Friday Night Party Animal
Another typical Friday Night...
I can’t explain to you how incredibly awesome it is to be young and single. Just imagine being young, and full of energy, like me, where every night is another adventure out on the town. Every night the music beats into your ears, and into your soul, the alcoholic drinks swirl through your bloodstream, helping to make the world seem more beautiful, and much more carefree than ever before. Every night is spent going out with larger than life, exquisitely entertaining friends. Each friend telling epic stories, each story bigger and funnier than the last. Everyone becomes more animated with every moment, till I, and my friends are the town criers for every bar we walk into, we are the soothsayers, we are the Oracles, we are gods. Every night sauntering up to the bar, looking out at the beautiful people, looking for that next conquest, that next young pretty little thing that you will make your lover for one, or two, or maybe even three nights. And who will it be tonight? Will it be the redhead with the fair skin and the green top? What about the brunette? I’ve always had a thing for brunettes; and she has that girl-next-door look that I find so irresistible. How about the blonde? Do gentlemen prefer blondes? Perhaps it’s long past time I find out the reason that statement was ever made.
Yes, my dear friends, my young, exciting, exotic life is full of sex, rock-n-roll, drugs, hubris, and all sorts of debauchery in large, excessive quantities. I fear these are the years that will surely punch my ticket to hell. All seven of the deadliest sins have long since been committed, and now I’m working on adding an eighth.
It happened just the other night. Another Friday night, the big night (although sometimes in my drunken state, nights tend to run together), I find myself sitting at home, and, hold on to your seats dear reader, I stayed up all night watching infomercials.
Okay, so there is no sex, or drugs, or rock-n-roll in my life. There is some indie-rock in my IPOD, but that’s neither here, nor there. There is no redhead with a green top, and while it’s true, I do have an affinity for girl-next-door brunettes, there are none to be found in my apartment. I have no idea why gentlemen prefer blondes, but I would like to find out why someday. No, my nights are not spent drinking with friends, partying in bars, but rather drinking alone (sometimes… not all the time) and watching television. They say there’s something alcoholic-ish about that, drinking alone, but come on, who hasn’t found themselves fully clothed on the couch at 4 in the morning, empty bottles of beer (or your drink of choice) strewn about the floor, with the television on, and that dry cotton mouth taste in your mouth competing with your gag reflexes for most annoying feeling? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and if you’re casting a stone, then you’re very prudish, and you don’t get to be my friend.
So, yes, last Friday night I found myself alone in my apartment, watching the television. I had already run through the three or four people I call to help me fight my inevitable Friday-night-sitting-alone, but damn it all if Talyor Dane was right, “No matter what you do, no matter what you say… You can’t fight fate.” Yes, destiny was calling me, and it said, “Hey, settle back, it’s time to watch some ridiculously bad television… oh, and bring the booze, you’re going to need it.”
11:30 PM- 11:56PM: I go through my usual channel surfing. I don’t have cable in my apartment, which means Late Night with Conan O’Brien is never really an option. I’m stuck having to decide between Jimmy Kimmel, and the Scottish Craig Kilborn (I don’t know that guy’s name, he was on The Drew Carey Show, he played Drew Carey’s boss), neither is Conan, so I choose not to watch either. I could watch BBC news, but I really don’t need to be that informed in world events. I read the front page of CNN.com almost daily, and I feel that’s enough news information for me. By now I’m in the upper UHF channels. (For those of you who have never experienced television without cable or satellite; broadcast television is split into two frequencies VHF, and UHF. I don’t know what those letters mean, something-something frequency I’d guess. I really don’t know. There’s a movie with Weird Al Yankovic called UHF, watch it, maybe it explains what it the letters mean).
There’s an old episode of King of Queens I pass by without a second thought. Then I hit it, jackpot! Gunner Peterson’s Core Secrets, the infomercial!
