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.
