Since it’s Friday, I’m taking the day off from posting my own source material.  Yes, I’m going to be content, lazily cherry-picking from the YouTube archives.

Now then … How the hell did I not know about Man and Wife before yesterday? Have I been living under a rock? This is hilarious. More, it’s timely. Fat Man Scoop and Shanda are the Ricky Ricardo and Lucy of our generation. They are Clair and Cliff Huxtable, just with an extra 40 lbs of belly apiece and a light sprinkling of ass-sweat.

Clair and Cliff took us into their bedroom, too. But today’s environment is one of informality and crass authenticity, so instead of Coz’s full-on pajama gear (which was always vomit-worthy), we get Fat Man Scoop’s ratty tank top and boxer drawers. Beautiful. Also Shanda is talking about balls and shit-stains. Phylicia Rashad never did that.

No, the nastiest we ever got on network TV was a Coz foot rub. That was NBC’s shorthand for a Coz lick out.

And they wonder why some of us children of the 1980’s turned to interracial porno. We were taunted.

No, what am I saying . . . Phylicia Rashad was not proposed to a children’s viewing audience as a sex object. . .  was she? Was she a Mom object, or a sex object? The worst thing about NBC is that they always try to have everything both ways. (”The Nanny” was a good example of this.) At least over at ABC, they let Roseanne Barr be a big, gross, piece of flabby ass that probably, now that I think about it, paved the way for Man and Wife a lot more than Clair and Cliff ever did.

Where is Roseanne? Is she still alive and eating jelly donuts? I haven’t heard a single thing from her since the mid-90’s. (Wait, not true. I attended her talk show once by accident when I was strolling on Venice Beach and a tout pressed a ticket into my hand. I spent a lonely afternoon in the CBS studio watching her interview the bald-guy from Star Trek. Wow. I had repressed that memory until just now.) And Roseanne was a really, really odd show. A fat, white, working-class family with a boring, tough-love attitude toward child-rearing - what made people think I wanted to watch that? And DJ? Fucking DJ. Talk about shit in your drawers. This kid exemplified shit in your drawers.

I repeat: and they wonder why some of us turned to producing porn. The more I look back on terrible sitcom families of the 80’s and 90’s (especially the Seavers of “Growing Pains”!) the more it makes sense to me that the eroticized body and the eroticized family would become my central concern. Episode after episode, while “real life” and intra-familial relationships are portrayed “realistically,” and  every topic under the sun is explored - “Elvin” wants to marry “Sondra;” “Dan” loses his job down at the “Plant;” “Jackie” has a date with “Becky’s” “Subsitute Teacher” then Becomes a “Truck Driver”; “Mike” refused “cocaine” - there’s no real fucking. No awkward moments of someone shitting loudly in the bathroom. No close-ups of bowls of vomit. Little to no facial cum shots. To many of us, these remain gaping holes. Yearning to be filled in.

Thank goodness for Man and Wife TV. Like hardcore offensive pornography, these two pick up where network TV leaves off. I want to hear more about their huge asses. I want to see them grind. That much is true.