Apparently Gunner Peterson can change my life with a giant silver balloon. See, the giant silver balloon works the body’s core, which is the… stomach? I’m not sure, I’m not really listening to the dialogue; I’m just looking at Brooke Burke doing crunches on the big silver balloon. She has a nice womanly figure. Wait, the pitch. Now I can have the giant balloon and some videos for $30, no, $20, no wait, $9.95!!! Damn Gunner, how are you going afford to eat? Maybe that’s part of the deal, no eating while doing crunches on the big silver balloon. I should really listen to what Brooke Burke is trying to tell me. Apparently the Duke University basketball team uses the big balloons, but that’s probably not the best endorsement, since Duke didn’t make it very far in the NCAA basketball tournament this year. (Not to mention the whole Lacrosse team rape scandal). Maybe Duke stopped using the big balloons, maybe that’s where the trouble began for them.
I can feel myself going brain dead. Really, the only thoughts going through my head at this point are, “that (crunches on the big silver balloon) really doesn’t look fun at all,” and, “I like watching girls in spandex roll, crunch, and flex over this giant, silver balloon.” It might be time to change the channel. The infomercial should be ending soon enough anyway.
11:56 PM-12:30 AM: I’m now starting beer number three, and switching over to the Spanish station. Now, I can neither speak, nor understand Spanish. I will, however, sometimes watch the Spanish television stations in the hopes that some knowledge of the language will somehow find it’s way into my brain. This has yet to happen. The other reason I watch Spanish television is that their programming has some of the strangest damn game shows, and there’s almost always a very attractive, scantily clad woman on the screen. A final bonus to Spanish television: the American movie dubbed in Spanish. Tonight’s contribution is Vengeance of the Ninja. I’m catching the tail end of the movie. All I know is that a ninja is staging a one-man assault on an office building in the middle what looks to be Los Angeles. He’s jumping up stairwells, climbing in ventilation ducks, sneaking up on and killing big evil henchmen/bodyguard types. There is a point in the movie where one of the evil henchmen/bodyguards types pulls the mask off of the ninja’s face, and the ninja returns this action by spiting nails into the bodyguards face. I know everyone thinks it’s cool to be a ninja (well, maybe it’s just me and some of my friends), but just think about how long that ninja had to keep the nails in his mouth before he even able to use that little trick. Then there’s the possibility that he might never have had the opportunity to spit nails at someone’s face… then what? What a waste of a trick? What if someone had kicked the ninja, and he swallowed all the nails? What then? All I know is being a ninja must be hard, in any language, so perhaps I should let go my dream of becoming one. After all there’s always the dream of becoming a pirate (minus the scurvy) to keep me company.
12:30 AM- 1:00AM: Holy Crap, my hero Chuck Norris is on the television. No, unfortunately it’s not an old syndicated episode of Walker, Texas Ranger (Oh, how I wish it were), but rather another infomercial, this time for something called the Total Gym. The Total Gym is this contraption, that sort of looks like a Bowflex, but apparently it’s different. Wesley Snipes swears by it, and he’s a black belt in… something, I don’t really remember. It should be said that I was flipping between the Total Gym infomercial, with Chuck Norris, and the Windsor Pilates infomercial (you can order the videos and they come with a special Pilates ring) starring Daisy Fuentes. Apparently Mari Windsor is just as sought after by famous people as Gunner Peterson for her personal training expertise. If only I had a Windsor Pilates Ring, A Gunner Peterson Core workout Ball, and a Total Gym, then I’d be the most fittest person of all time. And once I’ve bought those three pieces of fitness equipment, I’ll never have to buy another piece of fitness equipment again! In an ironic note, between all the channel flipping, from fitness commercial to fitness commercial, where everyone is trying to prolong and make my life better, I run across a cheaply produced and locally made commercial for a casket store called Budget Casket. They have the cheapest caskets in town. I haven’t thought much about my death, about what kind of casket I’ll be eternally laid in (although, who knows, perhaps I’ll get cremated), but if I’m dead, I really don’t think I’m going to care how expensive my casket is. And if I’m buried, I doubt anyone living topside will care what kind of casket I have either. At first I