So watch it I did. I watched lots of TV and it was to the point where not only was I beating the Geeks, I was fucking Geek grandmaster of all that was Geeky in the Geekinest geek-off of all time, okay? In short, I was feeling like a big, fat loser and thinking that I'd never find a job ever and nobody would ever love a stupid, unemployed loser so I should just stop trying. Just wallow in my own crapulance and move into the basement and get a couple more cats and some cheetos and give up totally and completely.
And then, something happened. Something magical and wonderful. I don't know if you're aware of it, but there's this thing called the Family Channel. Wait! Wait! Hear me out!
It happened so gradually that I didn't even realize it. I mean, I'd start out all "Oh, I wonder what this Lizzie McGuire show is about. Hey. Isn't that the guy from Revenge of the Nerds as Lizzie's dad? Hmmm... that Gordo is fiiinnnnne. I wish he'd quit mooning over Lizzie and get with the hero who is obviously Miranda." Yeah. And then I'd flip to Championship soccer and watch some hot boys running around in shorts and forget all about it.
Once, I was flicking around looking for Red Shoe Diaries late at night (WHAT?! A girl's got to get her soft-core porn Duchovny fix somewhere doesn't she?) and I came across Mysterious Ways which is, to the best of my knowledge, a completely ignored gem of a bad tv-show. It has the makings of a good tv show. It's got Adrian Pasdar who is cute in an "I married a dixie chick" kinda way and definitely scores points on the cool-o meter since he was that guy who slept in a box on that show called Profit that was so good it only had four episodes before FOX cancelled it. And it's got this really awesome Canadian actress who plays a socially inept science geek who owns her own motorcycle. And he's an Anthropology professor and she's his grad student assistant and they investigate miraculous phenomenon. Yeah. Touched by an X-file as so many lazy TV writers have described it. So you know, it should be good. But it also has Rae Dawn Chong who is...not good. We'll leave it at that. I don't want to have Rae Dawn Chong groupies hunting me down and telling me how great she is. So of course, this being the family channel, this show is very wholesome and good for you which should make me want to barf. But I concentrated on the hot Anthro prof and his iconoclastic sidekick and ignored the platitudes and religious overtones. And soon, I was searching it out. Actually, soon, I didn't have to search anything out. I knew when it was coming on and if I was doing something else (like what? I was a lazy bum, remember?) I'd drop it and go watch TV.
Oh, and there was also a very sad (happy!) time when I watched every single episode of Due South ever and even had dialogue memorized at one point. For those of you who think I'm a big, fat loser, I beg you to watch the interaction between Ray (played by Callum Keith Rennie) and Fraser (mmm....Paul Gross) and tell me they don't totally want each other every single second they're on screen together. It is sooooo obvious. They're totally hot for it. Yeah. They are. Shut up.
But by far the worst (best!) part of my foray into family oriented viewing, the sad, pathetic apex of it all, was my obsession with Full House.
I'm not going to tell you that it's a wonderful show. You know it's not. It sucks. The acting is wooden, the cloying cuteness makes you want to run in circles flogging yourself and screaming about penance while the saccharine music plays over the episodes big "lesson" spelled out in no uncertain terms by Uncle Jesse/Joey/Danny or "Deej" or "Steph." The one thing the Olsen twins can say about that show is that it was over before they were old enough to be the ones spouting the platitudes like "Well, I shouldn't have gotten my ears pierced without your permission, Dad. And I know that now that my lobes are dripping with puss and infection and decay. I sure have learned my lesson. Can you ever forgive me?" or "After one day of refusing to eat and giving my sammiches to the dog so I will fit into my swim-suit for the big swimming party tomorrow, I think it is finally time to admit that I have an eating disorder. But thanks to the love and affection and attention of my extended family, I know now that it doesn't matter what I look like, it's what's on the inside that counts." Or "I know I've been pretending to be a rough, tough, sexy musician who is completely emotionally unavailable, but I really think it's time I settled down with my two, single, male best friends in San Francisco and raised our three precoscious daughters. I'm sorry I ever wanted to move out. Hey, how's about I just live in the attic until I get married to a lovely beard and have twin boys of my own. Hell, what do I mean, until? Of course, I won't move out! I'll still live in the attic! And sometimes, my friends the Beach Boys can pop over and we'll all go to Hawaii and play in the big, reunion tour with them. That will teach us a valuable lesson about...um...the Beach Boys?"
