Saturday, Sep. 26, 2009

Nothing to watch? There's always monkeys

CELIA RIVENBARK

Set your DVRs, hons, because there's going to be a new fall hit coming your way: TLC's "My Monkey Baby." Not since the debut of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant!" have I been this excited.

This should answer, once and for all, those satellite TV ingrates who love to whine, "I have 856 channels and there's not a thing to watch!" I repeat: Monkey babies.

Who could resist following the daily hi-jinks of Jessica Marie, a girl monkey with her own pink bedroom, designer clothes, toys, games and makeup?

TLC, which used to stand for The Learning Channel but now stands for Titillating Losers for Cash, follows quasi-redneck couple Lori and Jim Johnson as they, seriously, examine the questions: "How strong is the parent-monkey bond?" and my personal favorite "Can a monkey really be a child substitute?"

Standing in the canned ravioli aisle at a Tarzana Safeway wearing ratty bedroom scuffs, the Octomom is probably slapping her forehead.

"Monkey babies! Why didn't I think of that?"

Monkey mama Lori has two grown human daughters of her own, but apparently they were much harder to hold down and administer blush and lipstick to.

"She loves it!" coos Lori, while Jessica Marie gazes stupidly at a tube of something that might have been tested on her long-lost cousin.

I'm sorry I said stupidly. Wouldn't want to set off Jim, who gets a might riled if you call Jessica Marie a monkey.

"Don't call her that! She's my daughter 100 percent!"

Given his propensity to wax philosophic over a cold 'un while a cigarette bounces up and down on his lip, who am I to argue? Maybe he has the DNA test to prove it.

I smell ratings bonanza here. No, sorry. That was just Jessica Marie flinging something. But I seriously believe that TLC could craft a TV special here that melds all of its best efforts from the TLC/Discovery Family.

Those wacky Duggars with their brood of 18 or 19, I forget which, could add a few monkey babies to the mix if they can just figure out how to get the monkeys to give up their computer skills in favor of wearing gingham aprons and writing on a slate. Or Jessica Marie, who wears pink sparkly tutus, could compete in the gruesomely watchable "Toddlers & Tiaras." If Jim lurched around the corner in his wifebeater at just the wrong time, those feisty "Police Women of Broward County" could wrassle him onto the ground and taze him just like they do in every show. Carmindy from "What Not to Wear" could wax, well, everything.

TLC, sounding downright journalistic, promises that "My Monkey Baby" will explore "the real lives of people parenting monkeys in America." I'm just glad Walter Cronkite isn't alive to see it.