All My Good Buddies Read Me the Nightly News

I was minding my own business Friday afternoon, zonking in front of the TV while my son caught a snooze upstairs. Sportscenter was on, the wife wasn't home yet, and I'd been alternating ZZZZs and "huh's?" since sinking into the couch.

Well, I wake up to my friendly evening anchor faces, Brian Kenny and Jay Harris telling me what's up in the world of hockey scores and basketball trades and yeah, the usual everyday string of steroid hearings, drug arrests and coach recruiting violations, when a birthday party breaks out.

Bill Walton, basketball Hall of Famer and ESPN analyst, waltzes into the room on his rebuilt knees and brandishes a birthday cake before Harris (his 43rd, according to Wikipedia), warbling in his Deadhead drawl, "Happy Birthday to you...."

I had to blink a couple times, pinch myself. I grinned a little, at first, but this scene went on for a bit. And when I began to notice the camera angles -- those full-body shots so many news shows are going to lately, to vary it up, I guess -- and the canned chummy dialogue began flying about like so many rubber snakes uncorked, well, my sleepy grin bent to a snarl and I switched off the damn TV to get an honest 40 winks.

I just don't get the phenomenon of news "personalities" trying so damn hard to be your buddy, to bring their, well, lack of personality bumping into your living room like a relative you never asked to stay over, but keeps hanging around, munching your milk and cookies.

I'll try to dredge up some examples from my mind dump. OK. So there are the full body shots, the anchors walking or pacing in a studio before some huge screen, when we used to only get the awkward backwards shuffle on feature off-site interviews. There are all the weird props, like CNN has unveiled for its political coverage this season -- the kind of dynamic feeling they achieve there is on a level with Paula Abduhl dancing with a cartoon cat: childish, and a little creepy. There are the football preview dudes, standing around on their painted studio football field before huddling up and running a few plays. They way they look over their shoulder at you, as if you were standing on the fringes of their group, is more than a little disconcerting -- are they going to call my number? Hit me with a pass? Oh, God, will I have to decipher the quarterback's cadence? LAME TWENTY-FOUR-SEVEN CHUMMY TALKING HEADS... HUT HUT HUT.

You just end up feeling sorry for them, like at an awkward corporate function or high school reunion. They're trying so damn hard for you to LIKE them. We're uncomfortable, they're uncomfortable, and it's because they're mostly bad at it. The Weather Channel people ought to be honored with a Wooden Spoon award, or a Pullcord Dummy statuette, or something. I mean, it's weather, right? Just give me the highs and lows and the outlook for the weekend and save the comments about your bikini or barbecue or quotations from Whitman for your next keynote speech at Bumblef*** Vocational Tech.

OK, I'll stop shouting at the TV now.

It's just that I don't need any more buddies in my life, canned voices trying to sell me something I shouldn't look for on the TV or from a telemarketer in the first place. Part of giving yourself over to the mindless glare of the TV is forgetting you're doing it in the first place. Real skill in getting you to tune in is making you unaware of the hours you're devoting to it (hey, it's a national average), sitting in one place, imagination on holiday, colors flashing across your eyes, butt growing numb. And then Heather Tesch and Nicole Mitchell start riffing on actual evapotranspiration and it's not just the weather anymore, it's amateur hour at the local Funny Bone.

And you don't even benefit from the two-drink minimum.

I may be the voice crying in the TV wilderness here, but spare me the small talk and buddy-buddy stuff and just read me the news. Give me the scores, tell me the forecast, and let me enjoy my own off-key birthday warble from my own relatives and friends.

We'd ask you over for the birthday dinner, but I think you've already had your fill of smoked ham and cheesy corn.

Man vs. Wild

I've often remarked to my wife that the Discovery Channel show "Man Vs. Wild," which sends Katie and I'm sure at least five other females (as in hundred thousand) ooohing and aaaahing every week, could be just as effectively filmed in our backyard.

With a few well-placed grunts, and dizzying camera angles, and a day's growth of beard (facelifts and six-month fitness binges aside), your average Joe couch husband could do a pretty passing impression of survival hunk Bear Grylls caught in a Congolese cave pit, or tromping over shards of volcanic rock.

