Your guide to 3:30 AM television

I am now an expert at late night TV viewing, since I have unofficially volunteered to take the 3 am to 7-8 am shift keeping Lenny asleep (she just hates her crib and insists on being held for a while to fall good and asleep). Since the websites I enjoy don't update overnight, I am relegated to TV. Lemme tell you what, the most popular show in this time frame is something called "Paid Programming," which appears to be in syndication on 50% of all channels. Crazy, they must have made several hundred episodes of this series, yet I never have seen it on primetime TV. My favorite character is Ron Popeil, a farcical idiot who finds stupid people (not unlike Sean Hannity, who has the added bonus of not being an actual stupid person, but also completely morally bankrupt) who believe simple tasks are difficult in order to give himself reason to invent a device that makes the simple task actually more difficult OR invent something that you will never need, like a five gallon food dehydrator or a knife set that includes a paring knife because so many people clean and filet their own fish nowadays.

Additionally, Austin has two PBS channels (one of which our totally awesome cable company has confined only to digital cable because a. PBS means Public Broadcasting System, so why the heck not restrict the audience's ability to view high-quality, informative, non-sensationalistic programming? and b. Time Warner Cable sucks big time). The only thing they broadcast overnight is some lame program called "Off Air." Why? Because people like you and me are too cheap to buy a tote bag when they are begging for just $20 so they can continue to bring you quality programming like "Hitman: David Foster and Friends," which was actually awesome, and Nova, which kicks ass 99.9% of the time.

ESPNU always has a replay of some game, but since their programming model is apparently strug-a-ling to make money, they only broadcast maybe five games a week, then replay them incessantly. So last night, the night before, and the night before that, I have watched Florida play Southern Miss in the Super Regionals not once, not twice, but thrice. Then when 6:00-ish swings around, ESPNU re-broadcasts yesterday's College Football Live... six times in a row to fill three hours of dead space. And this despite the fact that there is absolutely no college football news to report. Yesterday, they did a report on the state of football in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; combined I-A and NFL football teams in those states? Zero. Funny accents in those states? Uncountable. Then this morning they spent half the show talking about what a BFD it is that 'Bama is going to have to vacate wins because (say it with me now) Alabama commited NCAA violations within their football program and also the sun rose in the east.

I could watch the same SportsCenter eight times in a row, but they are focusing on the NBA (which sucks) way too much, and I am permanently boycotting Major League Baseball because when Pujols gets outed as a 'roider, it would break my heart if I were following the sport.

The actual only cool program on during this time is a Science Channel show that is not about science at all. It's called "Mantracker," and it is awesome because it is about a guy with a sweet beard and a cowboy hat who persues the most dangerous game: Canadian people, eh? You know, those northern Snowbillies (yes, Canada, you can have Alaska, you already have one lunatic petro-state, why not take a second, crazier one? you could add a superfluous "u" or two, if you'd like; call it "Aulaskau") who are always dreaming up a lotta ways to ruin our lives. The metric system, for the love of God! Celsius! Neil Young! The fact that it's Canadian improves upon the concept because of funny accents and the ability to film in such scenic locales as the Great Plains of Alberta, or the Great Plains of Saskatchewan. If you're lucky, they may hit the prairie portions of Manitoba, too. He'll never track people through Canada's capital, Toronto, or the bustling metropolis of Whitehorse, though, because Mantracker (eh?) is too tuned-in to bent grass and snapped twigs to bother with your fancy "streeuts" and "boouk leaurnin'."

And finally, let's not forget the oldie but goodie perfect-for-a-laff-in-the-morning idiot-fest, Fox & Friends, which simply has to be a joke that Republicans are playing on the rest of us. Normally I can take about 18 seconds of that show before I have an aneurysm (which is a word I can't spell, so I'd love to watch the brown haired guy who isn't Steve Doocy try it). Then I am almost dead so Lenny gets handed off to Nina and I sleep it off until I "go to work" around 2:00 pm.