"Huell Howser At Canters."

When I left LA and LIKE A DUMMY came back to the old country, I was determined to keep watching Huell Howser every day to keep my favourite state alive in my life. We got to England, a quaint village name of Streatley which didn't have an internet connection and there went that plan.

It didn't barely have electricity.
What we had a lot of was carpet moths which love pure wool carpets, which we had in abundance.

Eventually we got TV and internet set up but the damage was done. I was too long away from Huell and California's Gold and it felt fake –– off –– insipid –– pathetic –– faraway –– creepy -- insincere –– watching Huell from Oxfordshire now.

I fell instead to watching NHK's world service and their Huell equivalent show, the superb Document 72 Hours. I'd been watching NHK in LA and so this felt like a bit of continuity at least that fed that pathetic appetite. Well we left there and gave up our satellite dish and now we watch NHK online and it doesn't even show Document 72 Hours. And yet you can tune in any day of the week and catch THANE CAMUS or MATT ALT on there. It don't seem fair. Probably KYLE CARD is still kicking around on NHK and I can't watch Document 72 Hours?

You know who I like?, I like Ali Marie and Marie Krause. That's who I like.
In fact I also like Peter Barakan.

Yyyyyyyyesterday after a long time apart, a long time watching Million Dollar Listing New York trying to decide who I hated less out of Ryan and Luis, I thought, spontaneously, "It's time to watch Huell again." I wanted to see the one where Huell visits Laguna but I ended up watching the "Tamales" episode. It was okay –– Huell was phoning it in somewhat. He had an unresponsive crowd in Indio at the Tamale Festival. The woman showing him around in particular didn't seem to be into it. She didn't seem to be in the best of moods. Also Huell was saying to all these Mexicans, "Stand in a lahn for a photograhph!" and they were all shuffling nervously trying to avoid undue attention.

I watch old Huell episodes and this unpleasant thought enters my head quite regularly: "Everybody now visible onscreen must be dead now." I think it all the time.

After that I found the episode where Huell goes to Canters the Jewish deli-bakery-restaurant on Fairfax (Visiting, #125). I love Canters. You can go in there and you might see that sad sack Rodney Bingenheimer sitting in a corner talking to the schoolchildren ABOUT THEIR FAVOURITE RECORDS ALL RIGHT.

It's a bona fide classic. Firstly Huell is weirdly ultra negative. It's like he's sick of LA or something. I think it wasn't long after an earthquake and of course the riots and nobody seems sure how they feel. Huell is having one of his seemingly standard confabs with an elderly lady who works at Canters and he's saying, "And yeou live around here?" Then he goes, "And it's safe?" And she goes, "No. Not safe at all." Soon she's musing about how she has been mugged twice in the street, and twice more in her home. And Huell doesn't say "Cut, let's go to something more cheerful," he starts demanding grisly details of this home invasion, wringing his hands. The old lady was philosophical. "They vanted something. They didn't got it."

He speaks to another old lady who works at Canters asking pointedly when she's going to retire?, and when she does retire, what is she going to do with all that free time, won't you get bored? He keeps drilling her like this, "But won't you get bored?" It's an existential critique of bourgeois life is what it is. "When ya retire, ain't ya gonna be bored?" The women were phlegmatic about it.

Another moment he is talking to a woman working the cash register and she's from the fahn state of Mississippi so they're about to get into a rale naice Southroners in California conversation when along happens a customer, also a Southroner, a young male college buck from North Carolina, and Huell's face lights up and he quite simply turns his back on Old Massassip mid-sentence and starts talking to the young rump of manstuff to his right. Huell might as well have shoved his hand into her face and said "Not today lady. Not ever." As it is Huell produces a drool cup from seemingly nowhere and proceeds to employ it in the manner for which it is intended.  The poor old schoolmarm from Mississippi is quite forgotten –– we never speak to or hear from her again for the rest of the episode. Her chance to speak to Huell was forever lost because of Huell's notorious primal instincts. Women always come off worse in these situations. The North Carolina blowhard weaves the standard Hollywood yarn of a white male used to the easy way of things. "Haow kin yeou jist fahnd work in this hard clahmate?" Huell asks, mouth agog. "Aow, ah happen to know a few of the raht people," replies Chapel Hill, "Lil ole me allus seems to land the raht way up. Ahm stayin with mah friend's uncle rent free on his couch." You can feel Huell bursting to cry out, "Yall want me to be that uncle? Ah'll deou hit! Ah say ah'll deou hit! But yall won't need a couch where ah'm takin' yeou! Whoo BOY HOWDY!"

