if we just move on.

"Mean" Joe Millionaire: Pittsburgh Steeler great "Mean" Joe Greene is a hall-of-fame defensive lineman with four Super Bowl rings -- and a lonely heart. Join him at his eastern Pennsylvania chateau, as 20 beauties compete for both his love and his vast personal fortune in a series of challenges that include hitting a tackling dummy, sacking Roger Staubach, and listening to Terry Bradshaw sing some of his favorite country tunes. Instead of giving jewels and necklaces to the women he wishes to keep around at the end of each episode, Mean Joe -- assisted by butler and former running back Rocky Bleier -- selects which ladies will remain at his chateau by flinging his jersey at them, á la the heart-warming Coca-Cola commercial from the 1970s. (To remain at the chateau, the ladies will then have to wash the jersey.) And the surprise twist at the end of the series? That's not "Mean" Joe Greene at all, but rather former Steeler safety Donnie Shell.

Joe Bazillionaire: Of course, Fox could do away with all these elaborate ruses and just lure in young, pulchritudinous females to participate in its reality programming by telling bald-faced lies so transparent even a child could see through the scam. Just grab some unemployed drifter, claim that he's worth a kajillion bazillion dollars which he found lying under the couch one day, hire some stuffy Brit to be his butler -- Richard E. Grant never seems to turn down work -- and see if anyone bites.

Past Joe Millionaire contestants -- who seemed to fall for this easily enough the first time around -- would be free to enter again.

Several people with no apparent reason to live have gotten their knickers in a knot about the Miller Lite commercial-within-a-commercial that features two chicks wrestling to defend their respective stances on the inexplicably timeless "tastes great/less filling" debate. An actual quote from the article:

"'Every time I see it, I cringe,' says Laura Ries, an image guru."

What the fuck is an "image guru?" I guess the unpaid journalism intern who wrote this bit didn't realize that if you ask an interviewee what her job is, and her answer consists of stringing two random words together to form a job title that doesn't exist, maybe it's best to leave that part out of the article.

So the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission is equipping a number of yellow cabs here with televisions as part of a experimental pilot program.

And now my dream has finally come true: to be able watch an episode of Friends while being jostled violently in my seat with the faint scent of body odor and incense. Only in New York, kids... only in new York.

Of course, Joe Millionaire is loathsome. You don't need me to tell you that. Sure, it's less loathsome than The Surreal Life and that show where a guy races a giraffe, but its loathsomeness can still be seen from high Earth orbit by the naked eye. The trick is figuring out exactly what the worst part of the show is. It's like walking into an open sewer and trying to figure out where that smell is coming from.

I am bound by convention to describe the premise of Joe Millionaire. I realize that you already know all about it, but this isn't for you; it's for future generations so they can more fully understand why our civilization crumbled.

The Fox Network has found twenty women and told them to compete for the love of a millionaire. The catch is that he's not really a millionaire. Didn't this already happen? I'm pretty sure that the guy in Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? turned out to be a con artist. But this time, we know ahead of time that the guy's not rich, so we can rub our hands and cackle gleefully at the prospect of the "winning" woman finding out.

There are some flaws with that scenario. For one thing, very few people cackle these days. And second, we're supposed to be asking whether the women are in this for money or for love. And that misses the point: they're in this for publicity. What do they care if they're mucking out stables for an actual millionaire or not? They get to be on television! People on Big Brother, Love Cruise, Temptation Island, and Cops all did more humiliating things without the prospect of millions of dollars.

I think I've figured out what really bothers me about it. The gimmick that the so-called millionaire really only makes $19,000 a year is phrased to suggest that therefore, he doesn't deserve love.

Am I wrong about this? Isn't there a sense of Fox giggling about how naughty they are to trick women into being nice to a construction worker? They can't possibly like him! He's (shudder) poor! I can just see the Fox executives with their cognac and powdered wigs chuckling at the very idea. Won't the ladies be shocked when they find out that their new beau is a mere peasant? I say! Now let's go to the cotillion, Muffy.

The introductory voiceover goes on about how he makes a "humble living" and then shows him eating his lunch with his hands. Why, this sort of boor would never be accepted by polite society! So there's a lot of remaking the guy so he looks more millionairey.