thought, “What an odd commercial.” But then again, I guess it makes sense that if you’re up at 12:57 in the morning with nothing better to do than watch television, then you might be wishing for your impending death. To be honest by this point in the night I’m starting to fade into sleep on my couch. My eyes grow heavy, as my head swims with the alcoholic content I’ve consumed throughout the night. Even though I can hear Chuck Norris tell me how tough the Total Gym work out is, that this is the be all and end all to fitness, there’s a quietness to my apartment. It seems late, middle of the night late, where nothing stirs at all. It sort of reminds me of when I was younger, of the time my dad and I took on a newspaper delivery route. We had to wake up at three in the morning, drive over to the corner of the strip mall located down the street from our house, pick up our bundle of papers, and drive our route which took us all around my hometown of Carrollton. My job was to run into the apartment complexes and drop the paper off at the doorsteps of subscribing apartments. It didn’t register with me at the time that this was a second job for my dad, that we were doing this for the money. I don’t know if I thought anything about the financial woes and possible hardships the family might be accruing at all during that time. I just enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed the stillness of the night. Everyone was asleep. Adults, kids, youths, drunks, dogs, cats, birds, it seemed as my dad and I were the only ones awake and toiling (with the exception of donut shops, they were toiling too, and I always wanted to run in for a donut, but we never did). I enjoyed the thought that my dad and I were the only ones out in the world; it was peaceful. I worked a truck shift for the Container Store a couple of years ago that forced me to wake up at 4 in the morning. Driving, to be at the Container Store by 5 in the morning did not produce the same effect. Too many people were already awake by that time in the morning, plus, I had learned to love sleep. That job didn’t last very long.
1:00 AM- 1:30 AM: I’m snapped back awake from my dream like state by the sultry voice of one Michael Montgomery. “What’s this on my television now?” I ask rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Host Vanessa Williams tell me I’m watching a Time-Life Music commercial for Time-Life’s Best Romantic Songs of All Time forever and ever, or something like that. I don’t know what it is about this commercial, but I shoot up from lying on the couch, and start to give my full attention to the singers. I hear snippets of songs from Phil Collins, Celine Dion, Joe Cocker, Kenny Rogers, Whitney Houston, Cindy Lauper, and much, much more!!! I think it was Gloria Estefan’s Anything For You that first caught my ear to the extent where I was actually singing along. “I’d still do anything for you, though you’re not here…” Then it was Every Time You Go Away by Paul Young, followed by If You Don’t Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (which brought up memories of Ricky Gervais’ cover of that song from The Office Specials). I joined in with Chris DeBurg as he sang Lady in Red, and thought of the Karate Kid movie when Chicago’s You’re the Inspiration was played (I don’t think that was the song from the second Karate Kid movie, but anytime I hear Peter Cetera’s voice I think of the Karate Kid). Then the kicker, Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman, which is a great song, and for the record, miles and miles better than the Michael Bolton version. Eight CDs, 132 songs, great songs, great artists, how could I resist? I was singing along to every song they played! How can I not buy this set? Vanessa Williams told me I’d spend hours upon hours tracking down all these songs in the CD store (Although, the invention of I-tunes makes that statement obsolete), but they’re all here on one convenient CD set! What have I got to lose? Yes, yes! Air Supply, you sing to me when you sing, “I’m all out of Love”, I know what you’re saying cause I too, am all out of love. Do I need this CD set? How much does it cost? Only nine bucks a CD? I’m sold! Where’s my credit card? In the other room? Forget it, I don’t care. Sure those musicians can sing to my soul, sure I can feel like I’m one of them as I find myself singing along with them, alone in my apartment at one-thirty in the morning, singing their songs of eternal love, and maybe if but for a brief moment those songs will lift my spirits, out of the muck of boredom, but reality comes screaming back to me by the end of the infomercial. It’s now two in the morning, and I’m still alone in my apartment with stinky beer breath. Yes, Air Supply I hear you. I too am all out of love.
