Somehow, in the last year or so, I’ve welcomed late-night TV into my life. I began suffering from insomnia around the time I found out I was going to be a dad (I’m sure that’s coincidental), and so I began staying up later and later, usually watching TV. At first, I was disturbed by what I found on the dial after midnight, but now I’m just fascinated.
I should point out that we do not have cable. So the late night television I’m watching is all network TV. In other words, it’s the scum scraped off the very bottom of the television barrel.
What I find fascinating is the steady decline in decency, both in the programming and the commercials, as the night progresses. First, I watch David Letterman, who occasionally gets flashed by Drew Barrymore or Courtney Love, but is basically okay with most grandparents. Then it’s on to Conan O’Brien, who begins to ruffle feathers with the occasional masturbating gorilla, but it’s all in good fun.
Something happens after 12:30 AM, a boundary is crossed, and we enter a strange, seedy new world, full of criminals, UFO conspiracies, circus performers, exercise equipment, credit counselors, and cute girls who really want to get to know you over the phone.
In James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, there’s a chapter called “Nighttown,” in which all the characters’ desires, fantasies, and fears come to life, as though the characters are all wandering around in their own subconsciouses. Nighttime television reminds me of that.
On one channel, you have blurry footage of Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster. On another, a nervous looking old man is explaining how you can buy a thirty thousand dollar house for a few hundred dollars. On another, a woman is admitting to her husband that she’s been sleeping with his brother, and the audience starts chanting, “Whore! Whore! Whore!” On still another, a man is attempting to break the world record for clamping clothes pins onto his face.
But even more interesting are the commercials, because they tell you who you are. There are advertisements for night school, because you’re obviously unemployed. There are advertisements for bankruptcy lawyers and personal injury lawyers, because you’re up to your eyes in debt and looking for a quick buck. There’s the endless parade of party line girls, begging you to call them, because they have nothing to do but sit on their couches and flip their hair out of their eyes and wear low cut blouses and wait for the phone to ring. And of course, there’s the commercial for the Girls Gone Wild video, which sometimes runs on an endless loop for up to a half-an-hour, and which features all manner of girls exposing their body parts, only to have those same body parts concealed by sparkling signs that say, “Money Back Guarantee!” This is the commercial where the host actually turns to a woman and says, “Show me where babies feed.” And when she does, he turns to the camera and says, “It’s natural!”
But perhaps the man who brings all of late night television together into the ultimate thirty second package of sex, greed, gaudiness, and horror, is the spokesman for a local adult video store here in the Twin Cities called Lickety Split. He looks to be of African descent, has a blondish afro, and wears a leisure suit with his collar open to a glittering gold star. He speaks with an absurd Australian accent, referring to all the girls in the commercial as “Sheilas.” After leading you around his store, and pointing things out by looking at them through his green binoculars (including a group of scantily clad, dancing Sheilas), he ends the commercial by turning to a stuffed pig he has in his hand (???), posing the ultimate rhetorical question, “Isn’t she a gnarly little Sheila?” And then the stuffed pig squeals.
I’m not sure what this means, but I think it’s beautiful.