What if someone made a television show designed just for you?
What if, on one of the hundreds of channels available on digital cable or one of the myriad networks decided that you personally would be the target audience for a half-hour show? It certainly wouldn't look like anything else on television. CNN's audience is mostly geezers, watching from their retirement communities on cable hookups subsidized by Social Security checks (it's true - the sound level on CNN is higher then on other networks because their audience doesn't hear well).
MTV's "Total Request Live" is designed for middle-schoolers who rush home every weekday to see Carson Daly announce that, once again, *NSYNC has topped the most-requested list. Well, after years of watching television shows that were created for other people, I finally found a program that had me in mind. I give you Insomniac, Sundays at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.
The concept of Insomniac is simple. Stand-up comedian Dave Attell, a bald New Yorker with a big nose and bad posture, goes around our beloved United States in search of good places to get drunk. He always succeeds. At each destination, Attell mingles with the locals in seedy bars, checks out late-night attractions, interviews people who loiter on the street and ends the half-hour on some empty trash-strewn street.
The concept is brilliant because as a college student, when I travel, I don't usually hit the museums and parks as soon as I arrive, only to tire from a long days sightseeing and retire for the night wherever I might be staying. I like to go out. Sure, the Travel Channel whisks viewers away for two weeks of eco-tourism in Costa Rica. That's great if you have two weeks and ten grand to spare. I have enough cash for my share of the gas bill and enough to get a few rounds.
Don't think, however, that the college-boy theme results in a show that is not educational or in any way closed-minded. Attell buys a few rounds for the drag queens at an after-hours nightclub in Houston, visits the zoo in Houston - and pitches in by picking up bat dung, no less! - and visits the lonely night watchman who mans the pumps that keep New Orleans from flooding. Of course, Attell also does shots with wet t-shirt contestants and visits Jell-O wrestlers as they shower three to a stall.
Not just about partying, Insomniac endeavors to chronicle everything that goes on under the cover of night. In fact, often funnier and more engaging than the drunken fools slobbering towards the camera are the pieces about the people who work at night. In fact, what originally got me hooked on Insomniac was a segment in New Orleans in which Attell goes around in the back of pickup truck with a sheriff hunting nutria, which are animals that look like a cross between a rat and a badger and are apparently are considered pests to be are shot on sight. After Attell gets dropped of at a gas station after shooting dozens of nutria, he says, "lots of animals were harmed in the making of this show." An understatement indeed.
Insomniac truly has something for everyone.
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