Hot Seat

In the early 1980’s, we’d get some strange TV shows on the non-network channels late on Saturday nights in Northern California. Most were unedited versions of British comedies like Monty Python, Benny Hill and Bizarre…but then there was also this crazy talk show from Southern California: “Hot Seat with Wally George.”

Hot Seat was completely different than anything we’d seen before. At that time, insane, one-sided hatemongering political shows were simply a pipe nightmare. Hot Seat predated them all. And like the ebola-ish political pundits of today, Wally catered to the lowest common denominator: white trash. The one difference (that we didn’t really understand at the time), was that we couldn’t really tell if he believed his own load of drivel or not…was he more Stephen Colbert or Rush Limbaugh?

If you’re not familiar with Wally, YouTube him. Perhaps considered tame by today’s sheer volume of babbling, offensive noise, Wally was one-of-a-kind 30 years ago. It was crazy, unique, disturbing, hilarious, yes – even daring. It was Jerry Springer mixed with Glen Beck: loud, raucous crowds, fake security guards taking away every guest (because each guest inevitably was kicked off the show right before the commercial break), over-the-top conservative “opinions” decreed as fact…and yet there was something comfortably funny about it all – like you were in on a joke that you didn’t fully understand.

Hot Seat only focused on two topics:

1. Ronald Reagan: God Jr.
2. Pot smokers: evil incarnate.

Everything, and I mean everything, could be deconstructed into one of these two camps. And, perhaps the best part of all? It was all delivered under the single worst hairstyle mankind has ever known:

When I started at UCLA in 1987, it was an obvious transition that instead of waiting for Hot Seat once a week, I could now watch his daily 30 minute call-in show on Channel 56 out of Ahaheim. At that time, this station had just enough juice to reach the 20 or so miles north to Westwood – it would come in full of static – wavering in and out in alignment with the weather patterns…

This version of Hot Seat was a real treat. Wally would literally spend 30 minutes in front of a giant U.S. flag at a desk with a picture of the space shuttle on one side and Reagan on the other and simply take calls.

But these weren’t the type of calls we’ve come to expect today on talk radio; instead, they were potheads calling up to mess with Wally.

Constantly.

“Hi caller, what can I do for you?” Wally would ask.

“Wally – something died on your head.” (hair-related calls were big…)

“GET OUTTA HERE!” he would yell, waving his thumb in the air with a scowl. “Next caller!”

“Yeah, Wally – I ran out of toilet paper, can I borrow your bad hair piece?”

It was…brilliant. LITERALLY every call berated Wally or promoted weed. Sometimes it was both.

“Hi Wally?”

“Yes caller, what question do you have?”

“I was just taking a massive bong hit, saw you on TV and was wondering if you were actually an albino version of Mushmouth from Fat Albert?”

“GET OUTTA HERE YOU FREAKING IDIOT! That caller clearly has BRAIN DAMAGE! Too much of the GREEN STUFF polluting his mind. Hey caller, I hope you fall in that “BONG” of yours and find a clue!”

Wally’s comebacks weren’t always that good, but his (feigned?) supreme anger trumped the need for a snappy retort. It was all delicious.

Of course, being a college kid with time on my hands, I couldn’t resist…

I started calling him every now and then, pretending that I was asking a real question, and then devolving into weird noises right in the middle of it all.

“Hi, Wally?”

“Yes, what’s your question?”

“I was wondering what you thought about the recent congressional vote abouoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiYOIYOIYOIYOIYOIYOIYOI!”

“GET HIM OUTTA HERE!!! YOU FREAK!!! OK, next caller…”

It was inane, adolescent, brainless…but so much fun. It was a good way for me to let off steam during my freshman year, and I would constantly try to change my voice before slipping into the weird noise.

Wally hated me.

Many times, after 15 non-stop minutes of berating phone calls, Wally would get so angry he’d threaten that if there was one more crank call he was just going to stare at the camera and not say a word the rest of the show. I was lucky enough to be the very next caller…

“Wally?”

“Yes…this better be a real question – I’m warning you! What’s your name?”

“Hi Wally,” I started in a nice, friendly voice that slowly changed into a low, guttural moan, “this is SATAN FROM HELL!!!”

True to his word, Wally vitriolically frowned into the camera for the next 10 minutes without taking another call. Pride soared to a new level.

Not having Beavis and Butthead yet, my roommate and I thought this was just pure hilarity. Then we hit upon the idea to actually get tickets to his weekly live show and catch him in person. Soon, we were on I5 heading south toward Anaheim one afternoon, tickets in hand for that day’s show with special “guest,” Mr. Bud Green (a “regular” on the show – having been booted at least a dozen times over the past year).

