Diary of a Tuber

The Cindy Margolis Show is syndicated, check your local listings for showtimes.

Think Kermit has it hard being green? Well, let me tell you, it's not easy being a Tuber, either. Specifically, a Tuber who works straight through prime time every weeknight and still can't afford cable. One can only review late night talk shows so often, and (in Denver at least) six channels of syndicated re-runs do not an enthralling column make. But enough with the lame excuses: I'm back, and I've got booty to review.

Saturday nights are generally a wasteland of television. Once another mind-numbing episode of SNL has faded into the cultural subconscious and old episodes of M*A*S*H and Bosom Buddies grind to a halt, local stations tend to give up the ghost and succumb to paid advertisements for the latest and greatest kitchen utensil. Syndicated pretenders have come and gone trying to fill this niche in programming (MWODs—Men Without Dates), usually utilizing the most powerful tool known to man: jiggly cleavage. The advent of the Internet porn may have initially frightened low-budget TV producers, but a seemingly ingenious solution soon emerged: take Internet porn and make a TV show about it.

Enter Cindy Margolis, the so-called Most Downloaded Woman on the 'net. Forgive me a moment of cynicism, but anyone who has refused to pose nude since getting a boob job must have a good publicist and a ballsy manager to claim that millions of ISP slaves are willing to wait ten minutes to see only a semi-nude JPEG when literally billions of naked women are waiting to download for only $19.99 a month ($3.95 three-day trial period, automatically renewed for your convenience). At any rate, Miss Margolis has just the blond hair, balloon boobs, and bikini-friendly legs to make that dangerous cross from pin-up to TV host, and naturally there was a producer there to grab the opportunity.

The show takes place in Miami's South Beach, possibly the most nauseating sea of silicon outside a Hollywood casting director's waiting room. The set-up is patterned after (ripped off from) MTV's Spring Break events, in which a drunken hoarde of semi-clothed twentysomethings crowd around a stage and scream on command whilst various non-entertaining events sate their seemingly endless appetite for non-entertainment. The thing about The Cindy Margolis Show, however, is that the frenzied mob seems to be inserted via the magic of stock footage. Long shots reveal a much more sedate audience than the soundtrack would have you believe, and only tight close-ups reveal tipsy revelers dancing to an unheard beat. A laugh track on a sitcom is pathetic enough, but this show either invented the Fun Track or employs the most inept cameramen and editors on television.

Veracity of the "good time" aside, I know if I were in the throng, I wouldn't be making any noise at all. It's hard to look or sound like you're having a go od time when the entertainment strikes you numb, leaving you a slack-jawed drooling oaf waiting for the spell of boredom to be broken. Typical events entail a mixed couple swapping swimsuits behind a shower curtain, a parade of "webkini girls" strutting their amateur plastic stuff, a poorly vocalized musical performance by the latest second-tier teen sensation, a thoroughly embarrassed quasi-celebrity guest (with the exception of Jerry Springer, who's a full-fledged celebrity and never embarrassed by anything), and the comedic stylings of Lance Krall.

Ah, Lance. How I loathe thee. Fans of old bad movies will instantly cringe at the appearance of the bumbling comic relief character, wedged into the script of many a sci-fi or horror flick in the glory days of drive-ins. Many thought this archetype died a slow painful death during the teen high school flicks of the '80s (blame Sean Penn's Spicoli for the short-lived revival), but along comes Lance Krall to bring the old buzzard back to life. Lance thinks he's Jim Carrey. Lance thinks he's Adam Sandler. Lance thinks he's Pauly Shore. Lance couldn't hold a candle to any of the three, and in the case of the last, that's saying something. His general schtick is to demean women, make allegedly funny voices using accents recycled from the Cold War, and utter knee-slappers such as, "Whoa ... mommy mommy mommy mommy," whenever a woman walks near him in a bikini (which is every three seconds). If Lance were the last cuddly koala bear on the planet, I'd still shoot him between the eyes.

Also joining Miss Cindy is DJ Skribble, arguably the most talented of the bunch, but it's tough to say since his job is putting records on a turntable and thus the standards aren't that high. He flings about witty repartee, and Cindy and Lance ignore him (or, possibly, can't hear him, what with all the taped hooting and hollering going on). His music makes the scantily-clad women dance. Play on, fair Skribble, it wouldn't be a show without you.

Who would watch this? It's all-access television, so any nudity is blurred out to the point that more is revealed by the bikinis. It's in Miami, so your chances of seeing a natural female body are as good as Michael Jackson's chances of getting into a B.P.O.E. Lodge. It's on after midnight on Saturdays (in most markets), so if you're drunk, you're having fun with friends already, and if you're alone, you're sober and this show isn't going to change anything. In fact, this program's main demographic must be pre-adolescent boys with no access to Playboys hidden in daddy's closet, and really really bored people like me.

If you should happen to catch this show by accident, might I suggest a drinking game in the spirit of Cindy Margolis. Only you don't drink. You change the channel. Here are the rules:

• Every time a naked body part is blurred out by censors, change the channel. Every time Skribble says "Make some noise" and puts his fist in the air, change the channel.

• Every time a webkini girl says her favorite color is green, change the channel.

• Every time a stock footage frat boy yells "yeeeeeah" into the camera, change the channel.

• Every time Cindy says "Oh, you're doing great, you're so cute" to a shy webkini girl, change the channel.

• Finally, every time Lance speaks, turn off the television. There are better ways to cope with insomnia, my friends.

—Chris J. Magyar