I thought I’d seen everything possible at LAX.

But I’ve never seen this.

Below you’ll find video footage of what is probably the worst New Year’s Eve coverage ever attempted on a television station.

KDOC is an independent broadcaster here in Los Angeles. One of its investors was Pat Boone (yes, that Pat Boone), and here’s some typical programming from its past: conservative commentator Wally George and televangelist Dr. Gene Scott. (Bear this in mind while you watch the video below — all 6 minutes of it please.)

This year, someone at KDOC decided that it would be a good, interesting idea to do a broadcast of a New Year’s Eve event that the station would create, originally programmed, that would wind up being sponsored by Carl’s Jr. (Another well-known conservative entity. Bear this in mind.) And that, wait for it, it should be done live, because, after all, New Year’s Eve requires a countdown.

Here’s what they wound up with:
 

• a sloppily dressed and ill-prepared emcee who never knows when he’s on-camera or off-, and who casually throws around fine-inducing obscenities
• a visibly very drunk or high washed-up singer, completely unrecognizable from her brief moment of success, singing flatly and, for some reason, without a band playing behind her
• a hip-hop group slamming that f-bomb around on stage
• unexpected blackouts and cutaways
• and a televised event that closes with an on-stage brawl.

It’s not to be missed.

I do want to add one thing:  My heart goes out to the people at KDOC who didn’t know what to do with this event in the moment or how to control it. Almost 15 years ago, I was involved in a significant live event that, before it finally got going, went almost this badly. It was no fun, and it can happen to anyone any time doing a live event. That’s why one hires professionals to do it. (As I had; circumstances — a brand-new major facility without any understanding yet of how to run a performance at the brand-new major facility — were against us.) I’m sorry that this happened to the people doing the event at KDOC. It makes for cringe-inducing television. I do have to wish I could see the reactions of Pat Boone, Wally George, Dr. Gene Scott, and Carl Karcher to it.

Here’s what hyperbole looks like: Mary McNamara’s over-the-top encomium to Maggie Smith, in today’s Los Angeles Times.

Choice bits:

“…a performer of such consistent, elastic and unique fabulousness that, well into her eighth decade, she’s practically become her own genre.” (Given that elsewhere in the same piece, the writer extolls Ms. Smith’s virtuosity of range, I can’t imagine what the genre would be. Except, perhaps, “classy old British actors in movies and television.” Is that a genre?)

“…the lift of an eyebrow, the tilt of her chin, and the world cracks open in her hand.”

“Smith is one of those women who has looked essentially the same since she was 20…”

Here is Maggie Smith in 1969:

Here is Maggie Smith in 2012:

Now, I too like Maggie Smith. A lot. But I don’t believe she is a genre unto herself, I doubt that she can sunder the forces holding together the globe, nor do I think she can arrest the progress of time. I just think she’s a really, really good actor.

We’ll get to celebrate it again in about two months. More fun to look forward to, courtesy of your government and mine.

As part of my continuing advocacy of the pleasures of reading, I offer this link. It’s to a blog run by young women who read books. Young women who happen to be topless. While reading those books. In public. Again, I offer this as a further means to spreading the joy of reading.

You may recall the story of how my 10-year-old smoked up the interior of our microwave oven — and our entire house — by trying to cook microwave noodles without putting any water in. (If you missed it, here it is.) Tomorrow marks the one-month anniversary of our near-Hindenburg, and during that month, we’ve made concerted and repeated efforts to get the microwave oven to stop reeking.

My wife cleaned it out.

I cleaned it out.

Then my wife moved it outside and left the door open, trying to air it out.

Then she tried various remedies found on the internet: microwaving lemon juice, or bleach, or who-knows-what. All while the microwave oven remained outside.

During the holidays, she’s left the Chernobyl oven outside, on a table in our carport, in what she’s taken to calling “the microwave annex.” It’s there that she and our three kids and her parents, who are visiting, have had to troop with various things to cook or reheat. (Me, I’ve relearned how to use a pot and a burner.)

Yesterday, I asked our eldest, Lex, who is 21 and visiting from Hawaii, to make another attempt. “Really scrub it out — again — then look on the Internet and try those solutions, and if none of that works, I’ll give up.” Because even though a new microwave oven will cost only about $109 (or $80 in a sale at our nearby Fry’s), I just haven’t been able to bring myself to agree to buy one, because this one works. There’s nothing wrong with it. Except the brimstone-like smell of it venting.

Late last night, he texted me: “No luck with the microwave. Clean now, still smells though.” Much as that comma splice made me wince (and he’s teaching 8th grade!), I was ready to relent.

Then I stopped home for lunch today and saw the microwave oven back inside. I opened the door to reheat a turkey wing, braced for the worst, and noticed… nothing.

“Hey!” I said. “It doesn’t stink! It smells clean! What did you guys do?”

Inside the microwave oven, I found a tub of baking soda. Evidently this final trick, atop all the others, was the compound solution we’d needed. I was delighted.

I put the turkey wing in, covered it with a microwave-oven covering plate, and pressed the buttons to heat for two minutes at 50% power. Except I couldn’t read the readout. I tried it again. No readout. I heated up the turkey wing successfully, but the readout was dead. Blammo. No indication of anything. When I pointed it out, Lex said, “Oh, I guess the readout finally died. It was burning out.”

So I texted my wife to tell her to buy a new microwave oven. (I also texted, “Whatever you decide, bear in mind Crist’s Law.” Crist’s Law, for the uninformed, is this: “If you’re going to buy one, buy a good one.”)

If I believed in fate, then I would believe we were fated to get a new microwave oven now, no matter what personal action we took. But I don’t believe in fate.

Offered without further comment, but with full enthusiasm.

Yesterday, just as the Mayans predicted, the world ended.

Today is the new world.

In the new world of today, you do not have to repeat the mistakes of that old world. That’s a big part of what makes it new. It’s also what makes it good.

I’m glad we all made it, and I’m looking forward to what we can accomplish.

A couple of potential solutions:

1. Start arming our children, and also amend the Constitution to clarify that they are part of our armed militia. Or:
2. Everybody who voted for Obama joins the NRA — and then takes it over.

A few years ago, I dubbed our local elementary school’s annual offering “The Talentless Show,” because clearly you didn’t need any in order to get up on stage. Now I see I have company.