RULE BRITTANYA!

  I’ve been checking out some of these apps where you can “cut the cord” and watch a bunch of shows and movies on your pocket size Telescreen. They are a mixed bag, I must say, but the most curious one so far is the Pluto app. This app gives me access to countless channels broadcasting films I managed to avoid when they were fresh, featuring actors I wish I’d never heard of, as well as many programs with cryptic and intriguing titles. In many cases, the nature of the channel is entirely baffling. One is called the Gorilla Channel, and it seems to be much like CNN, except that instead of 24 hours a day of newslike material, it’s 24 hours a day of rubes and their kids staring at gorillas through a bay window. The rubes will talk to the apes, as one might talk to fish in a tank, saying things like, “go get him,” and “what’s that big one doing?” I’ve always been perplexed by why people like to say “go get him” so much. I’m not really an animal lover, but apparently part of the appeal is watching one animal run after another one, and then playfully knock him into a coma. 

  Because I am a parent, and always looking for tips on nurturing, I was drawn to a show called Bikini Day Care. Perhaps the nurturing part was coming up after the commercial break, but the segment I caught featured some rock singer who felt the need to wear both a bandanna and a cap at the same time, while chatting with a size six young lady in a size five shirt about how another young lady had poured a bunch of salsa into her Samsonite luggage. In a voiceover, the rock star allowed as how he was attracted to Kayla, or Britnee, or someone, and she was hot, but the last thing he needed now was drama. It’s the danger of consorting with hot women, I learned, that with hotness comes drama. You have to watch your step when you’re choosing among hot women that were supplied by a TV producer. Here at our house, we sometimes buy salsa, but mostly we put it on eggs and nachos and things, because after a long day of nurturing, we’re too tired to pour it into each other’s suitcases. 

  The One Foot in the Grave Channel runs vintage programs for people with vintage prostates. I was able to catch an episode of Peter Gunn, which is a show dating back to the Classic TV period, when two of the best minutes of music ever recorded would run over the credits of a program that turned out to be rife with jawdropping idiocy. The handsome titular character walked around in a nightclub milieu packed with white people who either played jazz or listened to it, while gorgeous women nursed highballs. It sounds pretty good, but once you’re watching, it’s hard to ignore the wooden clunk of the hip dialogue, which mercifully is sometimes drowned out by Mancini flutes. As with the Bikini Nurturing, I guess the gunplay was coming up after the commercial break. 

  Some channels I gave a miss and never looked back. Here’s an example of the elitism I’m known for— when I see that a channel called The Cat Channel has a show called Cats, Cats, Cats, it strikes me as lazy. And I’m unwilling to watch any show about Bigfoot, especially if it’s two hours long, since I read that there are people who believe that Bigfoot can’t be killed by a bullet because he is able to travel between dimensions. I have a dim memory of once hearing someone claim the same thing about Bea Arthur. 

  As I clicked around in search of watchable content, I occasionally checked back in to see where they were at with the scantily-clad nurturing, and was appalled to discover that the show features a kind of busty Star Chamber, where ladies who’d previously dallied with the star of the show sat in a tribunal judging the current crop of croptops. A lot of high level amateur psychoanalysing was going on, with most of the women being described as having “issues,” and one poor gal with the portmanteau-bimbeaux name of Brittanya coming in for a great deal of abuse. Nobody liked her, or her cowboy hat, and they weren’t inclined to mince words on the subject. My guess would be that they probably voted her off Bikini Island not long afterward.