The story is that he's just inherited fifty million dollars, but they spend a lot of time "teaching him to be wealthy." Being wealthy, in this case, means waltzing and riding horses and generally acting like Prince Charming, but if he'd just inherited the money, why would he already know how to fence? Is the idea that when they deliver the inheritance check, you also get skilled with the epee?

Look: I live in Seattle, the home of Microsoft and a bunch of rock stars. I know a few millionaires, and most of them can barely dress themselves. From my observations, vesting stock options doesn't automatically make you elegant.

Watching this show, there are a few different things to enjoy, depending on what you're into. If you like, you can enjoy the way the women get humiliated by the structure of the show. Welcome to the chateau! Now fight over dresses! Shovel manure! Pick grapes in mud! Shovel coal! Grovel! Grovel, I say! And all the time you're chuckling at their foolish idea that they'll find love. Of course they won't find love; it's a reality show.

You can also enjoy the very poor job Our Hero does at pretending to be a millionaire. It doesn't sound all that hard; all you should really have to do is occasionally say "Oh, by the way, I've got fifty million clams." But he's not good at coming up with things on the spur of the moment, so there are a lot of awkward pauses. The women seem to end up thinking that he's nice (because, presumably, of the aforementioned clams, and also because I hear he's an unemployed male model, not a construction worker) but eccentric. "Eccentric" being rich for "crazy."

But he's not super-crazy. I'd enjoy the show a lot more if he were full-on, over-the-top, Steve-Martin-in-The-Jerk crazy. There is one thing I can say for the show, though. It's practically the only hour of television during which you won't be subjected to those awful commercials for Joe Millionaire.

So I was reading the paper this morning, and apparently CBS is backing out of plans to do a reality show based on The Beverly Hillbillies. Apparently, CBS getting cold feet because of a $75,000 ad campaign in several newspapers by a Hillbilly lobbying group.

I swear to God, I'm not making this up. And no, it's not the National Rifle Association. A Whitesburg, Kentucky-based group, the Center for Rural Strategies, last week launched a media campaign to derail the show.

God bless America. The only country in the world where even common white trash has someone lobbying on their behalf.

Since Phil only writes about commercials now, here's more raw material. The rest of us are going to go and give our TiVos a back-rub right now, because we haven't seen any of these, save the Britney Super Bowl ad.

The scary thing is, most of these 20 Most Effective Ads of 2002 are merely remembered by consumers since they're so horrifying. I mean, two Pier One import ads with Kirstie Alley in the Top 20? A Jason Alexander KFC ad? People remember these because they aren't able to scrub the back of their retinas.

We've all seen those car commercials in which the new sedan or sports car is speeding along some winding mountain road or hydroplaning across a rain-slicked straight-away and the driver is swerving to avoid falling boulders and shoulder-mounted antitank missiles and thunderbolts hurled down from Olympus. And no matter what car the commercial is hawking, there's always a variation of the same message placed on the screen in a small yet still eye-catching font -- "Professional Driver: Do Not Attempt." Maybe you've enjoyed a good laugh at the expense of these ads -- God knows I have. "Yes, indeed," I'll say to myself after such a commercial airs. "I was just about to fire up the ol' '91 Plymouth Acclaim and head out to that crumbling mountain highway where spikes periodically shoot up out the road before I have to drive through the wall of fire at a rate of speed three times higher than the posted limit. But thanks to your stern but sensible bit of legalese, I'll probably just finish my pot pie."

Then I remember that the legal mumbo-jumbo was probably stuck in the ad at the behest of some Ivy League-educated lawyer who doubtlessly racked up the gross domestic product of Belgium in billable hours just for telling a car company to remind people not to drive like maniacs after buying their new Subaru. And suddenly the ad is only funny in the sad, ironic sense of the word.

Nevertheless, the legally mandated warnings are there with every car commercial, comforting us, soothing us, reassuring us that no one will ever drive in an unsafe manner unless he or she happens to be a professional driver in closed conditions.

At least, they used to be.