Post 2:00 AM: I decide it’s way past time to make my way to bed. I take one last spin around the dial, because I’m a glutton for punishment. Now there is almost nothing on my television that garners my interest. There’s late-late night news, really boring financial infomercials, people telling me Jesus is my savior (those guys are always on), and the late night broadcast television porn. I happened across a Girls Gone Wild paid advertisement. “Have you ever dreamed of having a private island all to yourself with nothing young college beauties there for your amusement?” The commercial asks. “No,” I think, “but I should probably start dreaming of that instead of dreaming that I could one day eat as much ice cream as I wanted, as fast as I wanted without getting brain freeze.” I think about sitting and watching the Girls Gone Wild paid advertisement for a bit longer, because I am a guy, and boobs, even blotted out boobs are on the television screen, but I already feel sort of dirty from my night of sloth, and drinking, so I change the channel.
Remember how I was telling you about the flat out insanity that one can find on Spanish television? Well, after I leave the Girls Gone Wild Island, I run across a Spanish paid advertisement on one of the Spanish stations. Now see if you can find the common link between these things: The video is called Table Dance Y Jaripeo (have no idea what Jaripeo is, and I can’t find my Spanish/English Dictionary). Yes, the video is of girls dancing and getting naked. But wait, there’s more. You also get five CDs of Tejano music. But that’s not all! You also get five videos called “sexcomedias”, or comedic sex videos, starring a person who’s sort of like a Mexican Benny Hill I’m guessing. That’s still not enough to entice you? Then this last little bit should do the trick: a video of rodeo highlights. The highlights consist mostly of bulls running over rodeo cowboys. What? Excuse me? Porn, mixed with comedy, mixed with Tejano music, mixed with Mexico’s Funniest Home Videos: The Gored by a Bull Edition, is what they’re selling? Nothing gets me hotter than seeing a kicking bull trample a man. Finally, I’d seen enough. It was definitely time to go to bed.
I decide to swing by the Jesus channel for a few seconds to give the evening some balance, and to atone for my sins in watching the Girls Gone Wild and Table Dance infomercial. Tammy Faye Bakker Messner is crying about something. Everything old is new again. I turn off the television, and go to bed, to dream of giant silver balloons, Chuck Norris, ninjas, Tammy Faye’s running mascara, paper routes, being able to eat as much ice cream as possible without getting brain freeze, and maybe, if I’m lucky my own private island.
I can’t explain to you how incredibly awesome it is to be young and single. Just imagine being young, and full of energy, like me, where every night is another adventure out on the town. Every night the music beats into your ears, and into your soul, the alcoholic drinks swirl through your bloodstream, helping to make the world seem more beautiful, and much more carefree than ever before. Every night is spent going out with larger than life, exquisitely entertaining friends. Each friend telling epic stories, each story bigger and funnier than the last. Everyone becomes more animated with every moment, till I, and my friends are the town criers for every bar we walk into, we are the soothsayers, we are the Oracles, we are gods. Every night sauntering up to the bar, looking out at the beautiful people, looking for that next conquest, that next young pretty little thing that you will make your lover for one, or two, or maybe even three nights. And who will it be tonight? Will it be the redhead with the fair skin and the green top? What about the brunette? I’ve always had a thing for brunettes; and she has that girl-next-door look that I find so irresistible. How about the blonde? Do gentlemen prefer blondes? Perhaps it’s long past time I find out the reason that statement was ever made.
Yes, my dear friends, my young, exciting, exotic life is full of sex, rock-n-roll, drugs, hubris, and all sorts of debauchery in large, excessive quantities. I fear these are the years that will surely punch my ticket to hell. All seven of the deadliest sins have long since been committed, and now I’m working on adding an eighth.
It happened just the other night. Another Friday night, the big night (although sometimes in my drunken state, nights tend to run together), I find myself sitting at home, and, hold on to your seats dear reader, I stayed up all night watching infomercials.
Okay, so there is no sex, or drugs, or rock-n-roll in my life. There is some indie-rock in my IPOD, but that’s neither here, nor there. There is no redhead with a green top, and while it’s true, I do have an affinity for girl-next-door brunettes, there are none to be found in my apartment. I have no idea why gentlemen prefer blondes, but I would like to find out why someday. No, my nights are not spent drinking with friends, partying in bars, but rather drinking alone (sometimes… not all the time) and watching television. They say there’s something alcoholic-ish about that, drinking alone, but come on, who hasn’t found themselves fully clothed on the couch at 4 in the morning, empty bottles of beer (or your drink of choice) strewn about the floor, with the television on, and that dry cotton mouth taste in your mouth competing with your gag reflexes for most annoying feeling? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and if you’re casting a stone, then you’re very prudish, and you don’t get to be my friend.
