I’m generally not one to complain about stuff like this. In fact, I’m really not complaining now; it’s just your imagination. You know how it is when your brain is running some weird recursive loop of overthinking at 90 miles an hour, and you can’t seem to break out of it? Isn’t that a pain in the ass when it’s 2 a.m.?
Yeah, occasional insomnia is totally normal, and usually, I’m okay with it. It just means bonus time to read, write, deep-dive some band or album I haven’t checked out yet, whatever. I’ll fix it tomorrow at work by booking a conference room for an hour and using it as a personal nap pod. Also, you can always grab a half hour in the I-69 construction zones during rush hour … both ways. The other drivers will kindly and politely honk when it’s time to roll your car ten feet forward and stop again.
Not that I don’t try my absolute best to shut down the brain with something dull enough to make it wave the white flag. I’ve got Alexa programmed with an arsenal of sonic sedatives: BBC4, SF-1033, радио джаз 89.1, Radio Yesteryear, and a few other ambient brain scramblers. But on the desperate nights, it’s TV time. Since there’s no point in wasting time trying to pick a movie (mostly impossible for me anyway), I take refuge in the insane live streams of Pluto.TV, Prime TV, Freevie, Tubi, Roku TV, Samsung TV, et al. What utter genius this stuff is.
The trick is, you can’t just put on anything. If it’s a familiar favorite, I’ll be binge-watching something like Blake’s 7 or Mythbusters until dawn. If it’s too stupid, my brain revolts, and I’ll have a new favorite show by breakfast. The sweet spot is something benign. Something like an old McCloud episode. Worst-case scenario? I’m about to drift off and recognize Bert Convy playing a casino owner, which sends me spiraling into building out a contiguous Convyverse of his television continuity. You laugh, but this what my brain does!
After this, I move into the section with all the cooking shows. Unfortunately, this fails miserably. Rick Stein’s tidbits about the vintage of grape or the particular species of bluegill that inhabits this specific region of northern Italy prompt me to grab a notepad and jot down all the details as fun background information for a scene I’m thinking of writing. Nigella Lawson, Rachel Khoo, the Hemsley sisters, describing how moist their cake is before drizzing melted fudge over the top of it … yeah, not good for insomnia, but we’ll bookmark that one for later. The Iron Chef channel? That’s my second-favorite arena sport behind baseball.
Once I scroll up into the high triple and low four-digit channels, that’s when things get deliciously weird. We’re past the 24-hour infomercials (note to self: order that steam mop for the kitchen) and through the 35 Big Brother House Camera feeds. It’s now pure fever dream. Holy crap! A 24-hour Adam-12 channel?! I loved that show as a kid! I still have the lunchbox! Hey, they’re showing the one where the kid gets his head stuck in the fence, just like my lunchbox. Oh wait… it’s apparently the only episode they have, and they’re playing on loop.
After channel 1000, we hit a full-on hallucination of content. Game shows hosted by Wink Martindale and Pat Sajak, but they’re running games you’ve never heard of. Mandala Effect, anyone? There are channels dedicated to watching other people play video games like it’s an Olympic sport. (Wait … is it? Don’t tell me.) There’s a celebrity boxing channel where I’ pretty sure I saw Gabe Kaplan go three rounds with Bea Arthur. (I might have briefly dozed off and dreamt that? Again, don’t tell me.) Side note: Why hasn’t anyone dug into the archives and launched a “Battle of the Network Stars” channel? YouTube only has a couple of partial episodes, and I need to watch Gil Gerard take out Larry Hagman on the obstacle course again.
That gets me thinking about my own dream lineup for Darrin TV. Now, THAT would be awesome. For starters, I’d have a collection of live music channels, but they’re really just grainy CCTV footage from local clubs in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Hours of VHS recordings of bands and drunk idiots hitting on women way out of their league. For movies, there’d be an entire channel dedicated to the brilliance of James Hong. Just wall-to-wall appearances. Look him up! He has 600+ credits, and a large percentage of them are great movies.
There’d be home shopping channels too, but only for vintage electronics. “This vintage Mac Classic has a 5-inch black-and-white display!” “Feast your eyes on the faux-wood finish of this 24-inch Zenith console TV, and did we mention it’s also an FM radio and 8-track player!” “This Palm Pilot is twice the size of your phone, can’t go online, and can’t make calls, but it does come with a handsome polyester canvas belt clip that’s more waterproof than the actual device.”
Of course, I have to have cooking shows, but I’ll combine formats here into sleep-deprivation reality chaos. “Irony Chef,” where you face off in real time against Gordon Ramsay at 3 a.m. in your underwear, both of you making a rack of lamb with mint jelly, roasted baby leeks, and a carrot soufflé in 60 minutes. Text us a photo of your plate to win fabulous prizes, but it’s really just a personalized outgoing message for your voicemail where Gordon tells your callers to piss off with world-class profanity.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about video production, so Darrin TV will remain a dream. Which means I go back to surfing the actual wasteland. Eventually, I find the right mix of boring, vaguely intriguing, and mildly unwatchable. Usually, it’s some obscure British crime drama from 1974 where everyone wears corduroy, the plot is 90% a detective walking through foggy Yorkshire villages to somber music (no dialogue), and there is a disturbing amount of harvest gold in the interiors. I’ll be almost asleep before my brain latches on and suddenly needs to know if the complete series is available on Blu-ray. Cut to 5:00 a.m., alarm blaring, and I’m in a Reddit thread arguing about whether Nigel Davenport was underrated. (He was.)
So the hunt continues. Somewhere out there on Pluto or Freevee is a show that’s just boring enough to knock me out without accidentally being amazing. Until then, I’ll be up at 3 a.m., watching the 1996 Ultimate Frisbee playoffs. (Which, it turns out, are pretty exciting.)
