for 19 February 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Having seen around eight
incomprehensible episodes of
Steptoe and Son, I assure you
that in almost every facet of
television production,
Sanford and Son is highly
superior.

1. Production. Steptoe and
Son is a muddy black and
white, and several scenes
lack the most basic
contrast of American
black-and-white shows. Of
course, I'm watching this on a
home transfer VCR, so it's
not top-notch coming from PAL
to NTSC, but it's really hard
to follow characters around
dark rooms. Similarly, the
sound is muddled, but I might
chalk up that confusion to
ultra-thick accents.

2. Steptoe is not Redd Foxx.
Steptoe is a cranky old
geezer, the likes of which
are as stereotypical as the
foxy grandma or
funky-dressing teenager. Redd
Foxx was not only playing the
cranky old man, he had
timing, visual reactions, and
all kinds of great acting skills
which made him Redd Foxx.

3. Lamont is not mean. The
Steptoe kid is mean and
way too trendy (in a Mod,
Carnaby Street sort of way),
whereas we sympathize with
Lamont's relationship with a
difficult father. On that
same tip, the Sanfords don't
really fight as cruelly. But
the British always go for the
jugular and feign "taking the
piss" - i.e., just having
fun, but in the cruelest
unentertaining way.

4. Steptoe and Son: There
are no neighbor characters
in the episodes I saw,
which were mostly about
working in a dump. Sanford
and Son has Aunt Esther and
Grady.

So, while British TV has some
great work, the sad truth of
the matter is it can't do
sitcoms better than the US,
which is the master. In fact,
I can only name one truly funny
British sitcom, Faulty
Towers. The rest are most
interesting for cultural
novelty value - like the
truly f*cked Are You Being
Served? or the Keeping Up
Appearances view of the
British suburbs. I got dozens
of examples from video
trading friends and was
disappointed by almost all of
them. I DO enjoy its 1960s
and 1970s kids shows, which
are often more thoughtful
than US counterparts: Oddly
enough, there was very little local
animation in the UK at that
time, compared to the
cartoon-conquering Saturday
Morning TV here.

This Sunday I am doing a
video night at a club showing
how the counterculture
influenced post-1968 kids'
TV. It's interesting to see
modern Rave clues, down to
the baggy pants, in the
Teletubbies.

Don Smith
<dsmith@qrc.com>

Thanks for outlining your
tastes so completely for us.
But, um, how many truly funny
American sitcoms can you
name? More than one,
certainly, but more than
five? And who says taking the
piss out of each other isn't
more fun than endlessly
repeating, "Come on, Pop!
Come on, Pop!"

Saying the US is the master
of sitcoms is like saying
we're the master of fried
cheese sticks. It's a dubious
accolade for anyone who
doesn't relish a congealed,
greasy mess.

Which means it's the highest
honor for those of us who
relish anything congealed,
greasy, and messy.

Disappointed but hungry,

Sucksters

Hey -

I wanted to flesh out your
answer to Alan's question. In
matters of theater, one thing
that is of primary importance
is the sense of immediacy.
Theater has compelled
audiences for centuries
because of the way the
performers onstage "converse"
with the audience across what
Brecht called the "mystic
chasm": that gulf between
actor and audience. It
follows, then, that not only
are all productions of
Hamlet different but that
all performances of a single
run of Hamlet are, in and of
themselves, different. There
is an art to play writing and an
art to acting, but the
complete artwork of theater
does not occur until the
piece is performed.

I imagine that the live
performance of classical
music and dance carries the
same visceral impact of
immediacy. Film and
television are drastically
different. There is never an
illusion of immediacy. There
is never an illusion of
mutability. Each shot has
been set up, every frame of
reality bears the stamp of
having been created, and the
viewer knows that repeating
the presentation will not
cause it to evolve. In fact,
these days we can pause,
reverse, skip ahead, and
otherwise control the way in
which the "art" is presented.

As film is set in stone when
it is finished, it seems more
wrenching when a piece of
film work is remade. But it
seems to me that theater
needs that constant
reinvention, if only to
retest and reevaluate the
vision of the playwright.

Jason Linkins
<J_Linkins@psava.com>

Nicely put. Know of any good
plays coming out West
sometime soon?

Speaking of which, if anyone
anywhere hasn't seen Danny
Hoch in anything, go see him.

Bored and too reinvented,

Sucksters

Subject: Dead fish floating
in a toilet

Sorry to hear about your
goldfish. I used to try to
keep fish, but slowly and
inevitably their scales would
begin to soften into a mush and
then fall off, except for
an angelfish (imaginatively
named Angel) that lived for
about five years. I have the
feeling he/she was poisoning
the others to get more food.
It was a large fish. Anyway,
my point is, one time I went
to a creek near my house with
a fishbowl and some corn
meal. I put the corn meal in
the bottom of the bowl, then
put the bowl in the creek
with the opening catching the
stream. It also caught about
a thousand minnows. As the
bowl filled, they managed to
displace nearly all the water
in the bowl. Proudly, I took
the fish-packed bowl home and
placed it on the bar. They
all died within the hour.
Fish not only need clean
water but air as well, I
learned. This is not to imply
that you would have done any
of these things to your
beloved goldfish: They're only
related fish stories that
occurred to me.

Mike Widner
<mwidner@flash.net>

I'm not sure who you're
talking to (Emily the
production manager and .alt
tag scribe?), but thanks for
the impromptu fish food for
thought. Sometimes I wonder
whether or not little
children should have pets,
given the fact that so many
of them die in gruesome,
horrible ways. (The pets, not
the little children.) I'll
skip the story about the
mouse I thought might subsist
on zucchini for months. Or
the gerbils whose water
bottle I forgot to refill. Or
the dog that got hit by a car
- nay, a van.