But we weren’t just going to watch; I had a plan…

I wanted to get kicked off the show. I knew Wally took questions from the audience at the beginning of each show, and I knew what needed to be done…

The 40 or so in the audience filed in and sat down – leather, tattoos, the acrid stink of pot smoke wafting from them all – it was a barnyard. The show began and Wally sat at his desk berating all things non-conservative (Mondale, Kennedy, whales, diet soda…); the crowd would react uproariously with every crazy declaration, pontificated with an angry pound on his desk, then they went to commercial.

Someone asked if anyone in the audience had any questions and instructed us to get in a line near a microphone. I got up and got in: 3rd. We came back from the break and Wally went right to the audience questions…

The first guy complimented Wally on his love of Reagan or some such nonsense and tossed him an easy softball about Robert Bork. Whetted, Wally went to the second guy who expressed his lust toward Wally’s “new” girlfriend Janice - who was this British beauty that Wally clearly hired to legitimize his celebrity (Wally feigned anger/disgust, but then expressed how much she loved Wally and America).

Then it was my turn.

I approached the mic in a leather jacket and sunglasses.

“Hi sir, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“Hi Wally…” I took a deep breath and tried my best not to smile, “I just kind of wanted to know abouoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiYOIYOIYOIYOIYOIYOIYOI!”

The crowd went crazy.

“GET HIM OUTTA HERE!!!” Wally yelled to his security guards who lovingly grabbed me by the arms and walked me off camera. But as the audience continued laughing uncontrollably, Wally pointed to me with a smile and said, “So YOU’RE the guy who does that?!”

The “guards” escorted me to my seat and departed with a fist bump.

The Hot Seat wasn’t all that hot…

Kind of like last night’s Survivor finale. Have you ever seen a final tribal council in the past 22 seasons in which the opening statements of the first two contestants completely admit their own incompetence and definitively decree that the winner should be the 3rd person?

Not that it should have been any other way… Natalie was purely a leech, and Phillip was an a-hole. Still…we expect more in the final hot seat…

Where was Phil’s promised “solid”, winning argument? I’m telling you, he could have garnered a couple extra votes if he had said it was all an act from day one, but instead he just seemed nervous and unable to put together coherent sentences (except when he was berating the jury and telling them not to vote for him – typically a poor strategy…).

In the end it really didn’t matter – Rob’s victory was a foregone conclusion if there ever was one. It wouldn’t have mattered if Ashley was there, Mike, Grant, Jesus; as David so appropriately stated, this was Rob’s game, and he played it brilliantly. When Jeff later said that it was the single most perfectly executed performance in Survivor’s 22 seasons, he was right: impressive, dominating, satisfying.

Still…we love the heat. That’s why we watch Survivor, right? No matter how much we may argue that the person who played the “game” the best should win, the unpredictable human component always seems to come into play. Friendship vs. strategy. Relationship vs. execution. Too many times we’ve seen the wrong person win because people take things personally. That’s what CBS banks on, and that’s what seems to deliver more times than not (see Russell’s two 2nd place finishes…).

But the trade off is that it can become unsatisfying. Like my Hot Seat experience, in which I soon lost interest in goading someone who only wanted to be goaded, Survivor should be more aware of this. Get rid of Redemption Island and contestants that have no right to have a chance to win after being booted off. Reinforce the "outwit/outplay/outlast" concept like a judge instructing the jury prior to deliberation. Stop setting the table for disappointment and instead let things play out on their own without intervention, without breaking down the third wall.

So which is right? Is it a game, or is it life?

I’m here to tell you, the answer is simple.

It’s…oiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiyoiYOIYOIYOIYOIYOIYOIYOI!

Until next season...

Balls + Taints + Statatory Rape = Heartwarming Hilarity!

As a child, it can be an extremely traumatizing experience to watch your parent getting injured.

One time when I was ten, my dad rode his bike over to my friend’s house to pick me up for dinner. He stuck me on the handlebars and off we went. About a half block away, a neighbor drove by and waved. Trying to be a good kid, I waved back, but the action required a counterbalance move to ensure I didn’t fall off.

Unfortunately, that move was me sticking my foot directly into the spokes of the front wheel.

The bike flipped head-over-heels and my dad landed half on his right arm, half on his face. My dad’s ample blood, scrapes, scratches and gravel-embedded road rash were minor compared to the arm broken in multiple places...and even that was secondary to the fact that when he landed on his face, the impact of his glasses literally gouged a chunk out of his nose in between his eyes.

