Before they mercifully filed for bankruptcy in February, I sent the following letter to Transit TV:
Dear Transit TV,
I have been occasionally slightly entertained by your programming on a semi-regular basis for a few years now, ever since the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Los Angeles installed television monitors on most of their buses. Your relatively innocuous flashing lights, and barely-heard-over-earbuds noise have been a companion for many a commute. While your programming was certainly weak, I always able to shut it all out. From your never ending stream of cellphone joke services featuring horrifyingly unreal computer animation, your unsettlingly easy Pat Sajak-branded "Puzzlers", all the way to your bizarre short films featuring hideously mutating fruits and vegetables: I was able to ignore every bit of it.
However, I am writing today, not to thank you for the white noise pumped into my buses, but to complain about the staggeringly unfunny Clever Cleaver Brothers. These "Kitchen Cutups" and their "hilarious" cooking shorts, are driving me fucking insane. Even with my Rotting Christ turned all the way up on my iPod, I cannot unsee the tragedy that is the Clever Cleaver Brothers. Their list of crimes is seemingly unending. There is the insufferable, head-wobbling mugging of Lee, who looks into the camera with a nauseating shit-eating grin on his face, while his brother cooks with a lifeless, soul-sucking sense of routine. There is the way they speak in practiced unison, as though the simple act of two fools speaking at the same time was inherently humorous. Most importantly, there is the format. Each 3-minute episode features the "Television's Zaniest Celebrity Chefs" introducing the food they will be preparing, by dressing in cartoonishly stereotyped garb representing the culture that produced the dish. For instance, if they are cooking Mexican food, they will be wearing sombreros and holding maracas. Sometimes, this offensive routine will even involve comical accents and body language, telegraphing their hate to the least enlightened of us. While they have not yet cooked fried chicken whilst in blackface, I have no doubt that the day is not far way.
They are not funny. They are heinous. I kindly ask that you not only remove them from your programming, but that you also kill them. While you may find this harsh, I assure you that many of your consumers will not sleep well unless they know that these cooking Hitlers are dead. You may also be thinking, what about their families? Should their wives and children be punished for their crimes? I admit, at first I wrestled with this. However, we are talking about women that would actually agree to marry someone that is a Clever Cleaver Brother. What kind of person would want to spend the rest of their lives in a legally binding contract with one of the worst people on earth? They are not blameless. Neither should the children be considered, as what kind of human could we expect to be raised by the Kitchen Cutups? Surely, both genetically and through environmental factors, these children would no doubt grow up to be just as bad, if not worse than the monsters that sired them.
Please hear my call. Stop the culinary hate that is the Clever Cleaver Brothers.
