So there I lay, paralyzed from exhaustion in the wee hours of Sunday morning. The TV was stuck on the News for Dummies Network and the remote control was missing. All I really wanted to do was shut my eyes and ears, but I was too tired to get out of bed to turn off the offending noise machine. Instead, I remained awake for the rest of the night, interminably serenaded by a succession of moronic "news" stories.
The warning to “look solemn” must have been emboldened on the teleprompter, the preferred method (I'm guessing) employed to hypothetically prevent airhead anchors from smiling through reports on shooting sprees inside kindergarten classrooms. TJ the CNN Anchor Dude was working hard to summon his intellectual avatar in order to achieve the requisite facial sobriety equal to the gravity of his next news story.
It should be noted that, unlike a real news organization, CNN’s measure of news weightiness is constructed on a dodecaphonic scale where even a fart from an ex-beauty pageant runner-up/ Veep wannabe is guaranteed airtime if not it's own primetime show. These days, network execs try out new gimmicks every 10 seconds in the bloody battle to retain America’s attention. Long ago they concluded that real news is often repetitive and dull while invented news can always be fresh and sensational. To the latter purpose, the networks seem particularly enamored by lunatic pastors like Wright, Muthee, Jones, Graham and Camping; men who do and say the outlandish and keep the puerile and otherwise disinterested tuned in. For icing, today’s news stories are sacrilegiously introduced with visual and musical accompaniment to bequeath some mystical value-addedness to the topic (I no not what). To accomplish this peculiar goal, every nanosecond of the broadcast day must include jarring sensory bombardment.
No doubt, Ed Murrow is turning and vibrating in his grave.
So how does a 24 /7 cable news network fill time when a promised apocalypse doesn’t materialize and they end up with a slow news day on their hands?
Think Flesh-eating zombies.
With his "serious guy" face in place, TJ the Anchor Dude informed his viewing audience that he had potentially life-critical information to impart, hot from the Bunson burners at the CDC. “Oh no, now what,” I thought, “a plague of Denque Fever-carrying locusts to fill the Biblical disaster void?” My man TJ didn’t disappoint. It seems the CDC's official website now includes (ready?) detailed instructions on how the public should deal with flesh-eating zombies if confronted with that unlikely (but apparently not impossible) scenario. Some nervous doctor down there with a vivid imagination believes the American public is ill-prepared to react to such potentialities; this despite the recent rash (as it were) of zombie flicks that should have left our citizens more zombie-smart than ever.
Obviously, the doc doesn’t know much about America’s love affair with home arsenals.
TJ, on the other hand, was experiencing a state of alternate news universe nirvana.
For my part, I was fairly certain the emergency anti-zombie kit in my basement was still well-stocked (I've barely used it) and well within its expiration date. I chose to store my kit in the basement after determining that most successful filmic last stands against zombies occur in basements rather than attics. Plus, my attic doesn’t include emergency refrigeration stocked with cold beer.
But enough already, for as bitten as I am by the zombie bug, I was beginning to ache for my missing remote control. Plus, I was curious whether competing news networks had latched their teeth into this fascinating news item. How, for instance, would Fox News handle the story? No doubt, their teaser would ask:
“Are Flesh-Eating Zombies Running the White House?”
But wait a minute, I mused, this is old Weekly World News-style material too stupid even for CNN. Perhaps I had slipped off to sleep during during CNN’s 900th replay of the royal wedding (the old one with Charles and Princess Di) and the zombie thing was just part of a really, really stupid dream. I probably should have reconsidered those three helpings of chicken wings at 1:00 AM in the morning.
Real or imagined, the zombie story ended in disappointment. Like most movie-going Americans, I already knew the favorite choices out there among anti-zombie weapons and was far more interested in the antidotal over than anecdotal, something the CDC, of all folks, couldn’t answer.
A now smiling TJ quickly moved on to a somewhat related news item, that being the President’s upcoming speech to AIPAC. A massive collection of crackerjack CNN pundits began to pop up within Hollywood Squares-like boxes across the screen. Unlike Hollywood Squares, TJ posed the same question to each panelist, the answer to which was multiple choice.
Would the flesh-eating AIPAC zombies (my term) welcome the President with:
A.) Some boos?
B.) A whole buncha boos?
or
C.) Deafening boos, catcalls and weaponized dradels?
A choice “D” was never offered up. You know, that’s the one where the President receives repeated applause, as actually happened.
But back to our panel of seer-sucking experts, after the last contributor had voiced her best guess, a cohesive group opinion emerged, and the opinion was that they had no opinion nor any fucking idea what would actually transpire.
So T.J. the Anchor Dude ended the segment by thanking his bevy of bozo bloviators for their collective contribution to the great void (not his exact words).
After tapping his green note pages on the desk three or four times, the Anchor Dude quickly moved on to breaking news.
To set the mood for this story, I suspect TJ was attempting to conjure the ghost of David Brinkley. With brow furled and in a staccato-like delivery sounding more like Billy Bob Thorton in Sling Blade than the departed Brinkley, he declared:
“We are reporting here at CNN that the World Did.. Not.. End... Yesterday!”