So, yes, last Friday night I found myself alone in my apartment, watching the television. I had already run through the three or four people I call to help me fight my inevitable Friday-night-sitting-alone, but damn it all if Talyor Dane was right, “No matter what you do, no matter what you say… You can’t fight fate.” Yes, destiny was calling me, and it said, “Hey, settle back, it’s time to watch some ridiculously bad television… oh, and bring the booze, you’re going to need it.”
11:30 PM- 11:56PM: I go through my usual channel surfing. I don’t have cable in my apartment, which means Late Night with Conan O’Brien is never really an option. I’m stuck having to decide between Jimmy Kimmel, and the Scottish Craig Kilborn (I don’t know that guy’s name, he was on The Drew Carey Show, he played Drew Carey’s boss), neither is Conan, so I choose not to watch either. I could watch BBC news, but I really don’t need to be that informed in world events. I read the front page of CNN.com almost daily, and I feel that’s enough news information for me. By now I’m in the upper UHF channels. (For those of you who have never experienced television without cable or satellite; broadcast television is split into two frequencies VHF, and UHF. I don’t know what those letters mean, something-something frequency I’d guess. I really don’t know. There’s a movie with Weird Al Yankovic called UHF, watch it, maybe it explains what it the letters mean).
There’s an old episode of King of Queens I pass by without a second thought. Then I hit it, jackpot! Gunner Peterson’s Core Secrets, the infomercial!
Apparently Gunner Peterson can change my life with a giant silver balloon. See, the giant silver balloon works the body’s core, which is the… stomach? I’m not sure, I’m not really listening to the dialogue; I’m just looking at Brooke Burke doing crunches on the big silver balloon. She has a nice womanly figure. Wait, the pitch. Now I can have the giant balloon and some videos for $30, no, $20, no wait, $9.95!!! Damn Gunner, how are you going afford to eat? Maybe that’s part of the deal, no eating while doing crunches on the big silver balloon. I should really listen to what Brooke Burke is trying to tell me. Apparently the Duke University basketball team uses the big balloons, but that’s probably not the best endorsement, since Duke didn’t make it very far in the NCAA basketball tournament this year. (Not to mention the whole Lacrosse team rape scandal). Maybe Duke stopped using the big balloons, maybe that’s where the trouble began for them.
I can feel myself going brain dead. Really, the only thoughts going through my head at this point are, “that (crunches on the big silver balloon) really doesn’t look fun at all,” and, “I like watching girls in spandex roll, crunch, and flex over this giant, silver balloon.” It might be time to change the channel. The infomercial should be ending soon enough anyway.
11:56 PM-12:30 AM: I’m now starting beer number three, and switching over to the Spanish station. Now, I can neither speak, nor understand Spanish. I will, however, sometimes watch the Spanish television stations in the hopes that some knowledge of the language will somehow find it’s way into my brain. This has yet to happen. The other reason I watch Spanish television is that their programming has some of the strangest damn game shows, and there’s almost always a very attractive, scantily clad woman on the screen. A final bonus to Spanish television: the American movie dubbed in Spanish. Tonight’s contribution is Vengeance of the Ninja. I’m catching the tail end of the movie. All I know is that a ninja is staging a one-man assault on an office building in the middle what looks to be Los Angeles. He’s jumping up stairwells, climbing in ventilation ducks, sneaking up on and killing big evil henchmen/bodyguard types. There is a point in the movie where one of the evil henchmen/bodyguards types pulls the mask off of the ninja’s face, and the ninja returns this action by spiting nails into the bodyguards face. I know everyone thinks it’s cool to be a ninja (well, maybe it’s just me and some of my friends), but just think about how long that ninja had to keep the nails in his mouth before he even able to use that little trick. Then there’s the possibility that he might never have had the opportunity to spit nails at someone’s face… then what? What a waste of a trick? What if someone had kicked the ninja, and he swallowed all the nails? What then? All I know is being a ninja must be hard, in any language, so perhaps I should let go my dream of becoming one. After all there’s always the dream of becoming a pirate (minus the scurvy) to keep me company.
