On DirecTV, the really bizarre stuff comes out after midnight. Not just the "adult"-themed programming on the pay movie channels like Skinemax, but even on more mainstream channels like the music video channel Fuse. This morning, I was surfing and found that Fuse had a show on called "Pants-Off Dance-Off." And it's about what you would expect from that title: Five amateurs (of both sexes) stripping down and dancing with a music video in the background, complete with trash-talking both from the "professional" dancer judges and the other competitors. No nudity is shown; after a certain point, the show's logo pops up and blocks strategic areas of the screen. However, the show pimps its web site, where it promises viewers the Full Monty. Some people will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame.
Then there is the Shop Erotic channel, where two attractive women show a variety of sex toys and describe their various features. Interestingly, they have two different phone lines for customers to order their products: One for men and one for women, who no doubt are more comfortable talking with a female customer service representative when ordering that sort of thing. There are a surprising variety of products available, and they range from inexpensive to pricey: Some of them run up around a couple of hundred dollars. This show goes off the air around 4 or 5 a.m.
The most bizarre thing I saw over the weekend was down in the 100s, a channel called IAC which is basically for advertising. Right now, it's running a promo for "The All-New 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan," but earlier it had some kind of an "Ultimate Dirty Movie" film/Axe body gel tie-in involving David Spade, where people uploaded clips of themselves rolling around wrestling in mud, teeter-tottering in green paint, and in one case, having a guy fall over in the kitchen and spill milk all over himself and two women in cat costumes then licked the milk off his shirt. There were perhaps five or six of these uploaded clips. Very, very weird stuff. Probably almost as weird as Dodge thinking anyone is going to watch their infomercial.