(On the positive side, his glasses have never slipped down his nose since…)

I felt horrible, but perhaps not as bad as my friend Bill felt about tainting my mom a couple years later… (Don’t worry, this isn’t a sordid “May-December” romance story gone bad…nor is it a story about taints…)

12 years old, Little League baseball game…all the parents sitting in the stands watching and cheering. Bill hit a foul ball high over the dugout and slowing arcing toward the crowd. Everyone quickly stood up and scatted like Birthers at a pro-brain convention.

Unfortunately, my mom hadn’t picked up the trajectory of the ball when it was hit and went into the tried and true “cocoon of incorrectly assumed safety”, attempting to shield herself from the ball.

“Crack!” We could hear it out on the field. My poor, broken handed, hospital-bound, fear forevermore-ingrained mom…

No, really - she was truly traumatized after that. In fact, about four months later, just after the cast came off, we were at an Oakland A’s game, great seats, about two rows behind the A’s dugout. My dad had just loaded us up with hot dogs, popcorn, sodas…the works.

First inning: Carney Lansford hits a high foul ball… My mom, hyper-sensitive to balls by this point (..my poor dad…), immediately jumps up out of her seat screaming,

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

…and in the process of doing so, throws her arms up and out, crazy with fear.

Of course, the giant tub of popcorn and 64 oz. vat of Coke went flying as well…directly onto the head of the guy sitting directly behind her.

And then the ball landed…forty rows behind us. In the upper deck.

“It’s Ok,” the poor guy managed to say through a thick coating of wet, melting popcorn and fizzy, runny corn syrup.

My mom was beyond embarrassed. (My dad, on the other hand, was probably hoping she’d learned a valuable lesson about all balls not necessarily being dangerous…)

So why have I been discussing balls, taints and statutory rape? What, isn’t it obvious?

Irrational, overly sensitive fear is the deathwish of a Survivor contestant. Sure, you need to be realistic and aware, but everybody is a target; if you can’t remain calm and focused, you’re gone.

I recently read Aron Ralston’s great book, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” (renamed “127 Hours” once the movie came out with James Franco). Highly recommend it – the guy is an absolute stud, and it’s one of the most inspirational stories I’ve ever read (*spoiler* - he cuts off his own arm!).

Of course everyone knows the story, but to hear it in his own words, minute by minute throughout the ordeal is incredible. By the time you get to the moment of truth, any doubts you had wondering if you could have done it yourself if you had been in the same situation are wiped away. In my mind I was shouting, “YES! YES! CUT THE DAMN THING OFF!”

But an interesting detail about his +/-90 minute self-amputation was that the pain was relatively bearable as he broke his bones and slowly sawed through the skin, muscles and sinew. The real roadblock? The nerves. The pain was beyond belief – but he powered through it with his 2” dull blade.

Survivor is all about sawing through your nerves with a dull blade. And there’s only one person remaining who has the balls/taint to do it: Rob. Any other winner this season will be a joke. He clearly wants it more than anyone, and he’s the only one who will do whatever it takes to be the sole survivor. Cut his #1 friend? See ya Grant. Consider cutting his #1 promise? Sorry Natalie, it’s just a game.

Meanwhile, this whole “Redemption Island” thing? Colossal lameness. If you’re voted off, you need to go home, period. If any of these people actually gets back in the game and makes it to the final tribal council, there is no way they deserve even a single goddamned vote. They lost. Anyone who votes for them simply doesn't understand the concept of this show.

And godboy Matt? Puh-lease. I’m glad he’s got God’s batphone number to help him overcome his impending disappointment, because anyone who gets booted TWICE deserves either our full scorn, balls randomly hitting them from different directions (something Ashley may actually like…), or the taint-side of the jury’s disdain. In Matt’s case I’m hoping for all three.

Was Rob wrong to boot Grant over Natalie? Look, he’s rolling the dice. There’s no clear right or wrong yet, but he showed he’s willing to cut through his nerves. Grant is probably a bigger threat in a final tribal (having won a couple immunities), but Natalie may be a bigger threat getting numbers together to boot Rob. On the flipside, Natalie already showed she was more aligned with Rob than with Ashley, so who knows? Maybe Rob chose right.

All I know is that come Sunday’s finale, Rob’s dull blade will be poised and ready for surgery.

Watch out for flying balls.

Blood, Sweat and Nudity

A few years back my brother, a couple running buddies and I met for an early morning tempo run.


A tempo run is a mid-distance run in which you target a specific pace and consistently hold it for the entire run. By all indications, we weren’t expecting anything out of the ordinary; it should be a typical, Saturday morning, out-and-back 10 miler on the bike trail. Get a good run in, get back home by 7:30, relax with a cup of coffee and the newspaper while basking in the rich aromatics of the miasma slowly emanating and wafting from my slowly cooling crotchal region.

