It is 4am on the east coast of the United States and I am wide awake. I didn't go out tonight, I didn't work all weekend, and I'm not strung out on speed. Normally the blame for my insomnia would fall squarely on my shoulders and the shoulders of the hamster running a 4.2 40 in the hamster wheel in my brain.

Tonight, however, the blame falls to one man: Dr. Jack Ryan, former Marine lieutenant, Professor of History at the Naval Academy, and Deputy Director Intelligence at the CIA. His madcap submarine adventures in the North Atlantic, his terrorist-shortened family vacations in England, and his clandestine Members Only jacket-wearing trips to Colombia rendered any sort of prolonged, restful sleep a virtual impossibility.

It's not my fault, though, really it isn't. It's all Comcast Cable's fault. I wanted to turn the television off, but I found that I wasn't physically capable of performing that function. I believe that is what typically happens when your local cable television provider allows The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger to air in relative succession across its many digital cable channels starting around 10pm local time. It is a cruel, cruel joke and it isn't funny.

The only thing that could have been worse was a Shawshank Redemption, Roadhouse, Rounders, Rocky IV, A Few Good Men marathon on TNT.

This is a phenomenon that occurs predominantly among men between the ages of 20 and 36. It involves, almost exclusively, movies that feature major Hollywood stars and opened, most often, with decent box office success despite a general lack of critical support and rarely ever getting nominated for industry awards.

These movies get picked up by cable networks a year or two after their release to rental and they play in pretty decent rotation. The first year or two you almost always pass by them as you surf toward Comedy Central or ESPN or HBO. The problem is that the films are still relatively fresh in your entertainment memory banks.

The conversation you have with yourself when you decide to pass is always the same. "Oh yeah, I remember this one. This is the one with Mel Gibson who plays the guy who wants the money these gangsters stole from him and he constantly has to correct them about the amount because they always overstate it...I think Kris Kristofferson is in it too. Oh, and that guy who played the whiny Jewish ice cream company owner in City Slickers."

But then something funny happens about a year after that. You stumble upon one of them some lazy Sunday afternoon while lying on the couch nursing a hangover. You catch it during either "that one really cool scene" or that "I don't remember that scene" scene and you're hooked. There's no way you're not watching it now.

You watch, not enraptured or anything, but you watch the whole thing. It's innocuous. It entertains. It doesn't make you think too hard. And, perhaps most importantly, it distracts you from the aches and dehydration that have crippled you for the day. It's at this point that the film burrows into your subconscious and sets up shop in that part of your brain that associates memory with sound.

Fast forward 6 months. Now it's 11:45pm on a Wednesday and John Mayer is the musical guest on Letterman. He thoroughly sucks, so you decide to get ready for bed. You flip to USA or TNT or TBS and think nothing of it because it's on a commercial. But then, as you're brushing your teeth, you hear "I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Cubans who are trained to kill me..."

You're fucked. You know you're fucked. And worst of all, you know there isn't a fucking thing you can do to unfuck yourself. So what do you do? What the fuck else are you going to do?! You climb into bed--now more awake than when John Mayer was hypnotizing you with his lilting pussy voice--and you watch as Lt. Caffey saves Dawson and Downey from life in prison by getting Col. Jessup to admit on the stand that he ordered the Code Red on Santiago.

I can't explain this phenomenon except to hypothesize that men are simple creatures of habit who will forsake sleep, against their better judgment, because they know they can't not watch an average piece of American cinema with which they have positive memories associated.

It's 5am on the east coast of the United States and I'm still awake. I'm about to head back to bed fully aware that if HBOW is showing Air Force One right now, I'm not sleeping until 7. Now, GET OFF MY PLANE!!!

Posted by nils at 5:04 AM

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