Okay, at least we’ve moved on to a zombie-free post-apocalypse, I thought.
Sadly, the breaking news turned out to be no more than yet another non-update on the wrong Reverend Camping’s non “End-of-Times” prognostication. That didn't stop CNN from treating the Earth versus the Frying Camping aftermath as an exclusive news scoop. They needed to reiterate the fact that the World had not exploded before any more of their interns quit to join communes in Montana. I suppose the CNN brain-trust may have viewed their umpteenth non-Rapture non-update as some form of a public service announcement. The planet is safe, ergo, my dogs must be walked.
“It is the day after and we’re all still here,” exclaimed TJ with a cold air of assurance, if not reassurance.
“Let’s get some people here to help us understand what happened and get some perspective.”
Oh boy, here we go again. This time it’s Hollywood Squares, Whole Earth Addition.
“Judgment Day: The Day After” read the story title. TJ’s promise of “people” turned out to be one professor of Theology from Emory University. Rather than contain him in a tiny, solitary square, the professor had been motored across town to appear live in the studio, an apparent acknowledgement of just how serious CNN moguls took this Jesus reborn as Charles Manson business. CNN’s distinguished guest had barely disappeared into a plush chair across from his interviewer when TJ seemingly yanked a well-worn copy of the Old Testament from his own rectum; no doubt the rubber-gloved fingers of God at work.
Damning the professor’s torpedoes containing poor Harold Camping in the crosshairs, TJ deftly and stubbornly kept fingering his way through the Biblical Babble to read his pre-marked passages on the coming Rapture. Arguably, his performance bested that of the exorcising Von Sydow chanting his way through a barrage of projectile pea soup. To be fair, Max would make a more convincing news anchor. That a cable network anchorman would have a flair for unadulterated bullshit is not surprising, but TJ appeared to be auditioning for the role of Moses in any remake of “The Bible.” Pea soup to wing nuts, the discussion left me in prayer, or more accurately, praying a zombie would suddenly appear and devour TJ’s entire head before millions of CNN viewers.
I wondered whether the Jesus’ no-show would become the lead story on every Sunday talk show and how that would unfold.
“Hi, I’m Bob Schieffer, and this is Face the Nation. Today we’ll be looking for answers to the question most Americans were asking just yesterday - where the fuck is Jesus, anyway? My guests today will be Governor Mike Huckabee and Frothy Mixture of Lube and Fecal Matter Rick Santorum. Later in today’s broadcast, my special guest will be the Governor’s music-making pal, Ted Nugent, with whom I will discuss the future of guns and pootytang in a post-apocalyptic World.”
Call it overconfidence, but as I momentarily drifted off, I experienced a sense of relief and well-being. After all, the flesh-eating zombies remained contained within the Republican caucus, and more importantly, the planet was still intact. I stared out my window to savor the vast beauty in our dysfunctional but still-intact World. A bubbling sound diverted my attention to a small lagoon forming on top of my backyard pool cover. Growing from the center of the brackish water were yellowish green fungoidal fingers that rose menacingly as if reaching for living creatures passing overhead. It was then that a terrible thought occurred to me; since the scriptures claim Jesus will return to Earth from deep space, what if JC’s watch was set to Mars time rather than GMT? I bet Reverend Camping didn’t factor that into his equations (and I bet that would move Judgment Day back to...oh, say... October 21st). Once again, I was reminded of an omnipotent Christian God and His ongoing tribunal to determine mankind’s ultimate penance.
Memo to self: call the pool company for a serious professional cleaning.
My heavy eyelids opened slightly as TJ the Anchor Dude returned from another break. This time, he appeared on a split screen opposite a grown-up with the unlikely name of “Candy.” Candy is not only CNN’s chief political reporter but also the most vapid political prognosticator since the days of Marie Antoinette.
TJ: (this time channeling the spirit of Wolf Blitzer) “So uh, Candy, uh, do you, uh, believe the President will be booed during his, uh, speech at AIPAC...uh?”
(I thought to myself, none of this conversation would be happening if Camping had only been right this one lousy time)
Candy: (speaking creepily slow and getting progressively slower) “Well Wolf, er, TJ, we really can’t accurately comment on where, when, why or even how enthusiastically the President is likely to be booed next until we receive Sarah Palin’s latest 140-character white paper on the state of the nation.”
Truth be known, Candy must have taken way too long to respond because I fell fast asleep before hearing a word of her answer, but I’m positive my reconstruction of the missing dialogue is 100% accurate on some level.
I could swear to friggin’ Space Beezus and the white horse he never rode in on that I’ll never again watch CNN, but sooner or later, off the wagon I’ll go. However, I have vowed to never again pig out on chicken wings after 9:00 PM. And most importantly, I found my lost remote control, so the next time reality runs South on CNN, I can simply change the channel to Celebrity Apprentice and...
Anybody need a remote?