There's this ad for a sport-utility vehicle. I'm not sure the make and the model -- the Ford Behemoth? The Lincoln Deforester? The Chevy Overcompensatingforsomething? Doesn't matter. You've probably seen the ad, too. It's the one where the gas-guzzling, earth-conquering vehicle in question is making its way through the briny deep -- Holy mother of God, the car is driving underwater -- while sharks swim around it menacingly.

This is not the part I find disturbing.

No, what troubles me about this ad is not that it shows an SUV doing something with ease that an SUV is most definitely not designed to do -- it's the legal disclaimer at the end of the ad. There's no "The lawyers have advised us to remind you not to drive your new car into shark-infested waters," no "Warning: Driver-side air bags will not repel sharks in any meaningful way," not even a "Hey, jackass, if you drive your car into the ocean, you will sink and most likely drown." Instead, the message is plain and simple -- "Simulation."

Now, our friends at Webster's define "simulation" as "the act or process of simulating" -- which isn't a terribly helpful definition -- "a sham object" -- which would seem to be the definition the SUV advertisers were going with -- or "the imitative representation of the functioning of one system or process by means of the functioning of another." And that's where we sort of run into a potential area for misunderstanding. Because when I see the word "Simulation" plastered over footage of a light truck doing seemingly impossible things, the takeaway message I get is that while it's probably not a good idea for me to get behind the wheel of an SUV, rev up the engine, drive into the sea and expect to float gracefully through the waters while sharks stare at me in dumb admiration, I could probably pull it off if I tried hard enough. And I think you'll agree that such a misreading of the ad maker's intent could have disastrous consequences.

Let's pretend for just a second that you're galactically stupid. You see this ad on TV where a guy is able to plow his SUV through swirling waters and deadly sharks with no apparent difficulty. So you go out, you buy the car, you drive it out into the sea... and if you're lucky, the divers find enough of your remains to fill a bucket. Meanwhile, others are suckered in by the same SUV siren song, only to wind up as chum, and before you know it, the waters of the Pacific have turned red with the blood of exceptionally gullible SUV owners.

I'm not necessarily arguing that this would be an unwelcome turn of events. Just mildly troubling is all. Besides, who fishes out all the SUVs from the bottom of the ocean before the oil and gas and window-washing fluid leak out and kill all the sea turtles? Greenpeace? Greenpeace has better things to do than clean up one of your messes, mister.

As bad as the SUV ad is, at least the only people to suffer by it will be remarkably thickheaded lovers of resource-wasting ground transportation and anyone foolish enough to ride shotgun with them. There's another commercial that's just begun airing on a TV set near you that puts everyone -- even attentive drivers and advocates of fuel-efficient vehicles -- at risk of death and dismemberment.

The commercial, I think, is for Honda, though possibly Hyundai, or maybe even Acura. (And isn't it always a sign of effective advertising when the 30-second spot fills me with such rage that my brain can no longer process the good or service I'm supposed to purchase?) A guy and a gal are sitting in a stylish yet affordable looking midsize automobile in some godforsaken snowy wasteland -- Canada, I'm guessing, or possibly one or both of the Dakotas -- and they're watching a flock of birds. So as the birds take off for points south, our young, hip bohemians drive off after them, following the flock both day and night, through good road conditions and bad, until both birds and yuppie couple reach a sunny, tropical destination where each presumably revels in their bliss.

Here's my problem with the commercial: the entire time the guy is chasing after the birds, his eyes are pointed skyward instead of straight ahead, ever vigilant for any hazards that might suddenly appear on the road. The dopey, open-mouthed jackass is even craning his neck outside the window so he can get a better look at the birds. And this is as he's driving at a rapid clip down two-lane highways and icy roads and narrow bridges.

I mean, what if there are schoolchildren crossing the road up ahead on their way to go sing songs at the old folks' home or what if our dopey hero is just a blind curve away from crossing paths with a family of five on their way home from church? They'd better have good reaction times, I guess, or at least financially secure next of kin. Because if it comes down to a choice between following the birds to their own slice of paradise or hitting the brakes to avoid T-boning Grandpa's jalopy, I kind of have a feeling what choice the slack-jawed driver and his idiot bride would opt for -- and it doesn't look good for Gramps.