Yeah. Stupid. But you know what? I don't care! Because Uncle Jesse is fucking hot, okay? Way hot. And that hair! Have mercy! Plus, he's connected! He knows those Beach Boys! And once, Tommy Page was on the show. And if you don't know who Tommy Page is, you were clearly not in touch with the teeny-pop music scene in the late 80s or early 90s. But enough about that loser. Back to babe-o-rama Uncle Jesse.
No, seriously. John Stamos clearly has a picture in the attic aging for him. Because he's still hot. And he and his super-model wife are splitting up. Now, I can hear you saying that it's probably because her star is just rising too fast and it must be really hard when an insanely hot woman who also happens to be on a bit of a run with the stupid X-men movies marries a smokin' hot guy who happens to have done nothing more than a 10-10-2-twenty long distance commercial in the past several years. It's obvious what happened. She got jealous of his relative anonymity.
I mean, imagine going everywhere with drooling fanboys trying to get you to morph or asking you stupid, fan-boy questions like "In episode 3.5 of the X-men cartoon titled 'Return of the Pheonix' you do not appear. Can you please tell my why we hear the sound of Wolverine's adamantium claws extending when his claws are clearly sheathed in the scene we see on screen?!? Hmmm? Can you?" Yeah. Meanwhile, nobody's lined up all "Oh, Mr. Stamos! Mr. Stamos! Can I have your autograph? Can you put Have Mercy, Lou-Anne? It's for my mom. She's a big fan. Thank you sir."
Except me. And when I say my mom? I mean me. And when I say "fan?" I mean "I want to jump your bones."
When I was writing for the student newspaper at the University of Regina, I spent one whole day wandering around campus with a bunch of pictures of famous people and our University president. The point was to show that people knew who folks like Stephen King (who happened to resemble our president a little bit) and Mr. Dressup were, while they had no idea who the president was. Included in the sheath of papers was a shot of John Stamos in his prime. His hair was so moussed and blow-dryed to perfection it wasn't even funny. I included the uncle Jesse shot because my editor (who may be an even bigger geek than me) was somewhat obsessed with the Stamos. My GUY editor. I think he just liked making fun of John Stamos. He has a theory that Full House spawned a generation of mal-adjusted materialists who felt that all problems should be solved within half an hour with treacly music, smiles and lemonade for the kids when the tears had dried. Central to this theory was the fact that Stamos paved the way for latter-day sideburn wearing rebels Brandon Walsh and Dylan McKay AKA Jason "crash'" Priestly and "Sideshow" Luke Perry and all inspired all those stupid, Lazy, saturday night Urkel-esque sitcoms including the ones about Bronson Pinchot as an alien and the family of Genies (which is also on the Family Channel) and the kid who ate the bad hamburger and went to heaven from where he advises his stupid earth-bound friend.
That's a lot to put on one man. But I guess if anybody can handle it, it's Stamos. Stamos with his, okay, not leather pants cause that would be too out there and this IS a family show and not, you know, Penthouse forum, but black jeans, okay? And his rock-a-roll hair and his band the Rippers and his cowboy boots and his painted-on aforementioned jeans and his sideburns and his affection for silk shirts. Why, he was all decked out like a girl of the late 80s dreams. He was the most subversive element of a versive show beamed to millions of suburban homes filled with giggling teenagers who would one day grow into the fantastically sarcastic and sardonic women of the world who could appreciate a man of his talents. He was way, way cooler than Dave-fucking-Coulier and what the hell was Alanis thinking anyway? Why go down on Uncle Joey in a theatre when Uncle Jesse is standing around giving you smoldering glances like "You. Me. We're tortured, ain't we, baby? We're children of a different time. Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!" I mean, his eyes were saying that. His lips were saying "Have mercy!" But that's okay.
Plus, you know the guy's got a sense of humour. How else to explain the movie "I am Stamos"? It's about a guy named Andy Shrub. He's a character actor with leading man dreams and he suddenly starts to photograph like Stamos, which incurs the wrath of the real Stamos. Okay, as movies go, it's no Being John Malkovich, but there is a delightful lack of John Cusack and so, I judge it to be better. I mean, leading man dreams and he starts to photograph like Stamos? Well that's too bad for this sclub Shrub because Stamos is a lot of things, but he is no leading man.
I haven't seen anything he's been in except I am Stamos, that phone commercial, and Full House. And he's been in some other stuff, just none of it's very good.
So yeah. Rebecca Romjin-Stamos is now just plane ol' Rebecca Romjin. We'll see how long she lasts without her Stamos. The fool.
Until then, call me, Uncle Jesse! We'll make beautiful music together. Or, at least, we can sing Kokomo while you play the bongos.
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