Prime Time

Squatting In The Carrot Patch

Prime Time

by Bichard C. Walls_

As this is being written, early on a humid, over-heated and fetid Detroit August, while second-hand fanscirculate and re-circulate the heavy unfriendly air thru my modest pseudo-slum dwelling, while my dog lies beached at my feet, exhausted from too much panting, and my cat dumps in the window pane watching with resignation as the grass of my untended lawn begins to caress the front door (the mice die of heat stroke only inches from the cheese and the trap—what puny sport they offer! Perhaps, she thinks, within the encroaching weeds and grass a hearty breed of winter mice is incubating), while my girlfriend kneels in front of the open refrigerator with her head in the crisper, seeking relief among the lettuce... in short, while me and mine are being overwhelmed by the weather's tropic attitude, it occurs to me that it's a good time to sing the praises, or at least to hum the good points of the perversity of Detroit tele vision. Detroit is not the center of the universe, not the cultural capital of America, not the Bagdad of the Middle West. So be it. But when it comes to video weirdness, we've got a lot to be proud of. And when the summer heat oppresses most of the physical urges (yeah, I know some people actually thrive on this kind of weather, but I don't wanna hear about it) it's so nice to be able to position the old bod in front of the tube and suck up some strangeness.

I'm not referring to the network stations (yawn) or PBS (polite applause) but rather three indigenous to Detroit UHF beauties and a border blessing, an honest to god Canadian station. The three UHF stations are Channel 50, which shows the standard reruns (Beverly Hillbillies, The Honey mooners) and the standard movies (whole lotta Warner Bros., some 20th Century Foxes); Channel 20, which shows both standard and sub-standard reruns (Green Acres, Mr. Ed) and a bizarrer batch of movies (Satan's Satellites, The Beast of Yucca Flats—a movie which, starring everyone's favorite Slavic endomorph Tor Johnson, deserves a column to itself); and the real winner of the Spirit of Detroit award,

Channel 62. Ah, Channel 62. This mind-bruiser of a station made national news some years ago when it established itself as the first black-owned independent TV station in the universe. And if some of the programming comes across black and proud, a lot of it comes across as funky and poor. Gritty. 62 was the first Detroit station to stay on all night, showing movies (of course), and tho at first their movie mainstays were PRC and Republic atrocities, singing cavalry westerns and foreign follies (I vaguely remember a badly dubbed German western that was Supposed to take place in Canada...), lately they've been showing, at the oddest times (4:50 a.m. isa favored Showtime) classic movies that are usually only heard about but rarely seen—Vampyre, pre-'35 Hitchcocks, silent gems like Potemkin. And if it isn't odd enough that a funky little midwest TV station that specialized in homegrown religious programs (featuring two types of evangelists—one type, usually black, seems to be auditioning for a record contract. "I knooooooow you can hear me, Lord. " Perfect pitch. The second type, usually white, gives the . impression that he's sending Jesus through college. "We need that money now, good people, we need it now." Tho Jesussaves, he apparently doesn't bank it) and syndicated series that were obscure when they were new (where else can you see reruns of Forest Ranger, invariably and inexplicably listed in the TV Guide as Hal Roach Theatre?) shows, in the deadest of night, movies rarely seen outside of the confines of the New York Museum of Modem Art; then there's also the curious matter of the "quality" of the prints. They're nearly always unwatchable. The greys bleed into the whites, the edges of the film fade into black hole darkness, the sound is thin and crackling. It's maddening. It's Detroit's finest. 62 is a perfect complement to the torpor of overheated days and nights—the spirits of the Three Stooges live on and they're running a small TV station in the Motor City.

Our Canadian station, Channel 9, features a more professional mindlessness, i.e., typical Canadian fare—Hog Farming In Manitoba, The Irish Rovers Live! From Prince Edward Island—you get the picture. Also featured is a liberal sprinkling of British imports, mostly comedies that will become the basis for American sitcoms if they aren't already . And, early Sunday morn there's a perfectly pointless British soap opera called Coronation Street. This on-going saga of little people doing nothing is, if not a cure (there is no cure), then a sympathetic palliative for Sunday morning hangovers. Sitting there on those wrathful Sabbaths, red-eyed and fragile, it's nice to be reassured that life indeed goes on, despite the fact that nothing happens.

It's all so underwhelming. A friend erf mine, whose most pungent barbs and epithets are inevitably anal (and possibly his most pungent deeds too, but I wouldn't know... not me) described watching Detroit TV in the summer thusly: It's like closing your eyes and running into a carrot patch and then squatting down and hoping you'll get lucky.

I have no idea what that means.