Inside, I Will Always Be a Horny Teen (Sorry)

As some of you may recall, before the USA Network became the place where characters are welcome (as long as those characters are quirky, attractive young white people with interesting jobs who live someplace sunny where high-stakes problems are treated with breezy low stakes) USA was a different sort of cable channel entirely.

Back in my day (and now the children eagerly pull up seats ‘round the fire for another installment of “pop culture tales of the late 80’s and early 90’s”) USA was the kind of network to air stuff like Silk Stalkings in their “crimetime after primetime” lineup. I never actually watched Silk Stalkings, mind you, but based on its opening credits, I believe it was a show about sex cops who used seduction to solve mysteries in a pantyhose factory – one that somehow generated copious welding sparks, accessed via foggy neon-drenched alley. 

It ran five seasons of the bikini-delivery-system “Pacific Blue,” a show about bicycle cops (yes, bicycle cops) policing the Santa Monica pier -- because I can imagine no better vehicle for pursuing someone over loose sand. 

“Can’t we have some of those ATVs with the tires only semi-inflated for better traction?!” I imagine the cops pleading with their supervisors. 

“NO!” they say. “Bicycles strike terror into the hearts of criminals! Schwinn up, McGroot!” (This particular cop’s name is McGroot.)

These days, most new TV services emerge from the cathode womb screaming “prestige,” because society has figured out what television “is” in a way that wasn’t true even a few decades ago, but that basic level of competence makes me yearn for the wilder, woolier growing pains of primordial basic cable.

Those early channels had a special, strange quality when they were young and the world was new, and they hadn’t figured themselves out yet. Later they grew safe and upscale, via a sort of “TV gentrification,” but in their youth they would try anything as long as it was cheap and filled airtime – like when Comedy Central was  “The Comedy Channel” and would run eight hours of The Higgins Boys and Gruber, between bite-sized snippets of Clutch Cargo and public domain shorts. Or when MTV would pause the actual music videos they used to play, so that underground cartoonists could dabble in avant-garde animation on Liquid Television. Or like when ABC Family launched, and all it showed was snuff films. Not sure why they programmed that for families, but hey – everyone’s parenting styles are different. 

For me, the best thing to come out of USA’s early, “sleazy” years was USA Up All Night, hosted by comedian, Playboy model, and buxom Benny Hill sight gag, Rhonda Shear. Actually, to be more accurate: on Fridays it was Rhonda Shear, and on Saturdays it was Gilbert Gottfried, but I was significantly less aroused by Gilbert, so I’ve written him out of these memories. Sorry, Gilbert. Rest in peace. You were amazing in Aladdin.

Up All Night was one last gasp of a grand old TV tradition: buying b-movies on the cheap, calling two of them a double-feature, and having a host bump the movies in and out of commercials – a la Vampira, Elvira, or USA’s own seedy superhero,“Commander USA” of Commander USA’s Groovie Movies. 

While the esteemed commander focused on old horror or sci-fi films for you to nap to, Rhonda Shear had a different area of expertise. She was the Laura Linney of teen sex comedies, and for me, USA Up All Night (or, as she said it, “UP… All Night”) was the true Masterpiece Theater. 

And I’ll cop to it. My interest was approximately 0% cinematic and 100% salacious. Up All Night’s glory years overlapped my puberty, during an era where – even if you had access to this new thing called “the web” – a hetero male seeking to understand the mysteries of women would have to log on to a bulletin board to download a “sexy” photo of Teri Hatcher in five parts, over thirty minutes, all the while hoping no one would interrupt the modem… only to be rewarded with a glossy photo of “nude” Teri covered by satin Superman cape, with her shoulders exposed for the arousal of any passing Victorian. 

I truly apologize for being so horny on main, but today’s young perverts don’t know how good they have it.

Of course, the USA network was basic cable. Basic, of course, being an acronym for “Boobs Aren’t Seen In Cinema.” So you may well ask why I consumed T&A films edited to remove the T and most of the A. Yes, these films had been robbed of their raison d’etre, leaving them bowdlerized, TV-PG husks. But for a 13-year-old boy, there were enough unblurred thongs to make it appointment viewing. Did my love of butts come from the fact that they were far more accessible to me than the body parts censors deemed R-rated? Or did I love the show because of a preexisting love of butts? It’s a real chicken-and-peach scenario.