And all this time, the warning messages on the bottom of the screen tell the viewer at home... absolutely nothing. No "Keep your eyes on the road, please," or "Hands at 10 and 2, buster," or a simple yet effective "Instead of using the migratory patterns of birds to get you from point A to point B, we suggest you spend a couple of bucks on a good road atlas." And that means a generation of newly minted drivers -- a demographic that most recently demonstrated its good sense by spending millions of dollars of allowance money on Britney Spears CDs -- are going to think it's perfectly all right to stare heavenward as they tool around town and directly into the path of oncoming traffic -- all because some car manufacturer's team of Armani-suited corporate lawyers was asleep at the switch.

Obviously, this won't do. Our -- and by "our," I mostly mean "my" -- safety depends on the growing percentage of noodle-brained yokels who take to the road having at least a modest understanding of how to safely operate an automobile. And if that means wallpapering TV advertisements with warnings like "Please do not attempt to pop wheelies while using your cell phone" or "Don't confuse this quiet suburban street for your own personal live-action version of 'Grand Theft Auto,'" then so be it. I want legal disclaimers scrolling on the top and the bottom of the screen like the CNBC stock ticker. I want the voice-over announcer spitting out so many cautions and alarms, he sounds like the surgeon general at a smokers' convention. And I want car commercials where the most dangerous maneuver someone attempts is parallel parking downtown in rush hour.

And for those who ignore the warnings? Well, it's into the SUV and off to the shark tank for them.

I've totally stopped watching TV. And you know what the interesting thing is? I don't miss it.

And I know how it happened too. I don't have cable. I just free TV. When the World Trade Center was destroyed, most of the transmitters for local stations were destroyed as well. Most of the stations moved their transmitters to the Empire State Building. But Fox and NBC didn't, and the reception for both stations is lousy in Brooklyn -- it's like moving fuzz.

I actually wasn't a big TV watcher before, but the few shows I did watch were on Fox or NBC. It's weird that I haven't seen an episode of The Simpsons in a year-and-a-half. Okay, I do miss watching The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle. And That '70s Show. And The West Wing. And Friends. And I really would have liked to have seen what the deal was with Niles on Frasier.

But other than that, I really don't miss TV at all.

Say what you will about Hidden Hills, Phil my boy, but it's opening up my eyes... to opera. Okay, ears.

There was this scene in the pilot with Webcam Mom where Doug imagines she's washing his car windows with opera playing in the background. Opera! It was a very good piece of music.

Alas, I must admit to being unwashed. And also not very knowledgeable about opera. About all I know is that my Italian grandfather used to sit in his kitchen smoking and watching PBS opera airings on a tiny black & white TV about fourteen feet away. I only heard as much as it took to say, "Good night, Grandpa," before scuttling off to sleep, the soundtrack to which was certainly not "La Traviata."

So I've been trying to track down the music with only the barest of clues. Since I can't yet figure out how to get the sound in my head into Google ("da-da daaaah dum-de-dum" -- now there's a search string) I'm forced to rely on other nitwits for scraps of information. One guy on Usenet says it's the same piece he heard in the film "8 Days a Week". I track that down on the IMDb. The credits list Rossini and Delibes (and Beethoven, but luckily I'm not so unwashed as to not know Beethoven's Ninth). Are there any MP3s?

As a result, I now have several excellent new pieces of music to listen to. I haven't heard the full version of Rossini's Overture from "William Tell" in a very long time. And I have bits of "Aida" and Delibes' "Flower Duet" from Lakme.

What I do not have -- yet -- is the piece I'm looking for. But it's only a matter of time. Time and diligence. How much opera can there be, anyway?

My dear husband gave me Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, in part because he knows that the way to my heart leads through a bookstore, and in part because Saturday Night: A Backstage History of "Saturday Night Live" by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad is one of my favorite entertainment reads. Thanks to these two books, I'm freakishly literate in SNL's history and in the press it receives, which is especially remarkable for someone who has not watched the show with any consistency since graduating high school.

