colboy's complaint. or, eff you, 'wamu!'

(with apologies to philip roth...)

his blog could have been called 'turquoise tangent' b/c a) i like alliterations in titles (and names) and b) i have come to realize the posts i most enjoy writing are the ones that connect one topic to another which is tangential at best. to wit:

when i was like ten or eleven or a similarly tiny might age, before we even had cable, i somehow learned about this thing called channel j. in those days in the apple, the cable channels were so few that they all fit on a dial that had the letters of the alphabet on it! there were cable boxes, but they just had that dial on it. can you imagine children?

channel j was and forever will be one of those magical phrases for me. you know, a phrase that always conjures up some special feeling, like 'third base' or 'chocolate fudge' or 'briss.' channel j was public access, which meant that late at night, it became the naked channel. i dont even know if i ever saw channel j, per se, but i knew about it, and at that age, that was like a young muslim boy knowing that if he blows himself up in a pizzeria, he'll be transported to a heaven filled with suddenly promiscuous virgins. i mean, it sounds pretty classy.

anyway, like i said, i never saw channel j, but somewhere around that time, when i was eleven or twelve let's say (to be consistent), the letters switched to numbers and channel j became channel 23, and brother, i did see that - prolly at a friend's house - and it was good.

the first naked show i ever saw, almost certainly the first live-action 'porn' i ever saw, was the robin byrd show. most of the show seemed to consist of an over-the-hill byrd talking about godknowswhat or just staring into the camera for inordinate amounts of time. but (what seemed like) every twenty minutes of the hour-long 'show,' an exotic dancer would come on and, accompanied by some terrible song, would strip for like two minutes. looking back, it was the lamest excuse for a strip since marmaduke, but at the time, it was amazing. breasts! nipples! pubic hair! (it was the early nineties, keep in mind.)

oh, one more thing. about half the time, the strippers would be men, but you never knew if a man or woman was coming up until byrd said their name. so youd sit there watching her talk about nothing for ten minutes, like a dog watching you slowly open the purina, then youd get anxious when shed say, 'so tonite, all the way from the magic club in boca raton-' then youd be thrilled when she said, 'jenny johnson!' - and crestfallen when shed say, 'bruce brown!'

i could go on about robin byrd for a long time, but i shant.

the thing im getting to is the second naked channel show i got into, not long after: midnight blue. by this time - im 13 or 14 by now - we had cable, and public access had been moved to channel 35. also by this time, i had my own tv at my mom's house, so i could scour the public access wonderland with reckless abandon.

somewhere in that scouring, in between countless commercials for sex chat lines, more robin byrd show, and the absolutely tragic robin byrd's men for men show (figure it out), i discovered midnight blue. it was on every monday and friday night at 11. j/k, it was on at midnight.

midnight blue was hosted by the founder and editor-in-chief of screw magazine, al goldstein - a fat-as-hell, very raspy-voiced jewba the hut. much like byrd, i could go on about blue and goldstein forever (my dad once worked for him[!]), but i want to relate only two things here.

first of all, for a budding master of my own domain, midnight blue was even more consternating than byrd. you see, while there was that moment of trepidation while byrd announced the next strippy (will it be a man or a woman?), at least your stomach would settle after you finally knew who was coming on (and you could just change the channel if the person had a penis). but midnight blue was an even more schizophrenic mindf*ck.

one segment of the show was always goldstein, looking like a beached whale in a director's chair, interviewing a comely porn star. and during the interview, the show would present clips of said star's films. so, one moment youre getting your first taste of real porn - men and women actually copulating on screen(!) - and the next moment, you're looking at this big fat mound of man. then back to the effing, then back to the kool-aid man:


do you have any idea what this ping-pong match can do the fragile psyche of a 13-year old male who's just 'discovering' stuff? it was like eating the greatest brownie in the world, knowing that every third bite would be pure feces. it was worth it, to be sure, but there was a lot of frustration involved.

the other noteworthy part of midnight blue was the 'fuck you' segment. goldstein would rant about some person or company or other entity, then at the end, he'd stare into the camera and give his target a glorious middle-finger salute.

one example i seem to remember was delta airlines. goldstein had flown them to l.a. or something, and his voyage resulted in this rant:
'so, delta airlines. for your retarded skycaps, your braindead ticket agents, your terrible in-flight meals, your rude stewardesses, and your overall apathy towards your customers, F*CK YOU!' it was great.

and here's where the tangent comes in. the other day, i was taking money out of an atm at washington mutual, or wamu, as it ridiculously likes to be known. then later that day, i realized i didnt have my atm card, and i quickly realized why. wamu is one of the few banks in nyc whose atms actually swallow your card, as opposed to the machines at my shylock, citibank, which let you dip the card, the card never leaving your hand. conditioned by the more forward-thinking citi, i had plum forgotten to take my card back at the end of my wamu transaction. as soon as i realized this, i ran to wamu, hoping the machine had re-swallowed my card after first spitting it out, and that the powers that be over there would have my card waiting for me.

alas, they did not. they were all, 'sorry, we dont have it. you gotta cancel your card.'

at first i thought, well, it's my own fault. but then i thought, 'hey, why blame myself? hasnt my life been hard enough? let me blame someone else for a change.' so i thought, 'for having the only atms that still take your card, F*CK YOU, WAMU!' and then, naturally, i thought of midnight blue. and then robin byrd. etc. etc. etc.