dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) (12/04/85)
One night my wife and I were idling around, looking for something worthwhile (or at least entertaining) on TV to watch, and she tuned into NICK At Night. (Not all cable subscribers get NICK after 6:00, but NICK actually goes til about 11:00.) Of course, NICK is the kiddie-cable TV, an all-day-long Sesame Street that is usually unbearable. But NICK at night is something else. There is a series that runs on NICK at night called "Turkey TV" that is mostly kiddie guffaws - but about half of the show looks like net.bizarre adapted to TV. I laughed my head off at some of the stuff they have. They get these weird foreign films and cartoons on that are very clever. I was happy to see that good adult cartoons still exist, albeit no longer in the US. (By adult I don't mean animated penises and the like, but simply good thought-provoking humour such as occurred on the old Bullwinkle and Beany & Cecil cartoons.) Some of the sight gags in the skits are every bit as good as Ernie Kovacs had. This series is worth catching if you get NICK at night. Most of the clips are from other shows, usually in foreign countries. The stuff they make up to fill up the rest of the time is typical kiddie-laffs stuff. Let me give you a couple of good examples of some of the best fare on TV. They were taken from another (foreign) series, I believe. CLIP #1: Scene opens on a city street, with parking meters in the foreground. Three women park their car behind the meter and walk up to it. The scene freezes, and the announcer says, "These women are about to commit a crime. The crime they commit is done throughout the country every day, but it IS A CRIME!" Scene unfreezes, and one woman searches for change in her purse, but doesn't find any. "Women have started to carry spare change in, of all places, their SHOES!" The woman takes her shoe off and pulls out a quarter and drops it in the meter. The scene freezes again. "Note what this woman just did. IT IS A CRIME. Because what she has just done is to pay the city with... SMELLY CHANGE!" The clip goes on to trace the smelly quarter through its life cycle after it hits the parking meter, with the meter maid coming to gather the change and turning away in horror from the smell. A couple of people arrive with gas masks and empty the change (from all those smelly women's shoes). It then goes to warn how people will eat fast food after paying with change, never aware of where that change they just handled might have been. "Be considerate of others. Avoid passing smelly change. It's not just good manners... it's the LAW!" By this time I was dying on the floor with laughter. CLIP #2: A man is riding his bicycle in the French countryside. He stops near a grassy meadow, dismounts his bike, and takes his lunch basket up the hill for a little bite to eat. He pulls out this 3-foot-long sub sandwich bun (which, of course, is much bigger than the basket it came in) and opens it up to prepare a large sandwich. He then proceeds to take out a whole bunch of different meats and condiments, which could not possibly have all fit into the bag. Okay, so far not really very good. An old sight gag. The show cuts to a totally different skit, and you think, "Boy, what a turkey of a clip." Then after the next skit, the scene goes back to the bicyclist, and by now he has loaded down his sandwich and is applying the final condiments. He closes the sandwich, then turns to clean things up a bit. Suddenly, while his back is turned, the sandwich starts running away, like a fast fat snake through the grass. The bicyclist chases the sandwich up and down the hill, bumping into people and other things and creating general chaos. The show cuts away to another skit, and you wonder, "What is the significance of this stupid running skit?" Finally, the show cuts to the third and final episode. By now the bicyclist is chasing the fleeing sandwich up a mountain. Eventually, when the sandwich reaches the top of the mountain, with the puffing bicyclist close in pursuit, the sandwich starts to lift off the top of the mountain, floating in mid-air and rising. The bicyclist reaches the top of the mountain just in time to catch the sandwich, but the sandwich just keeps rising, carrying the bicyclist with it through the air. Gradually as they rise you can see a string attached to the sandwich, which is pulling it upwards. Finally you see the other end of the string, which is attached to a giant fishing pole. A giant peels the bicyclist off the bait and places him on a giant sub sandwich along with other people and condiments. The giant closes the sandwich and eats it. I loved it! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Kirby ( ...!ihnp4!akgub!cylixd!dave)