the kids yearn for tv programming: reject binge culture embrace the archive
long live the new flesh
I felt myself pulled towards the residence of the flagship & first ever Dallas BBQ1, Times Square, to go people-watching after a night in the audience of Carmen at Bryant Park. My friend reluctantly humored me, lured in by three fourth’s of a bottle of vinho verde and the promise of a sativa hybrid pre-roll from Travel Agency. Somewhere between the man crawling out of his gorilla costume and the Midnight Moment it became clear that it was all too much and we retreated to the quiet residential side streets of Midtown West, sprinkled with titty bars and commercial margaritas. I love doing corny New York shit. One of my favorite familial memories is of the day after my dad moved me into my first NY apartment, we sat outside of the 42nd street Chase bank passing a vape back and forth silently, just taking it all in. Unfortunately for my current moment, the bench was stained with hotdogs slid across its lower half & other unknown muck.
In college, my suitemate Brianna and I would sit at the top of the elevators next to the Dunkin Donuts by the quad and watch people come and go as we sipped our coffees & ate bacon-egg croissant sandwiches.
Observation makes me feel like Harriet the Spy, her sloppy tomato sandwiches cut with dull butter knife & slathered in mayonnaise. Harriet was kind of brutal in what she said but at least she had opinions, I guess. Every time I take one of my long walks this time of year I think about that windchime garden Rosie O’Donnell takes Harriet & her friends to before she got fired. I think about how perfectly sunny and fall and New York that day was, with her Benneton Rainbow of cool interesting friends that only the 90s could do justice to.
I had that film on one of Nickelodeon’s orange VHS tapes.
I want to delobotomize my brain after thirty years of survival mode. Maybe, if I enter the trance of media yore then I can interlace my current knowledge with my memories to gain a more accurate picture. A diy EMDR/ ketamine adjacent moment if you will.
Post nightime-spliff, I’ve been simultaneously bored by my favorites like The PowerPuff Girls and overwhelmed by having to select a show that satisfies all of my muddled cravings. The Youtube algorithm feeds me indie animation from grad students which is really exciting but again, sometimes I want to not have to curate a vibe. In the olden days there was TV programming like Adult Swim for people in my exact predicament. I could fall into a stunningly surreal discontenting medley of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (a favorite from childhood), Robot Chicken & SuperJail without any effort on my part except desiring to tune in, regardless of whatever state I was in that night. Do you see what they’ve taken from us??
I pull up the one full episode I can find of Kim Possible after a conversation about retired Taco Bell items with my roommate. Unable to find more, even on Internet Archive, I remember running across some educational Instagram content praising Marion Stokes, an archivist who hoarded 35 years of television programming until her death in 2012. Voila, I’ve rediscovered cable programming.
My Youtube cartoon block selections are from 1999 through 2009, the year I entered high school proper — my school had a freshman satellite campus. I’m not really interested in entering these rabbit hole watches with shows I’m unfamiliar with as much as I am catching episodes of shows that slipped through the cracks of syndication. But if it happens, when it happens, even better. I want the vibes and I want to see how far I can stretch them. How much space is there between Home Movies and Moral Orel? Why were they placed next to each other?
From the Cartoon Cartoon in-network ads, I notice April 27, 2000 was scheduled to play only Ed, Edd & Eddy, my personal nightmare, but at least you could opt out of screentime! Cartoon Network was a separate entity. We made an active choice to catch a show - for those 22 mins split into two segments you were all in, present. That’s what was so special about longer episodes, you had to keep returning, testing your endurance for presence and feeling the reward of the payoff through sitting through less appealing moments (commercials).
There would be crude skits in those breaks, characters would promote their show and interact in their channel universe. Johnny Bravo pitches his show alongside Cow & Chicken in a slightly uncanny manner that justifies their distinct commerciality in design wrapped in familiar sensibilities. They’re a scion, an offshoot to lure us in.
And opposed to the commercials we pay or pirate our way out of now, and maybe defeating my original purpose, I want to witness the ads. When I can’t resist the urge to pee any longer or crave salt intake via my almost nightly cucumber salad, I pause the video. I must know what the furniture ads from the fall of 2000 in Modesto California were giving. Why were all the ads marketed to children at the time ‘EXTREME’ and how did that affect our perspective on maturity? I rewatched Cronenberg’s Videodrome and I’m concerned!
I’m halfway through a 50 minute long episode of Dexter[’s Laboratory]2 that seems to have disappeared from the series collection until at least 2021. In the 1999 episode titled Ego Trip, Dexter visits the future to save the present, he discovers that his anxieties have stopped him from becoming the super genius hero he knew he’d become. As he dives into the neuroses of the ‘other him’ he must travel further and further in time, reminding his multiple selves of who they are at their core…I’m assuming it works and he fixes the future and all is right with his world. That’s how epics usually go at least.