Sometimes, just sometimes, you look at your clock. It might be your phone. It’s midnight.
You think to yourself, “Man… what to do… I have the fucking Imperial Lounge… or the smoke-filled Tonic. Or horrible music at the Five Star. Well, I COULD get a bite to eat at Silver Peak, but hell they’re packed. I know lets cruise Virginia! Wait, I’m not that lame. Crap… what should I do, go cow tipping?”
Maybe you’re really hot on taking out your bomb-ass fart-noise making CRX, putting your hat on cockeyed and showing off your Pep Boys sound system at the Jack in the Box, but you just rememberd you don’t own a bomb-ass fart-noise making CRX and hate Jack in the Box and tuner cars.
Then again, you could just be ailing from the latest incarnation of influenza, and nothing, I mean NOTHING will make you feel better.
There’s no good shows, your girlfriend/boyfriend is being a dipshit, and you’re out of gas/bus money anyway.
….pregnant pause and hopeless, dramatic sigh…
Face it, you and your sensible tastes have nothing to do! Your night is for naught!
Wrong, Reno.
If you have the fifty cents for a bag of microwave popcorn, a $50 microwave, a paid power bill, and a cable connection that somehow works (of COURSE because you pay for it) and at least a landlord that isn’t clawing at your door, even you, sir or madam, can have a great night IN.
The fine folks at your local public access cable channel 16 have allowed commercial-free entertainment from Cheap Thrills Theatre. May 1997 gave birth to something terrible, on that day, and the philosophy of “…don’t shoot the messenger,” surely applies here.
Cheap Thrills Theatre doesn’t show good movies, in fact, they’re not even mediocre movies. They’re terrible movies. Not terrible in “Daddy Day Care,” kind of way, which makes you want to stick pencils in four of your five senses, but terrible in that way that makes you feel really guilty for watching– and enjoying!
They’re aficionados of the horror side of things, showing you movies that might have had a budget roughly the size of your last paycheck, but not more than three of your last paychecks. You cannot blame Cheap Thrills Theatre if you turn them on, and they subsequently don’t turn you on. That is your problem, not their’s.
The night (well, tonight…) I stumbled upon CTT, I was shown the amazing film, “The Velvet Vampire,” which was described by Cheap Thrills Theatre as:
“More hot bisexual vampire action as Celeste Yarnall runs around the Mojave desert in dune buggies, sucking snake venom out of another chicks’ leg, as well as sucking other things. Hippy counterculture/Manson family vampier action!”
Well, who now wouldn’t be enticed to such entertainment no matter what their persuasion?
So who is Cheap Thrills Theatre, anyway?
Mike Ward, or as he’s known amongst the rest of greater Reno proper, Mike Ward, (you can call him Mike, I think anyway…) is the show’s host, talking from the inside of what seems to be a refrigerator box (or a steamy mop closet) with very limited movement and nothing but a road flare for camera light. You might recognize Mike from such fine Reno institutions as Recycled Records.
On a personal note, Mike has introduced me to many interesting directions in my music listening, everything from Mister Bungle to The Future Sound of London. He’s been in this town for a while, and it is folks like him not moving away to more “urban,” or, dare I say, “cool places,” that help keep this town intelligent, snarky and legitimately sophisticated in a uniquely Reno way.
Cheap Thrills Theatre is available to you every single Friday at 12:00AM (which is really Saturday morning for you OCD fans out there), on SNCAT (That’s SIN-cat) cable channel 16. You will be graced with whatever choice they have decided to unleash upon your senses, and your complaints about it will probably fall on deaf ears (or blind eyes if you email them), so it is best advised to develop a taste for the tasteless when enjoying your feature presentation.
More information, show schedules and a by-date description of each show is available here:
http://www.cheapthrillstheatre.com/main.php
So don’t fret, my pretties, Friday nights are not lost due to boredom, Renoitis, or even just the weather going to crap. Let Cheap Thrills Theatre thrill you in ways you never imagined.
- Gay Rodeo