Having pets didn't teach me
responsibility, it taught me
to fear responsibility. It's
kind of like Catholicism,
which doesn't teach purity
and honor so much as it
incites a craving for
depravity.

Too much information, as
usual. At least now I have an
idea for next week's Filler.

Thanks, man!

Polly

Hit & Run

What?? In a year where the
blow job has reigned supreme
over the national news front,
you mention the Super Bowl
without so much as a
titillating reference to
Eugene Robinson's pregame
arrest? The Falcons player
who was reportedly so pious
that his teammates called him
The Prophet gets arrested for
soliciting oral sex from an
undercover officer, and you
don't touch it with a 10-foot
pole??

I think it's fairly
amusing.... That evening
Robinson receives an award
for Outstanding Moral
Character from a Christian
Athletes group (which he
accepts with a big,
shit-eating grin, I bet) and
then mere hours later he's
rounded up in a dragnet for
trying to negotiate a
spit shine - with his wife
and kids in a hotel a few
blocks away!

Can you imagine what his
first post-arrest conversation
with his wife must have
been like?

"Dammit, honey, if you had
just given me the blow job
when I goddamn asked, none
o' this shit would'a
happened."

But why? Why would a man who
was a pillar of morality and
an outstanding role model
self-destruct like this?
Well, a God-fearing man is
going to have a God-fearing
wife ... and God-fearing
women don't usually make for
ravenous cocksuckers. Falcons
players quoted anonymously in
the media have stated that
Eugene was by far not the
only player to make the haj.
And I'm sure that when Eugene
heard the locker room talk
about the quality hummers
being served up by Miami's
finest he felt much like
Christ being tempted by the
"Deevil" ... so he gave in and
got busted, and I enjoyed
hearing about it.

But you're avoiding this
story. "The man has
suffered enough," you're
saying ... or "it's too easy,"
you're thinking ... or "no more
goddamned blow jobs!" you're crying.

I say YES! More blow jobs! All
blow jobs all the time! BNN,
the Blow job News Network: who
was blown today, who has been
attempting to get blown, who
needs to be blown, and what
upcoming blow jobs we can look
forward to. A can of stiff,
erect worms has been opened,
and now there's no going
back!

Oh, and leave the name alone
... it's Czech.

Buck Futt
Private Eye
<buckfutt@excite.com>

More interesting than
Robinson or his Pocket
Prophet is the question of
why Miami's Finest are using
their resources to entrap
horny Super Bowlers, when
their city has what I believe
is still one of the highest
homicide rates in the
country.

Not touching you with
anybody's 10-foot pole,

Bartel

What's with all of the
language today? I can't even
read this at work now without
being concerned that someone
is standing behind me reading
over my shoulder!! You don't
have to cuss to be funny.

Wes Cutshall
<WESLEY.A.CUTSHALL@usa.conoco.com>
Conoco Visual Communications

Dear Wes,

I've combed today's Suck for
salty language but have only
managed to find the following
samples:

lambkin
urchins
maxim
commodious
fiascos
Lynn Swann
slovenly
fussbudgets
Hubba hubba

Tune in for next week's Hit
and Run as we'll be working
"stickler," "toggle,"
"billets doux," and
"canoodling" into our
sailor-mouthed tirades.

yr pal,

Bartel

Subject: Unwanted Job
Applications

Dear Sucksters,

Regarding your assertion,
"Frankly, the regular pattern
of letters from disgruntled
employees imagining how
'cool' it would be to work at
Suck just makes us bitter and
depressed," it comes to my
attention that, whereas
heretofore readers of your
so-called new-media
publication might
historically have been gently
ribbed by your altogether
caustic (and rarely
unnecessarily so) wit, as it
is clearly your aim only to
poke harmless fun without
undue offense to any but the
most adamant admirers of
Third Eye Blind (who are
rightly hailed throughout
developed nations as the
foremost sublime tribute band
of their time) and fresh
basil, now you would tread
upon the hopes and dreams of
the very segment of the
populous which I would
venture to claim, with little
doubt, comprises a near
majority of your readership.
That is, they are the very sort of
embittered, jaded, and if I
may be so bold as to add,
lazy sort of people who ask
for little more from life
than the opportunity to earn
something resembling a living
wage by engaging in so noble
a profession as one
that combines all
the titillating stimuli of
free coffee, Internet access,
and a virtually unlimited
supply of magazines with the
job security that goes
hand-in-hand with the
patronage of a much larger,
more successful, and more
commercially crass
publication - that is, writing for
Suck. For after all, if it
is indeed not, in fact,
"cool" to work at Suck, why
pray tell do you Sucksters
yourselves not pursue lines
of work requiring much less
effort to obtain, such as (to
throw out a perfectly random
and unrelated example) that
of photocomp keyboard
operator at the Texas
Agricultural Extension
Service, thus relinquishing
valuable Suck staff positions
to those eager would-be
new media journalists who
wish to be immortalized in
caricature by Terry Colon?

Jeb Hagan
<jeb@antisocial.com>

Jeb,

There is no free coffee, we
pay for our own Internet
access, job security doesn't
exist, and the caricatures
aren't even of us. In
reality, Duke of URL is a
muscular Navajo who usually
dresses in chaps and a
10-gallon hat that he wears
to his job with the Indian
rodeo. Polly Esther is a
flamboyantly gay man who
weighs close to 400 pounds,
and Terry Colon is a
smart-ass 12-year-old with a
bowl haircut and an uncanny
resemblance to Malachi from
Children of the Corn. I am
part of a set of Siamese
twins who share a leg, but
fortunately I've never been
caricatured.

yr pal,

Bartel