Up all night

Wednesday, October 6th, 2004
Filed Under: Entertainment/ 3 Comments


“Listen, I got news for ya, it’s nice to be involved with somebody who’s interested in something other than Nick-at-Nite. Now he’s got a grip on reality, he’s happy, he’s well adjusted.” - Elaine Benes, 1992

I’ve written about it before, but I have a hopeless addiction to Nick-at-Nite. And let’s face it, outside of politics, the one thing I love talking about most is television. After the late night talk shows are over, and my local Fox affiliate has shown the last repeats of Seinfeld and King of the Hill, I take comfort in switching over to my usual lineup of late night nostalgia. Testing the limits of my multi-tasking abilities, I split my attention between the television and my computer monitor. If cathode ray tubes cause cancer at an advanced rate, I’m in trouble.

The problem with reruns is that because they are fairly numerous, networks that buy syndication rights can shuffle things up on you without much notice. I used to get two King of the Hills on Fox every night, but then KTBC decided to squeeze in a That 70’s Show. Isn’t it enough that they punish me nightly with Dharma & Greg?

Unfortunately, Nick-at-Nite performed a similar maneuver a few weeks ago and replaced Cheers with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Cosby Show. The Fresh Prince was really popular when I was younger, but I always found it to be too slapstick for my taste. I enjoy the Cosby Show, but I wouldn’t have traded Cheers to get it. There was already more than enough “family humor” with a double shot of Roseanne just an hour earlier. I liked that most of the night was given to comedies without children, which often have a longer shelf life in the creativity department. It’s also more difficult to stomach fake cute at 2 o’clock in the morning.

And so, what am I to do? Flip around looking for something else every night? No, that would defeat the purpose of only giving it half my attention. Instead I’ve been paying even less attention than usual for that hour while going about the business of staring at my monitor.

It’s been suggested (by Nicole) that I give up my night owl routine and just go to bed like a “normal” person, but that leads to my “sleeping your life away” theory and I’m too tired to get into that.