TV: What about Grape Ape?

The three-month free preview of certain premium package channels on DirecTV just expired, which means I must once again survive without VH1 Classic. And I don't think I can.

Oh, sweet, sweet VH1 Classic. Get this: it's a music video channel -- that plays music videos! No, I'm serious! (Music videos, for those of you who are under 25, and therefore may never have seen one, are short films built around a particular song, often featuring the song's artists pretending to sing, and, as often as not, buxom women in various stages of undress. And, if you've only seen music videos on TRL, here's the kicker -- actual music videos last the ENTIRE LENGTH of a song, and are NOT OBSCURED by fawning text messages from sub-literate dipshits with computer access in their detention facilities, and are ENTIRELY FREE of screaming idiots in Times Square superimposed over the screen! Hard to believe, isn't it?)

MTV was lost to fans of music videos a long, long time ago. If you want "reality" programming showcasing the most repugnant alleged human beings on the planet, if you want pranks performed by a B-list celebrity on C-list dupes, if you want "news" "documentaries" about breast implants and other real-life issues, as long as they involve tits, if you want millionaires rubbing your nose in your non-millionaire life by showing you their personal bowling alleys and movie theaters and 87 pimped-out Rolls Royces, if you want awards shows that can't even get the major winners to show up to the ceremony, hosted by anyone who once appeared on In Living Color who isn't Jim Carrey, if you want Gideon and Suchin Pak, for Christ's sake... then you want your MTV! If you want music videos, however -- or, even more specifically, non hip-hop music videos -- try checking in at about 3 AM, and maybe they'll throw a Creed bone your way.

The original VH1 is even worse. They rode a minor popularity wave for a while in the '90s, with non-video programming like Behind the Music and Pop-Up Video, but that eventually petered out, and rather than going back to showing the Video Hits that the VH in their name stands for, they went all-nostalgia, all the time. I Love the '80s! I Love the '70s! I Love the '80s Strikes Back! I Love the '90s! Even Best Week Ever, which attempts to manufacture nostalgia for last Thursday. And if it's not nostalgia, then it's crappy, crappy, crappy movies, like Grease 2 or -- and I still can't believe this one -- a heavily censored version of Showgirls. Which, truth be told, is almost as unintentionally hilarious as the original -- the fact that someone actually digitally added bras to all the topless women cracks me up.

MTV2, for the longest time, I thought was the answer to my music video quest. They're all about the music, right? Well, for all I know, they might very well have been -- up until the point that I actually started getting it. Then it turned into a rerun-dumping ground for MTV, broken up by four-hour blocks of hip-hop. Okay, I get it already: the kids love the hip-hop. But I'm pretty sure other music is still being made, check me if I'm wrong. Would it kill you to play a video of one of those songs?

But then there's VH1 Classic. Sweet, sweet VH1 Classic. I would gladly trade the dozens of channels which are devoted to people decorating other people's homes (by force, if necessary) for VH1 Classic. I would give up all 28 variations on the Discovery Channel, I would sacrifice at least 10 of the 12 sports stations, I'd even give them back UPN, if they would only give me my one music video channel that only plays music videos.

And when I tell you they play only music videos, I'm not screwing around: they don't even have commercials. At most, they break for a minute-long promo of something on VH1, or for a VJ to talk about Styx's current album, as though anyone gives a rat's ass about any Styx album more recent than 20 years ago. And then they get right back to playing a music video, all of it, all the way through, no announcer speaking over the beginning or end or anything. And then after that, they play another one. And another. Until you just want to weep for the beauty of it all.

The catch, of course, is that they're all older videos, at least five years old, I'd say, and usually more. The bonus is: no Creed! No Nelly! No Fred Durst! No Britney Spears! No Matchbox 20!

And again: I now have to learn to live without it. The free preview was wonderful, wonderful enough that I'd gladly pay for it -- if I only had to pay for that one channel. Instead, I would have to pay for a whole buttload of channels that I don't give a damn about, because DirecTV loves to screw you like that. "Why can't I pay a fraction of that price and get just the one channel?" I ask DirecTV. "Because sit down and shut up," they respond.

(This is why I don't get HBO. I can't just get the one HBO that has The Sopranos. I have to also pay for HBO2, and HBO West, and HBO East, and HBO Reykjavik, Iceland, and HBO Family, and HBO Sports, and HBO Comedy, and HBO All Fraggle Rock All the Time, and HBO Dance For Us, Clown, DANCE!!!)

So, in summary: crap.

Also, I don't get Boomerang anymore, either, which is okay, because I didn't watch it nearly as much as I thought I would, anyway. I guess my craving for Huckleberry Hound and Top Cat and Wally Gator and Magilla Gorilla wasn't as strong as I thought it was. Oh well.

MOVIES: Fahrenheit 9/11

I've never had a movie-going experience like Fahrenheit 9/11.

I can't write an objective and analytical review of this film. I'm not hyper-informed enough to pick out the alleged inaccuracies of the film, nor to counter the inaccuracies of those who listed Michael Moore's inaccuracies in the first place. I don't doubt that some of the film has been exaggerated, taken out of context, skewed to support Moore's beliefs. And those beliefs mirror mine, that Bush and his administration are deeply corrupt, deceitful, and dangerous, so I'm more inclined to take Moore's side in any case.

All I can tell you is how I felt, and what I'm still feeling, 24 hours later.

It was an incredibly emotional two hours. I cycled through any number of powerful feelings -- I was furious, I was appalled, I was horrified, I was laughing out loud, I was ashamed, I was sickened, I was guilt-ridden, I was deeply mournful. I was devastated. I literally had tears running down my cheeks at one point: when, in the film's centerpiece, Moore talks to a woman from his hometown of Flint, Michigan, a conservative military booster who lost a son in Iraq -- her world has been destroyed, and she doesn't even know why -- it's overwhelming, just overwhelming. Thinking about it even now, I feel my throat tightening and my eyes watering. You can't watch that segment and be unmoved. You simply can't. Unless you're a robot. In which case you totally deserve to have your ass kicked by Will Smith.

She reads her son's last letter home, and he asks her what he's doing there, why Bush has sent him and so many others to Iraq, and she doesn't have any more idea than he did. But Moore has an idea or two, most of them involving the vast amounts of money the Saudis invest in America. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, the Bin Laden family are Saudis, but Bush can't afford to alienate a country with that much money -- especially when they're spending it on companies closely related to him and his family. So instead he picks a scapegoat, trumps up some WMD charges, and off to war we go.

That's what Moore believes to be true, and that's what he sets out to prove. Whether he succeeds or not is up to the individual filmgoer.

But there are things in this film that can not be countered or spun. The human cost, on both sides of this war, is immeasurable. Try to hate the Iraqis, when you see a pickup truck full of dead Iraqi children. Try blaming the U.S. soldiers, when you see a double amputee describe the crushing pain he still feels in his missing hands, or a mother's grief at losing her firstborn son.

I certainly wasn't alone in the audience. When I got emotional, I could hear others around me in the same state: gasping, sniffling, snorting at Bush's clownish pandering to the rich while the poor on both sides were dying. There were even some who, like me, sat through the end credits to hear all of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," which was a decompression period, a cathartic release, at the end of such a roller coaster of emotions. There was little else I could think of for hours after I left the theater. This is a film that stays with you.

I couldn't recommend this film more highly. Everyone needs to see it. Even those who hate Michael Moore, who support the president without question (as Britney Spears is shown professing in one hilarious interview segment) -- if only to come out of it saying, "I still support the war, but now I'm fully aware of the human cost involved."