12:30 AM- 1:00AM: Holy Crap, my hero Chuck Norris is on the television. No, unfortunately it’s not an old syndicated episode of Walker, Texas Ranger (Oh, how I wish it were), but rather another infomercial, this time for something called the Total Gym. The Total Gym is this contraption, that sort of looks like a Bowflex, but apparently it’s different. Wesley Snipes swears by it, and he’s a black belt in… something, I don’t really remember. It should be said that I was flipping between the Total Gym infomercial, with Chuck Norris, and the Windsor Pilates infomercial (you can order the videos and they come with a special Pilates ring) starring Daisy Fuentes. Apparently Mari Windsor is just as sought after by famous people as Gunner Peterson for her personal training expertise. If only I had a Windsor Pilates Ring, A Gunner Peterson Core workout Ball, and a Total Gym, then I’d be the most fittest person of all time. And once I’ve bought those three pieces of fitness equipment, I’ll never have to buy another piece of fitness equipment again! In an ironic note, between all the channel flipping, from fitness commercial to fitness commercial, where everyone is trying to prolong and make my life better, I run across a cheaply produced and locally made commercial for a casket store called Budget Casket. They have the cheapest caskets in town. I haven’t thought much about my death, about what kind of casket I’ll be eternally laid in (although, who knows, perhaps I’ll get cremated), but if I’m dead, I really don’t think I’m going to care how expensive my casket is. And if I’m buried, I doubt anyone living topside will care what kind of casket I have either. At first I thought, “What an odd commercial.” But then again, I guess it makes sense that if you’re up at 12:57 in the morning with nothing better to do than watch television, then you might be wishing for your impending death. To be honest by this point in the night I’m starting to fade into sleep on my couch. My eyes grow heavy, as my head swims with the alcoholic content I’ve consumed throughout the night. Even though I can hear Chuck Norris tell me how tough the Total Gym work out is, that this is the be all and end all to fitness, there’s a quietness to my apartment. It seems late, middle of the night late, where nothing stirs at all. It sort of reminds me of when I was younger, of the time my dad and I took on a newspaper delivery route. We had to wake up at three in the morning, drive over to the corner of the strip mall located down the street from our house, pick up our bundle of papers, and drive our route which took us all around my hometown of Carrollton. My job was to run into the apartment complexes and drop the paper off at the doorsteps of subscribing apartments. It didn’t register with me at the time that this was a second job for my dad, that we were doing this for the money. I don’t know if I thought anything about the financial woes and possible hardships the family might be accruing at all during that time. I just enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed the stillness of the night. Everyone was asleep. Adults, kids, youths, drunks, dogs, cats, birds, it seemed as my dad and I were the only ones awake and toiling (with the exception of donut shops, they were toiling too, and I always wanted to run in for a donut, but we never did). I enjoyed the thought that my dad and I were the only ones out in the world; it was peaceful. I worked a truck shift for the Container Store a couple of years ago that forced me to wake up at 4 in the morning. Driving, to be at the Container Store by 5 in the morning did not produce the same effect. Too many people were already awake by that time in the morning, plus, I had learned to love sleep. That job didn’t last very long.
