Richard Dawson, Ron Popeil, Billy Corgan and Me
As plausible of an event this may seem, this is actually a work of fiction written at 5am after being awake for 22 hours.
Insomnia’s in full force again.
I look at the clock. It’s 3:30am.
Fuck.
I turn on the television. What else can one do at this hour?
Click.
Richard Dawson is hosting Family Feud, though by the looks of it he’s spending more time hitting on every single female contestant with ovaries.
I’m fairly certain that has caused some family feuds.
Click.
Home Improvement. Tim Allen drops an I-beam on top of a car.
Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that some viewed him as a “man’s man” when the show was on the air.
Click.
It’s a Weaponology marathon. Six jam-packed hours of how to completely annihilate your enemies and make it look awesome.
Click.
Ronco’s spray-on hair.
Perfect. I already feel like ripping my hair out.
Click.
Elephant on the Independent Film Channel. High school kids slaughtering other high school kids. I think back to when I was dubbed the next Dylan Klebold my freshman year of high school.
I wonder if those guys watched six hours of Weaponology.
Click.
Talk Sex with Sue Johanson.
I can’t even talk about sex to my friends, much less someone who looks like my grandmother.
Click.
Xanadu. Olivia Newton-John doing roller disco.
The jokes just write themselves.
Click.
Billy Corgan intones in a long-forgotten Smashing Pumpkins video to “Speak to me in a language I can hear.”
Click.
If I order now, I can get not one, not two, but three Girls Gone Wild videos.
I’m sure my grandmother would love to talk about this.
I’m sure Richard Dawson would too.
Click.
Legends Of The Hidden Temple, a tweenage game show in which kids attempt to race through a “Mayan temple” in order to recover historical artifacts. Today’s “legend,” the levitating dog leash of Nostradamus.
History has become a joke.
Yet it keeps me up all night.
Click.
Another music video, this one showing a semi-androgynous man on the verge of tears standing on the ledge of a commercial high-rise. Police and bystanders scream for the (wo)man to come down as the song croons that “a friend in need is a friend indeed”.
At the climax of the song, the man jumps, mere milliseconds before a cop reaches out from behind him to catch him.
Halfway down his fall, the man slows to a stop, and floats in mid-air.
He begins walking down the side of the building.
As this happens, the final lines of the song are repeated.
“Day’s dawning. Pure morning. Pure morning.
“Pure morning.”
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