Like the lady said, "They vanted something. They didn't got it."

"Huell Howser Water Car Episode."

Been binge–watching Huell Howser lately.  At first you're mildly charmed by him, get some local education, but not particularly concerned. The addiction doesn't come immediately. Maybe you see an unfortunate episode, like the Hatch green peppers one, or the one at the railway museum where even Huell is visibly bored. Eventually you become adept at sifting through the episodes and winnowing wheat from chaff as you go. You find episodes about places you have been to –– Fern Dell or Musso and Frank's or Pink's Hot Dogs. You might see a classic episode, like the one about the lady who makes art from lint or the basset hound picnic one. I even printed up a complete (six-page) list of all the episodes to "cherry pick" the interesting episodes on Youtube or through Chapman College's site.

Even so, I record all Huell episodes on the PBS channels as they come, and so on Labor Day I found myself watching the "Road Trip" episode in Eureka. I said to my wife, "Isn't Eureka where Bob Durst used to go and hide out for months at a time, pretending to be a deaf mute female?"
Yes it is.
I was watching to see if Huell would chance upon Durst in disguise and ask him what he was eating. "Whatcha doin'?" With his patented guilelessness Bob would blurt, "Oh, hiding out after killing my wife."
Then I watched the episode with the "Whistling Champ."

Now I started the "Water Car" episode. Huell was in an aquatic car heading down to the lake's edge and he was being cute and clever about what they were doing. He said, "We're drahving down to the lake to get in the boat." He was not going to simply say, "We're in an aquatic car," he was being opaque and ironic. "The only catch is, whaaat yer gonna fahnd unbelievable is the boat we're gonna spend the ahfternoon on, is unlahk any other you ever seed befowah."

To read my writing you'd think he was Rogue of the X-Men.

Huell was really laying it on, he goes, "We're drahving the car raight daown to the aydge of the water." When the car reached the lakeside, he turned to the car's owner ("Mr. Tate") and said, "Whah doan't yeou reveal our story to everybody?" But TATE was also trying to be cute and obscure, so he goes "Well the catch is you'd better make sure the belt's plugged in and the doors are securely latched, else we might be swimming back, Huell." He didn't come out and say what he was meant to; that the car was a boat.

Huell gently tried to prompt him, saying, "Awl raht, wait a minute, the story is:" Still the guy wanted to drag out the suspense, so fudging the suspense he goes "When mum and dad originally bought this in Sixty-seven, brand new, they were lookin' for a, um, second ve–hic–le, but yet they wanted a boat. And, uh, they came across a lot that had this, and Dad put a tow bar on hit, an' said, 'I'll tow hit out of here'––"

Having heard enough Huell exploded here, "The story is, this isn't a car––" and thrust the microphone at the guy to get the cue and say, "No: it's a BOAT!," but the guy missed the nod and said "Waal you'll just have to fahnd out" and then Huell messed it up further and said "Waal hit aint a boat––?" and the guy Mr. Tate said, "Waal I guess you would say it's an amphicar."

Amphicar meaning an amphibious car. But that's a neologism and hardly recognizable to the lay viewer, so I think you'll agree with me when I say that between them they all fudged the story royally.
They should have just said, "This is a car and it's a boat!"

Well the episode's called "Water Car" anyway.