Mike F. Has Been Avenged

How many years has it been now since host Ken Ober denied my friend Mike F. his chance at quiz-show glory by prematurely tipping Mike's Barcalounger into the void on MTV's Remote Control when he missed his first question about the Brady Bunch? Can it have been ten years already - a full decade by anyone's reckoning - since those narrowcasting bastards stripped Mike of his pride in the hope of eking out a larger audience share against a syndicated episode of Evening Shade?

~ ~ ~

"Fuck the MTV pride thieves! Tonight I avenge Mike F.," was the thought running through my mind as I stood at the checkout counter at Metro Drug on 8th Street on Wednesday evening, being filmed for an upcoming episode of MTV's hidden-camera show, Boiling Points. With a crystal-clear idea of what I had to do, I dealt calmly with the seemingly incompetent checkout girl, putting up with her nonsense and her inability to properly ring up my purchases until I'd survived the allotted time and she pulled what's called "the reveal," handing me a $100 bill and informing me of my supposedly unwitting participation in the show.

Right on cue, the production crew burst out from the surrounding aisles, waivers waving and headsets buzzing. They were nice kids - bubbly, too. Their energy level would have made you think that they'd just had a successful runthrough of the first-ever high-school production of Angels In America. Instead, they'd orchestrated a rather lifeless eight-minute segment in which a young woman wearing the sort of Kool Moe Dee eyeglasses that might as well have "HIDDEN CAMERA" engraved on them pretends to be unable to properly ring up a purchase of Ivory liquid hand soap for a guy who's already spotted at least two other "hidden" cameras - a large one up and to his left, behind the counter, and the other a small "lipstick" unit planted awkwardly among the lip balms and ravers' candy buttressing the cash register.

The cashier was almost English in her indifference to retail niceties, and so in combination with her ridiculous glasses I'd been suspicious from the moment I walked up to her register. Her setup started innocently enough, and I'm afraid my determined unflappability as the mark meant the segment never really got interesting. She rang up my purchases but said the Ivory soap wasn't going through. She called for a price check, using a white plastic telephone - the second bad prop that caused me to start looking for the cameras.

After she called in the price check, she stopped and looked at me. "Do you... smell something?" she asked. I shook my head, and asked her what she smelled. "Do you work in a zoo?" she asked. "Because that's the kind of thing I'm smelling." I played along, realizing that if I wanted to win, I was basically going to have to stand there and play improv games with her until the time was up. I asked her why her boss was taking so long with the price check, and she said he was probably locked in his office smoking weed. Then there were some other mundane exchanges about how long it was taking; and had I tried to alter the price on the Ivory liquid hand soap; and did I want to pay $120 to enroll in the Super Reducer Savings Club for a year (waving a sheet of paper on which I could make out the words "Application for Employment"); and did I want to just pay for all nine bottles of soap that the register suddenly added to the bill; and did I want to charge the minimum $25 plus $125 for the Super Reducer Club membership to my credit card and then come back tomorrow for my change on the merchandise.

Not only did I strongly suspect that I was being filmed for a hidden camera show, but I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I had a pretty good idea about which one it was. Standing there waiting for it to unfold, I had a lot of time to think about it. Right away, it felt more like MTV's Boiling Points - unfamiliar to many due to its previous airtime of 4:30 pm on weekdays - than Oxygen's "Girls Behaving Badly." It didn't involve any scantily-clad Latinas, so it obviously wasn't Univision's "Loco Video," and I wasn't being stalked by a space alien, so it wasn't the Sci-Fi Channel's "Scare Tactics." It didn't involve the mismanagement of my Escalade or any Los Angeles locations, so I was pretty sure I wasn't being Punk'd. (Anyway, who'd have the balls to be Punk'ng me? Bow Wow? JT? Lohan? Puh-lease.)

The episode that I've described doesn't sound like good television, does it? I don't think it will be. So keep an eye on Boiling Points in late January - experience the boredom for yourself, but remember that Mike F. has been avenged.

- S.C. Higgins, 1/8/04
somnosonic (at) hotmail.com

Update - Mike F. responds:

"Shucks Hig, I'm honored that my perceived shame helped you surmount the dangerous boredom that you faced while purchasing sundries.

"However, I think you have the wrong idea. The `void' into which my barcalounger was tipped was actually a super-fun party room, filled with rappers, party people and MTV personalities such as Tabitha Soren and Downtown Julie Brown. So while I may have looked like a complete idiot, the truth is that I was livin' large like a Mac Daddy! It sounds far-fetched but you must believe me.

"Anyway, congrats on keeping your cool under that tremendous duress. I think of you while I'm in the checkout line all the time. I'm glad to know it works both ways.

"At least you got a hundred bucks. All I got was a universal remote control that never worked and a case of Brut by Faberge..."