Is this gross? I apologize. But for men of a certain age, pre-Porky’s small exploitation pictures and post-Porky’s big studio sex comedies are inextricable from our sexual architecture. These days, as a hopefully more-evolved person, I can pick apart the gross gaze-y parts of these movies, and recognize how – let’s charitably say “loose” their relationship with “consent” is, with the constant peeping tommery and plots to steal bikini tops. At their best, sex comedies like these present sexuality as a high-spirited romp through a cheesecake world, where everyone’s sex-positive and down to clown, and the women have as much joyful agency as men, but let’s be honest – they were very rarely at their best. I certainly hope that I’ve deprogrammed the most insidious parts of these movies in my own psyche, but inasmuch as I’m still fond of the genre… what can I say? The hooks pierced me at the right time. I’m just thankful I wasn’t programmed by the flipside of these movies – all the thrillers where sex is punishable by death, a much more dour and morally oppressive universe.

Anyway, to give you a taste of the kind of sophisticated fare Up All Night trafficked in, here are some titles they screened:

• H.O.T.S.
• Hollywood Hot Tubs
• Joysticks 
• The Bikini Carwash duology
• The Vice Academy pentology (pedantry requires me to mention there’s a sixth, but it was released after Up All Night left the airways)
• And, of course, the film that dared make the subtext text: Nudity Required.

Why am I talking about USA Up All Night? Especially because, as the internet has helpfully (and truthfully) reminded us “No one cares about your boner?” Mostly to share this anecdote: 

About 15 years ago now, in a nostalgic mood, I began tweeting made-up titles with the hashtag “Lost USA Up All Night Films.” It’s extremely tough to parody something already so parody-adjacent, so they’re not my best work, but my titles included the following:

• South Beach Vice Patrol 2: Order in the Skirt
• Shuttlecock Summer 
• Butt Party USA
• Goosin' Out!
• Nerds: The Movie!
• Doin' It* (*It = Sex)
•  Bikini Drugstore
• Bocceballz
• Xtrontia: The Girl With the Iron Thong

Others adopted the tag, contributing such titles as Fraternity Staycation, and soon enough #LostUSAUpAllNightFilms was trending on Twitter. 

Apparently Rhonda Shear is very active online, as befits the owner of  “Rhonda Shear Intimates,” a lingerie business I was delighted to discover she founded post-UAN (partly because I’m glad she’s doing well, but also because Rhonda Shear going from Up All Night to owning a lingerie company is like Springsteen retiring to manufacture butt hankies). To my delight, the Queen of Horny Insomniacs herself replied to my hashtag by tweeting, quote, “Wow! Love that - what a blast from the past! There were sooo many #LostUSAUpAllNightFilms over 400 episodes.” Granted, she doesn’t seem to quite get the premise, but – it was an honor.

When a goddess descends to acknowledge a mortal, it’s only right to pay respect. So I responded “Getting LostUSAUpAllNightFilms trending and having Rhonda Shear tweet about it = the culmination of a dream 13-year-old-me could never anticipate.”

Then: a miracle. Emerging from the mists of the Internet like a bikini model emerging from the mist created by erotic car washing, Rhonda Sheer tweeted at me, saying, “@dankmccoy: Love it! I think I got many a young man through puberty... XOXO Sizzles.” And then, for good measure, she appended a photo of herself in a red dress and long red gloves, running her fingers through her expertly-teased-and-bleached hair. 

What a treat. Her hugs and kisses. The sentence fragment “Sizzles.”  And: the not-even-close-to-veiled acknowledgement that millions of boys likely thought of her during their most shameful moments. But mostly it was wonderful to see how the Internet – the very thing that helped kill Up All Night by robbing sex of any lingering innocence, allowed my eternal adolescent to briefly reach through the television to the lovable Ms. Shear. 

Sizzles 4-ever.

For earlier posts, check out the archive. In my other life, I’m a podcaster. Listen to my show The Flop House, here. In my other other life, I’m an Emmy-winning comedy writer. If you’re looking to staff, get in touch! And if you love the newsletter, you can always consider tipping me, by enrolling in the paid tier!