they go there live

I hate to eat alone, and lately if I must do so, I find myself turning on the TV for auditory company (nothing is sadder than masticating alone in dead silence). I like to eat late, so most often I’ll be sitting in front of FOX25 Local News. It has quickly become one of my favorite shows. The studio alone is a futuristic riot of plexiglass, chrome, flastscreen monitors, and dramatically exposed catwalks and stairways. It feels like M.C. Escher and the Borg got together and decided to make a TV studio, and ridiculous as it may be, it does make all the competing local news look like they shoot their programs in your mom’s basement.

FOX’s studio is indicative of the generally overblown nature of the local news, and it’s a hilarious good time. Here, now, is Your Local News Drinking Game (relax: I’m talking about water or soda here. I don’t get smashed five nights per week).

  • Drink every time a local family loses its home to fire, mold, inconsiderate local construction, or preferably, all three.
  • Drink every time they try to hook you with a preview of the local weather. Can’t I just look out the window?
  • Drink whenever it is implied that the weather man is actually Weather Man, a super being who is directly responsible for the climate, and that our local temperature and precipitation are products of his whims. End your own life if he is ever referred to as the Meteorology Correspondent.
  • Drink whenever you get the feeling that the male and female co-anchors “banter” outside the studio. All night long.
  • Drink whenever we go live to where nothing is currently happening, but was just hours ago.
  • Chug whenever we go live to outside the studio.
  • Drink during the Killer Mysterious Virus of the Week that is in Fact Just a Difficult to Treat Rash promos.
  • Drink if the Sports Guy covers a spelling bee.
  • Drink during any and all gratuitous survellience footage of a store clerk being beaten, robbed, or (last night) scalded with his own coffee. This stuff serves no purpose but to make you feel better about how you are so NOT beaten, robbed, and/or scalded.
  • Drink when they make the awkward transition from a murder report to Celebrity News.

With any luck, you will have to use the bathroom every 15 minutes. There’s ten. Got any more?

–January 13th 2006

Commentation

(1 Comment)

  1. Damian wrote:

    Drink when the anchor says something really stupid during a breaking story like, “If your power is out, you’re not watching this.”

    L.A. rule: Drink when they bring up a “Storm Watch!” graphic and it’s only sprinkling.