So if the books were paired off against each other in a no-holds-barred wrestling brawl, who would win? It depends: one of the most consistently amusing things in Live from New York is reading, again and again, how very much nearly everyone associated with SNL hates Chevy Chase, while Saturday Night is a great deal more diplomatic about Chase's people skills. The Jean Doumanian era (all ten months of it) is dissected in excruciating detail in Saturday Night, while Live from New York offers much less meaty material. Charles Rocket -- he of the inadvertent "fuck" that led to Doumanian's departure -- either wasn't giving interviews or didn't give any account of the incident for Live from New York, and I noticed the absence.

A lot of the book is shaped by who isn't talking. The 1985-86 cast -- locked in a three-way battle with 1980-81 and 1994-95 for the title of Most Likely to Be Regarded as Franchise Nadir -- featured Anthony Michael Hall, Damon Wayans, Joan Cusack and Robert Downey, Jr. That's a fairly deep bench of talent that did miserably on the show. While Wayans and Hall are willing to discuss their brief stints on the show, there's nothing from Downey or Cusack on their experiences. This is actually a loss, as one of the ideas that bubbles up through interviews from time to time is that some of the most gifted or funny people to pass through the 17th floor had the most unhappy or unsuccessful tenures. It would have been illuminating to read more from people who have done better off the show than on it, such as Christine Ebersole, Randy Quaid, Ben Stiller, Jay Mohr, or Sarah Silverman, none of whom appear.

The real story in Live from New York is approached obliquely, and it is never stated outright, so I'll do it here: the show's biggest legacy may not be what talent it launched into the wider entertainment world, but what talent it squandered. A bedrock assertion in Saturday Night is that the only person who really discovered Eddie Murphy was Eddie Murphy; that's backed up here, and the sequels, Nobody Appreciated Damon Wayans and Whose Bright Idea Was It to Underuse Chris Rock? are produced as well. Much is made of SNL chronic boys-club problem -- dismissed by one writer as the "DNA of the show" -- and Janeane Garofalo does herself no favors in elaborating on it. But very little is said about how SNL managed to ignore three of the strongest African-American comics and actors in the last twenty years. That nobody other than Rock or Wayans was capable of seeing or commenting on this phenomenon is just bizarre.

The things that do get talked about -- like the tension between relatively untested talent and established comics Billy Crystal, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Martin Short during the 1984-85 season -- are interesting but not too surprising, and there's a lack of follow-up when the same thing duplicated itself ten years later with Michael McKean and Mark McKinney. It's clear that Miller and Shales had an Augean editing task in whipping hundred of interviews into some sort of cogent book form, but the lack of follow-up on some interesting questions is frustrating.

Then again, some might call this sort of thing "reader-directed interpretation." One of the most consistently amusing threads running through nearly every chapter concerns drug use among the staff, beginning with "We were so stoned!" and ending with the current cast marveling at how sleep deprivation is ruining their complexion. This topic eloquently illustrates how SNL went from hipster appointment viewing to stodgy broadcasting institution without ever saying so directly. That Shales and Miller are willing to stand back and let the reader come to that conclusion is one of the best things about the book.

One of the best things, mind you. The real, lasting delight is in the small details where people inadvertently reveal the warts in their personalities. For example, the only person in Live from New York who doesn't regard Phil Hartman as a prince among men is Joe Piscopo, who talks instead about how his Sinatra impersonation was superior to Hartman's. It's worth noting that other people in the book talk about Piscopo's Sinatramania inspiring the game-show sketch "What would Frank Do?" after the writers got fed up with Piscopo vetoing jokes on the ground that "Frank wouldn't do that." It's also worth noting that the book details the time Joe Piscopo proposed hosting the show in his Sinatra persona. Live from New York leaves it to the reader to conclude whether it would be better to be remembered as a selfless and talented professional whose death left everyone he knew shaken, or a zealous celebrity impersonator who lets no chance for self-promotion pass.

It's these accumulated anecdotes that make Live from New York worth reading, but they're also what make it a much different book than Saturday Night. The earlier book is actually the one that tries to ask and answer the question of what SNL done to America and vice-versa. The most recent book simply accepts the claims of SNL as an institution straight from the mouths of people who say it's so. Of course they're going to say that -- they worked on the show. But there's a world of difference between a first-hand perspective and a reporters' perspective, and anyone who reads Live from New York needs to remember that before they even open the book.