The quintessential, family-friendly Saturday morning.

Not so easy.

As I drove over to our meeting point a little after 5:30am, I noticed the temperature gauge on my dash said it was already 88 degrees. Bad sign.

Even worse, when I climbed out of the car, I was hit in the face with the sticky weight of unprecedented (and extremely unusual) humidity, like a heavy, face-first Big-Ball bounce on Wipeout. Sacramento gets hot in the summer (regularly over 100-110), but it’s always a dry heat.

Not this morning.

The four of us nervously addressed the brutal atmosphere as we walked the 1/8 of a mile to the trail. Sweat was already pouring down our faces as we discussed our planned paces, the potential need to refuel our water bottles along the way, and how we thought the heat and humidity might affect our performances.

On top of this, my brother was freaked out because there had been some house invasions in his neighborhood the past couple days and the neighbors were getting panicked, completely on edge. Every sound he’d heard throughout the night had been someone trying to break in, and he hadn't slept very well.

My plan? Hold 7:30’s. But holding 7:30’s was an assumption based upon my ideal, nipple-scabbing chill temperature of 30-40 degrees. It was already going to be a struggle at 50-60 degrees (the expected temperature), but 88?!

I readjusted and publicly stated that my goal was 7:30…but I’d be happy with…just finishing.

We all stood together on the trail resetting our watches… 3…2…1…off! Everyone took off at different paces, ensuring we’d each be running alone, but knowing that we’d pass each other near the 5 mile turnaround while offering words of encouragement.

At first, with the wind rushing by and the early morning rustle of rabbits and birds keeping things alive and interesting, I began to rethink my concern. Heat and humidity? No problem.

By the end of mile 1 I looked at my watch: 7:29. Just gotta maintain. But soon after, absolutely drenched in wetness, it felt like I was running underwater. By mile 2, my splits had changed to 7:45, and as I moved into mile 3 I was quickly losing the ability to recognize my surroundings, let alone increase or (heaven forbid) maintain my current pace.

Which is probably why when I ran past the first drinking fountain/longdrop bathroom, it didn’t fully register in my mind that there was paint splattered everywhere: “fucking kids holy crap I’m dying out here why is there paint everywhere no I really am going to die shriveled up like a mummy’s dusty and dehydrated scrotum…”

I pushed on through mile 3 and 4, my pace well beyond 8:00 and slowing toward 8:30 when one by one the three other guys passed me going the other way as I neared the turnaround point, each painfully conveying in their own fleeting fashion how horrific this all was.

I was on the brink of a comatose, dehydrated death when I passed the same drinking fountain/longdrop toilet on the way back, but this time the dozen police/ambulance/firefighters milling about the now yellow-police-tape-surrounded area caught my attention: “dying dying what’s this all about dying dying…”

I stumbled through the final mile out of my head thirsty and hurting, crossing the finish line like Julie Moss in the 1982 Ironman competition…

Actual photo of me on the run...

The other three were already in full conversation, “Did you see?” “Can you believe?” “What happened!?”

Momentarily putting aside our insane fatigue, dehydration and mental instability, we each had our own story to tell about the fountain/longdrop location. Apparently, what I had seen wasn’t paint – it was blood. One of the guys had actually stopped to get a drink and that’s when he noticed that the fountain, the walls of the toilet and the entire surrounding area were splashed with vast amounts of blood. We must have come across it soon after whatever happened, happened.

We found out later that two homeless men had gotten into a knifefight, carnage ensued, one killed and ending up in the bushes near the river. Brutal. I had struggled to survive in the humidity on my run, I couldn’t even imagine trying to survive in that humidity in a knifefight to the death…

Shaken, stinking and drenched to the bone, we slowly made our way back to the cars. I stripped down to my running shorts and nothing else – but even that was an uncomfortable necessity as I made the ten minute ride home. My brother, on the other hand, took it all off – everything - tossing the dripping heap of clothes in the back of his SUV and pulling away with a hoot and a wave.

Heading home commando-style.

Windows open, A/C blasting, crotchal miasma spreading, he drove home in the still early morning sunshine, relieved to have the run behind him and confident of his ability to pull into his garage, close the door, and walk straight into the shower – nakedness a non-issue. Other than an 18-wheeler trucker sitting up high in his cab catching a glimpse of my brother's sweaty junk, what could possibly go wrong?

But as he turned into the neighborhood near his house, a crowd of people standing in the street raised their arms…

STOP.