1:00 AM- 1:30 AM: I’m snapped back awake from my dream like state by the sultry voice of one Michael Montgomery. “What’s this on my television now?” I ask rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Host Vanessa Williams tell me I’m watching a Time-Life Music commercial for Time-Life’s Best Romantic Songs of All Time forever and ever, or something like that. I don’t know what it is about this commercial, but I shoot up from lying on the couch, and start to give my full attention to the singers. I hear snippets of songs from Phil Collins, Celine Dion, Joe Cocker, Kenny Rogers, Whitney Houston, Cindy Lauper, and much, much more!!! I think it was Gloria Estefan’s Anything For You that first caught my ear to the extent where I was actually singing along. “I’d still do anything for you, though you’re not here…” Then it was Every Time You Go Away by Paul Young, followed by If You Don’t Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (which brought up memories of Ricky Gervais’ cover of that song from The Office Specials). I joined in with Chris DeBurg as he sang Lady in Red, and thought of the Karate Kid movie when Chicago’s You’re the Inspiration was played (I don’t think that was the song from the second Karate Kid movie, but anytime I hear Peter Cetera’s voice I think of the Karate Kid). Then the kicker, Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman, which is a great song, and for the record, miles and miles better than the Michael Bolton version. Eight CDs, 132 songs, great songs, great artists, how could I resist? I was singing along to every song they played! How can I not buy this set? Vanessa Williams told me I’d spend hours upon hours tracking down all these songs in the CD store (Although, the invention of I-tunes makes that statement obsolete), but they’re all here on one convenient CD set! What have I got to lose? Yes, yes! Air Supply, you sing to me when you sing, “I’m all out of Love”, I know what you’re saying cause I too, am all out of love. Do I need this CD set? How much does it cost? Only nine bucks a CD? I’m sold! Where’s my credit card? In the other room? Forget it, I don’t care. Sure those musicians can sing to my soul, sure I can feel like I’m one of them as I find myself singing along with them, alone in my apartment at one-thirty in the morning, singing their songs of eternal love, and maybe if but for a brief moment those songs will lift my spirits, out of the muck of boredom, but reality comes screaming back to me by the end of the infomercial. It’s now two in the morning, and I’m still alone in my apartment with stinky beer breath. Yes, Air Supply I hear you. I too am all out of love.
Post 2:00 AM: I decide it’s way past time to make my way to bed. I take one last spin around the dial, because I’m a glutton for punishment. Now there is almost nothing on my television that garners my interest. There’s late-late night news, really boring financial infomercials, people telling me Jesus is my savior (those guys are always on), and the late night broadcast television porn. I happened across a Girls Gone Wild paid advertisement. “Have you ever dreamed of having a private island all to yourself with nothing young college beauties there for your amusement?” The commercial asks. “No,” I think, “but I should probably start dreaming of that instead of dreaming that I could one day eat as much ice cream as I wanted, as fast as I wanted without getting brain freeze.” I think about sitting and watching the Girls Gone Wild paid advertisement for a bit longer, because I am a guy, and boobs, even blotted out boobs are on the television screen, but I already feel sort of dirty from my night of sloth, and drinking, so I change the channel.
Remember how I was telling you about the flat out insanity that one can find on Spanish television? Well, after I leave the Girls Gone Wild Island, I run across a Spanish paid advertisement on one of the Spanish stations. Now see if you can find the common link between these things: The video is called Table Dance Y Jaripeo (have no idea what Jaripeo is, and I can’t find my Spanish/English Dictionary). Yes, the video is of girls dancing and getting naked. But wait, there’s more. You also get five CDs of Tejano music. But that’s not all! You also get five videos called “sexcomedias”, or comedic sex videos, starring a person who’s sort of like a Mexican Benny Hill I’m guessing. That’s still not enough to entice you? Then this last little bit should do the trick: a video of rodeo highlights. The highlights consist mostly of bulls running over rodeo cowboys. What? Excuse me? Porn, mixed with comedy, mixed with Tejano music, mixed with Mexico’s Funniest Home Videos: The Gored by a Bull Edition, is what they’re selling? Nothing gets me hotter than seeing a kicking bull trample a man. Finally, I’d seen enough. It was definitely time to go to bed.
I decide to swing by the Jesus channel for a few seconds to give the evening some balance, and to atone for my sins in watching the Girls Gone Wild and Table Dance infomercial. Tammy Faye Bakker Messner is crying about something. Everything old is new again. I turn off the television, and go to bed, to dream of giant silver balloons, Chuck Norris, ninjas, Tammy Faye’s running mascara, paper routes, being able to eat as much ice cream as possible without getting brain freeze, and maybe, if I’m lucky my own private island.