When the moon is full, I don’t sleep very well, and either I was dreaming, or cable TV has gotten awfully weird. Reclining on the couch with my feet draped across the coffee table, remote dangling from my right hand, my left cradling two ounces of Calvados, I doze and stumble across one program after another, feeling ever more confused and incredulous. Of what I can remember, I offer the following:
“The Adventures of Nadi and Bindu” – Two pubescent, virtually identical, fraternal-twin teenagers in a bustling city in the Indian subcontinent work in a call center for AT&T doing collection work on past due accounts and pitching occasional service upgrades. Their boss, who has adopted the American name “Jimmy,” keeps getting them mixed up and is obsessed with Starbucks’ Mochachino. In the meantime, the plot line involves endless confusing conversations with upset Americans who ask questions not covered by the twins’ collection “scripts,” leading to a lot of wacky ad-libbing in Hindi. Hard to tell if this is reality TV – on a network called IndraNet.
“Why is There Life at All?” – Short videos of people putting shoes on their hands and walking upside down, eating 350 oysters in less than one hour, building miniature houses from their nail trimmings and other assorted oddities. Narrated by someone who sounds a lot like Lorne Green of “Ponderosa” fame. Commercials about chewing gum that turns mouths’ black and pets called “water monkeys,” but they might be more videos. Not sure of the station, I drifted off, but I think it was something like Pair-a-Ducks Network.
“CCD – America’s Emerging Epidemic” – A grim news report about CCD, Compulsive Comedic Disorder, and its epidemic spread in America, particularly among its youth population. The hour included interviews with educators, medical professionals, sociologists and psychiatrists who speculate on the origins of CCD and the pernicious effects of uncontrolled irony and satire on personality development. Interspersed with commercials for erectile dysfunction, the program was narrated by former President Bill Clinton, on something called the TragiCom Channel.
“Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern” – Trips around the world where we watch a plump-faced ex-New Yorker talk with his mouth full while he stuffs himself on delicacies such as deep-fried scorpions, sautéed beetle grubs and worm omelet. In Vietnam he eats snake in garlic sauce, and in Bolivia he eats pickled poached donkey hide. In America he wolfs down street vendor chili dogs. He rarely chokes, but does a lot of facial sight gagging. On the Travel Channel.
“The Life of Jewpopa” – The story of the famed 13th century Tibetan Jewish Lama who uncovered a treasure trove of wisdom during a sacred mirror divination, including such precious jewels as: (a) “Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.” (b) “Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?” And, (c) “If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?” Narrated by Leonard Nimoy on a channel called AnAtMa.
At 6 a.m. I wake up to snow on the flat screen, and the quiet and soothing hiss of no channel at all. Pressing the remote, the TV says I am tuned to the Calcium Channel, but that it is not available because I have taken the blood pressure medication Cardizem, a calcium channel blocker.