Holy crap! What in the hell was this throng of frazzled people, completely on edge in the wee hours of the morning doing…? What was going on?! Did this have something to do with the bloody carnage we'd just witnessed not to far away...?

He stopped the car about twenty yards from the group and rolled down the window, “What’s going on?” he asked innocently, trying his best to sound as non-chalant and normal as possible…

“Someone just broke into that house down there,” a guy pointed to a house three down, “and the owner scared him and he ran off. We’re all looking for him…” The guy eyed my brother suspiciously, “Who are you?”

It all ran in front of my brother’s eyes at that moment like a bad episode of Cops: angry mob, looking for the bad guy that had just broken into their house, stumbles upon an unknown car, approach to discover a random, sketchy looking guy driving around, casing the neighborhood, 7 in the morning...

Completely nude.

Dripping wet.

The dozen other neighbors, sensing my brother’s hesitation, started making their way over to his car…

Surely you’ve found yourself in a situation like this…right? Well, maybe not wet, stinky and nude, and surrounded by an angry mob assuming you were a child-molesting, home-invasioning, sick, psychotic lunatic, but, you know: the wrong place at the wrong time?

Survivor is all about the wrong place at the wrong time. What makes it interesting, is that it’s a rare occasion when the person caught in the web of the angry mob actually realizes they’re about to be throttled. Usually it’s a blindside: tar and feathered, dragged from the car, beaten to a pulp, extinguished torch…

Andrea was in the wrong place, wrong time last night. Full dismissal of the competing tribe complete, it was time to start picking off their own, and someone had to provide even the flimsiest of reasons to have the neck exposed. Andrea has a thing for godboy? See ya.

So let’s talk about the godboys for a second.

It is so comforting to learn that with all the turmoil, sickness, poverty, injustice, war, death, love, births, NFL wide receiver accomplishments, last second NBA shots and teenage boys pledging for God’s enduring servitude if they can just get to 2nd base with the braless hottie from Geometry class, that God has instead dedicated His attention to the reality TV show: Survivor.

Well, more specifically, to two contestants on that show: Matt and Mike.

You guys are so frigging special.

Too bad you’ve been voted off a combined 3 times, losers.

Still, their belief is so strong, even I was surprised when Matt’s special someone that came to meet him on the island wasn’t God Himself (alas, it was only his lame brother). Can you say “letdown”? Perhaps God had more pressing matters in a piece of toast soon to be listed on Craigslist Tijuana…

And Mike? How fortunate that he learned from the bible just moments before the challenge that God wanted him to break some tiles with a ball in some hokey, meaningless game in order to continue living on a desert island purely to line the pockets of CBS and its advertisers! (What was that biblical passage again? Summerseve 5:16?)

Oops, sorry, how dare I misrepresent Mike’s deeper religious connection! My apologies to all. It wasn’t that God wanted him to make good TV, it was that God wanted him to win a million dollars!

How very Jesus-like!

When my youngest daughter was 3 years old, we went to the funeral of the priest at my parent’s church who was beloved by the community. We holed up in the kids annex where we could hear the ceremony, but the noise of the kids didn’t disturb the rest of the standing-room only congregation.

About halfway through, McKenna had to go to the bathroom, so I picked her up, told her she needed to be completely quiet, and walked into the church, hugging the side wall all the way to the back where we could exit to the toilets. The ceremony droned tonelessly on on as we plodded down the thin purple carpet.

As we walked past the endless stunning stainglass windows lining the wall, McKenna suddenly saw the Stations of the Cross statues on the pillars in between.

“Daddy!” she whispered. I ignored her.

“Daddy!” she said louder, thinking I hadn’t heard her. Wanting to keep her quiet, I mouthed, “What?”

She pointed to one of the statues, and, thinking that my silent response meant that I couldn’t hear too well, shouted, “BUDDHA!!!”

It echoed throughout the giant holy space, “BUDDHA-OODA-OODA-OODA-OODA-OODA!”

Clearly, she had associated the word, “Buddha” with “statue,” as we had a small Buddha garden in the backyard and she didn’t understand the difference.

But the shocked looks from some of the people…wow. It was like we had let out an evil fart or something…

The point is this: get off your high horses, Matt and Mike.

You’re on a reality TV show. You’re playing for money and fame. If God was really talking to you, He’d be saying, “What the Hell are you doing wasting your time with this drivel? Get out there and help some poor people. Got it? OK, now, gotta get back to that teenager in Geometry class…”

Nobody's special here. Except maybe Rob.

And me. Oh, did I forget to mention that God told me how fantastic I was about predicting Phil's final tribal council speech and strategy?

Hey...do you suddenly smell something evil...?

Until next week,

PB