It's a slow Friday on Cannery Row, so today I decided to do a little spring cleaning. But since my workstation is more of a pulley- and lever-based operation, it seems, cleaning my springs didn't really take me that long. (
rim shot!) So I decided to bust out the old can of Falcon brand Dust-Off®, the Original Compressed Gas Duster, and get busy on my keyboard. You know what they say, if it ain't Falcon, it's probably a different brand of compressed gas duster that might not work as well but will most likely be comparable!
Obviously, there's very little on this earth as satisfying as spraying compressed air into the crannies of your keyboard and watching the orgiastic burst of dust and hair that explodes from the teeny little canyons between the keys. And can I mention, for the record, how surprised I was to discover just how much storage room there is underneath the keyboard keys? Besides the dust and hair, the Falcon brand Dust-Off® also unearthed three dimes, a slice of very aged cheddar cheese, a die-cast model of the Millennium Falcon, and a pocket-size copy of the Magna Carta!
Needless to say, I was quite pleased with myself. My allergies, on the other hand, were not quite pleased with myself. They were quite angry with myself, as a matter of fact. I have no one but myself to blame, though, and I think my allergies knew that, and that's exactly who they're blaming - myself.
All my allergies wanted was to be left alone, after all. They didn't particularly need or care for any additional stimulation. This morning, my brain was in such an allergenic haze that it didn't so much wake up as it subtly shifted from ruminations on air travel to a deep contemplation of the ABC Friday night television lineup in the late 80s and early 90s. I'm not sure which one of those I was asleep for. I'm guessing it was some of both.
Ultimately, I think both subjects stem from watching
Lost, which has become an intense and soul-wrenching experience ever since the strike beards came off and the writers went back to work. I almost get the sense that the rotten-hearted writers or producers of
Lost (or perhaps both) are pissed off at all of us, and that they therefore feel compelled to induce ulcer-like symptoms and mild coronary crisis in their audience members, which is not very nice.
But surely, you can see the connection, right? Because I'm very much aware of how flimsy the segue is from dusting my keyboard to what I dreamed about this morning to
Lost to the heyday of TGIF, and I need you to make this journey with me. So here goes:
I dreamed about air travel, which obviously derives from
Lost because of all the
travel companies that sponsor it, and because the show is, to use the insider term, "on the
air." And the Friday night lineup on ABC is because today is Friday, and because of my recurring adolescent fantasy that John Stamos and Dave Coulier die in a fiery plane crash somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, or that they land on a seemingly uninhabited island and get shot by the natives, much like what keeps happening on
Lost.
My point, which is pretty much a non-sequitur despite the hundreds of words I've spent getting there already, is that while we're waiting TWO WEEKS to find out what happens to Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Ben, Gilligan, Ginger, and the Skipper, I think we can apply the lessons of
Lost to the old classics like
Full House and
Perfect Strangers - both of which could really have benefited from some cliffhangers and plot twists.
Actually,
Perfect Strangers was an impeccable example of sitcom, and should never be fucked with, ever. For six magical years, Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn-Baker went together like cream and coffee, in that they were an ideal match.
Full House, on the other hand, could have used some punching up. There were chemistry problems on that show right from the getgo, mostly between John Stamos and Jodie Sweetin. Stamos and Sweetin went together like cream and coffee, in that they were hopelessly disgusting after a few hours together, even with frequent stirring and reheating.
So why not play up the conflict a little bit?
To this day, I still look back fondly on the episode where "Mister Stephanie" gave Uncle Jesse a pretend haircut that went wrong, happily resulting in the death of Stamos's ill-advised Elvis Presley-mullet fusion experiment (an experiment that continues to this day all over Tennessee for no adequately explainable reason). Uncle Jesse responded by giving Stephanie the silent treatment (reportedly not an act), but how awesome would it have been if, instead, he had dangled her off the edge of a cliff by her fingers, and then counted the piggies while she screamed.
UNCLE JESSE: This little piggy went to market...
STEPHANIE: NO! Uncle Jesse! Stop! Please! [She sobs violently.]
UNCLE JESSE: This little piggy stayed home...
STEPHANIE: Oh my god, I can't hold on. I'm gonna fall, Uncle Jesse, please save me! [She continues sobbing.]
UNCLE JESSE: This little piggy had roast beef...
[Stephanie's remaining two fingers, or "piggies," give out. She falls to the canyon floor, shrinking to nothing long before her inert, elementary school form thuds to the ground. Her piercing scream gradually fades to silence.]
Now that's good television!
Oh,
Lost, and all you rotten-hearted writers and producers, you don't just make Thursday night television better, you make
all television better.
Of course, it would be even better if they had dropped Uncle Jesse, that fuckwad wannabe hearthrob, off that cliff instead.
Have mercyyyyyyy....! Splat.
As for what caused the writers of Lost to perpetrate such a nasty prank on the viewing public, I have a theory about that too. Think about the timeline of the events of the show: the plane crashed on September 22, 2004. The Oceanic Six were rescued 108 days later, on January 8, 2005. Between their crash and rescue, the Red Sox won the World Series, and George Bush got re-elected. I imagine the subsequent conversation went something like this:
FOX:
