Dan Gillis III: An Astute Analysis of Daytime TV

An Astute Analysis of Daytime TV
by Dan Gillis III
Published by LA Alternative
Posted on his website: Underbelly L.A.

Over the last few months of writing for L.A. Alternative, I’ve taken part in some pretty bizarre activities: going to cuddle parties and cyber-clown sex chat sites, stoned dining excursions, and even a colossal colon blow. But nothing compares to the carnage that ensued this last week, as I succumbed to the arduous ardor that can only come with one atrocious thing: Regis Philbin.

It’s true, being newly unemployed has given me the chance to test my endurance against this assault on the senses as I sat through an entire episode of Live with Regis and Kelly, determined to dissect the show with a sharp eye and a pen.

With this precise exactitude, I give you the following three things I extracted from the strange and terrifying subliminal world that underlies daytime television.

1. Don’t you know I’m loco?

Regis can’t control his voice. Nor can he control the content of the odd stuff that jumps out of his mouth. Perhaps it’s something that happens when you get older: you start going gray at your temples, wrinkles appear on your hands and you begin to inexplicably shout at the end of your sentences. Kelly will say how excited she is for a new Disney-affiliated movie to come out, then Regis will yell, “Sacagawea!” or “Kelly’s a slutastrophe!” Well, maybe those were not his exact words, but it was certainly implied. He’ll just look confused as Kelly has to explain what an MP3 is, or carefully explicate power door locks.

2. Girls just wanna have fun.

If you ever accidentally buy a time machine at Costco that had that ability to leap 400,000 years into the future as imagined by Maxim, I’m certain you’d catch a glimpse of the Pleasure Sexxxbot 2000 (being retro will be all the rage 397,994 years from now). This robot would look something like Pris (the pre-tree punky Daryl Hannah) from Blade Runner, or possibly a FrankenFergie (from the Black Eyed Peas, not the Duchess of York). Programmed only for pleasure, these gine-a-zoids would be the solution to the Great Boner Depression of the 400th millennium.

But today, seeing as though there is a war on and we need to conserve our resources, time machines aren’t as easy to find as they were in the ’90s. So for the sake of rationing, we could just take a look at Kelly Ripa (aka Gigglebot) today. With her pumpkin-colored fake ‘n’ bake skin, straw hair, and Michael Jackson nose, Ripa has either been grown in a lab or constructed by a gaggle of Teutonic scientists. She is a glimpse of the Brave New Girl of the future, where agreeable smiles and giggles and a sympathetic arm squeeze are all preprogrammed.

Exhibit A:
Ol’ Reege: I’m incontinent and lonely, HA!
Kelly Belly [rubbing his arm]: Oh Reg, you’re such a silly-billy, let me get my knee-pads and wet naps. You’re sooooo funny.

What kind of message is this sending to the youth of America? Probably nothing, ’cause they’re just doing crystal meth under the bleachers. But as for their single mothers in West Covina, they look up to Ripa and her robo-retorts. It must seem totally believable that Ripa shops at Kmart like she espouses, and she does have the same concerns that we have: picking up her kids from school, making dinner for her servants, or perhaps getting a Brazilian wax in Brazil.

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