Our backyard has a wicked gopher holl in the far right corner -- I could spend ten minutes or so vamping my way over it. There's this weird silver grass sprouting up along the back fenceline -- I could spend a night talking about its dietary benefits and rip into it with gusto, a few strands provocatively poking through my teeth. I can mimic thirst, hunger, exhaustion. I'm a pretty good sweater, too, if it came to that. And I can rig up all the Boy Scout lean-to fires you could ask for.

Done with an Australian accent, I could have the Discovery film crew over here in a second. Or at least public access.

Ah, but my point. And I do have one.

Nothing makes me go all survivor guy like the recent dumping of snow we endured in the "Greater Chicagoland Area." Several powdered doughnut dustings nearly every day in the early part of last week, then the prodigious eight inch dumping Thursday, followed by the Super Bowl whiteout Sunday.

I'm normally a neighborly guy, but I reserve the right to pound my chest and act like the King Gorilla when I've spent an hour and longer digging out of our driveway and doing all the sidewalks on our corner lot besides. C'mon, across-the-street dude with the snowblower -- I'm up and leaning into it by 7, can't you pull the ripcord on your cakewalk device before the mail comes in the afternoon?

Probably dangerously, this attitude can extend to the roads. Me and my more-or-less family-man sedan, riding the bumpers of the SUVs and grumbling about "If you can't drive in it, there are perfectly good buses... short ones." Not really fair, I know. (I'm good at the personal guilt.) How can SUVs win in this weather? On the one hand, they're built for getting through it, so why the hell are they dragging ass? On the other, they're built for getting through it, so why ride MY slip-sliding-sedan ass -- gimme a break, gas guzzler!

See? They can't win. I can't win. Bear Grylls can't win (read about he and his crew faking their "authentic" survival shoots here: investigation). The only victor in all this is Mother Nature, who laughs at the trenches I dig to allow nonexistant walkers a place to cool their heels, and happily heaps on the wet and heavy stuff when the piles around my mailbox are approaching shoulder height (youch, says my back), then turns around and hits us with 45 degrees hours after my latest feat of shoveling, producing fog and receding piles.

Ah, but anyway -- it's a great workout, right? If you pull something major, and end up in traction for all of February, take heart: that scapegoat Groundhog says we won't see sun until March, anyway.

The view from our driveway Friday, half done:

And Here I Thought We Were Made, A&E

Where Have You Gone, Tony Soprano?


File this post under my rant of the day from the unrelenting tedium of winter break.

Probably I'd be better off not admitting this, seeing as there are only so many hours of the day to be productive, and running out of reasons to blend my mind into mush in front of the TV is more likely something to celebrate, but:

Can anyone out there tell me what the heck A&E is doing with its rights to The Sopranos these days? The love affair started out so dreamily between us.

I'd put my time in, last year, churning out pages of writing during the day, alternately driving into the city for classes and babysitting sonny, and then come nightfall veg out with the wife on the couch Wednesdays for our weekly date with Tony and his bloody band of brothers.

Man, A&E made the most of its $2.55 million-per-episode investment in the beginning, showing 2 episodes in sequence every Wednesday, and reruns to boot during the week. Gangster Heaven (as the commercials boasted)? Fuhgeddaboutit! And this was bliss, even though we'd mostly seen all the episodes from having HBO for a while and then renting the DVDs once our conscious-parents budget kicked in.

Well, then A&E dropped back to one episode a night, at a later time. And then it backtracked over the summer. And now, just when A&E made it through a nice, long sequence of episodes leading through the stellar season 5 (the penultimate season, before the two-part grand send-off), you can't find the episodes anywhere on the schedule.

Oh, they're re-airing episodes from season 5 (after copping out with some "viewers' best" picks before Christmas), and they're on at, like, 2:13 a.m. in the East. What gives? The Sopranos cost A&E a mint of money and delivered them record ratings. So now it's time to toy with viewers?

Seeing as there is only so much time I can devote to TV, especially stuff I've already seen, I think the answer is simple, after sitting through a night last night (no football on that I cared about; crap early-season basketball; no patience for the network slop; and woah... CSI: Miami on A&E): shut the freaking (to borrow from A&E censors) tube off.

Once we "stop believin'" there are so many better things to find to do. Hey, maybe even spend time with our own, live "families"? (see above)