If I ever get to meet the guy who decided to greenlight \Cold Pizza"" on ESPN2, I will douse him in gasoline and light him on fire. Then, and only then, will I be satisfied that he has experienced as much pain as I did watching his bilious scourge of a show.
In true ESPN style, they marketed the crap out of a crappy waste of time. I don't even think that pseudo-porno ""Skin"" received as many on-air promos on Fox. I only mention ""Skin"" because I watched a clip of it on ""Cold Pizza."" Yeah, because what better way to start my morning than watching an unexciting car chase from a piss-poor show ON another piss-poor show?
The hosts of ""Cold Pizza"" are Jay Crawford and Kit Hoover. Crawford is the sports anchor for a Tampa station and apparently got the job by having the whitest teeth known to man. My God, those suckers must have been Chloroxed to death! He also seems to derive a bunch of his jokes from being the only guy on the show, using a lot of '70s swinger/""Three's Company"" jokes that went out with male symbol necklaces.
Kit Hoover ... wait a minute. Who the hell is named Kit anyway? Wasn't that the air-surfing, prepubescent bear from ""Tale Spin?"" Well, you might remember Kit from being a pioneer on the first insipid what-if-we-put-The-Real-World-on-an-RV show, ""Road Rules."" She played the flirty chick who cheats on her boyfriend on national television. Not only that, but she did the beast with two backs with the traveling human Q-Tip, Mark.
There's also a ""news"" anchor and a national correspondent. I put quotations around ""news"" because the morning news that they covered went from Kobe Bryant's rape trial to Pam Anderson's breakup with Kid Rock. The news is as hard-hitting as Don Zimmer going for Pedro.
Here's some stats from yesterday's ""Cold Pizza:""
Number of times ""guest weather person,"" WNBA player Jackie Coogan tripped over her lines, causing me to switch to a ""Coach"" re-run: three
Number of different shows shown: three (""South Park,"" ""Jimmy Kimmel"" and ""Skin"")
Times that Kobe Bryant's rape trial was mentioned and was met with laughter: two
Size shoe of Miami Dolphins tight end Randy McMichael: 13 (Causing the reporter, Thea Andrews, to remark, ""You're a 13? Wow!"" in a sexually tense manner).
Shots of the Brooklyn Bride for no good reason: two
Times a man jumps out of a refrigerator: one (and that's one too many, folks.)
Times Kit used phrases from the early 1990's such as ""dope,"" ""fresh"" and ""Gin and Juice:"" seven
Times I switched over to ""SportsCenter:"" 15
Times I missed a really good part of ""Cold Pizza"": zero
Times they replayed their show, analyzed their performances, and put on makeup on the air: one
Percentage of times this is always annoying: 100
Time remaining in the show when I decided to go back to sleep: one minute
Obviously, every show that debuts needs a little tweaking. My suggestion in order to make this time slot worth watching on ESPN2? Cancel the show, and put on duck-hunting or an infomercial.
Mike Jones is a senior majoring in political science and international studies. He can be reached at mikejones@dailycardinal.com.
