Posted inNews & Politics

Cable Box

Format Three La-Z-Boy pundits swilling beer and displaying their dirty socks assess music and cinema. In any given half-hour episode, pickin’ may refer to selectin’ fine VCR fodder, riffin’ rhapsodically on an acoustic guitar, or whiskin’ away dingleberries tendin’ to accumulate on sofa-huggin’ homeboys’ bums. Target Demographic Ennui-ridden males, ages 17 to 41, living among […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Group Efforts: I’m OK, you’re OK, even if we’re not OK

A poster listing the “10 Warning Signs of ‘Normality’” hangs in Katherine Hodges’s Ukrainian Village kitchen. It cautions that such qualities as being obedient, boring, and gullible may be psychiatric problems like “adjustment prone,” “hyper-inactivity,” and “naivete disorder.” “I don’t like seeing emotions and behaviors as illnesses,” says the 24-year-old Columbia College student. “Your emotions […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Cable Box

Format Multimedia variety show, with an emphasis on variety. Depending on the episode, viewers might see repetitive skits performed by hand puppets, an immigrant offering snack cakes, or sad-faced young men walking in circles. Performers play experimental music akin to a yak birthing and tell excited yarns about Providence, Rhode Island. Nothing on UnBalanced Load […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Ladies’ Rooms

By Joy Bergmann Susan Leinwohl leapt at the chance to run away from her dour Denver women’s college with a dashing graduate student from Northwestern she’d met on the Colorado ski slopes. Whisked away to Chicago at 19, she looked forward to happy adventures in the big city. But three months into the courtship, her […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Cable Box

Format Sixty minutes of “nonstop action” produced by the avuncular Bill Wildt, 56, president of the nonprofit Motorsports Advancement Crusade. Footage of racing and of customized cars, trucks, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and motorboats enhanced by the Lovely Ladies of Motorsports. The ladies wear pink leotards, bow ties, feather headdresses, and white pumps to all events. They’re […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Cable Box

Format Half hour of sketch comedy by the Cirque du Squirrel ensemble under the direction of auteur Dale Chapman. Program promotes yucks through “dick jokes and infantile bathroom humor.” Target Demographic Men, 25 to 39, who rhapsodize about their first viewing of Porky’s—-and the women who love them. Thematic Concerns Celebrating the prophetic powers of […]