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Souls glimpsed on talk show
By Pam Chickering
Courier
A new talk show opened last Friday night in Waterloo, but judging by the standards of the field, it won’t last too long. It neglected to feature any “stupid pet tricks.” It failed to titillate the audience with petty arguments between guests or snide comebacks. As talk shows go, the host didn’t interrupt enough, allowing guests to capture the audiences’ attention for minutes at a time with stories about their real lives. No one got into an argument on the set, nor did anyone confess to sleeping with the babysitter, and not a single guest did anything quite foolish enough to set audiences snickering at them after the show. The show didn’t make fun of anyone with a difficult to pronounce foreign name, nor “interview” striptease dancers about how they felt about their profession, then have them demonstrate their craft in the name of investigative journalism.
In short, the Jinx Davis Show just didn’t cut it in the talk show world, and that’s just how the host wants it.
Every week, Davis will rely on neighbors’ interest in knowing their neighbors to gain an audience for her show, a technique that has know little market success, and yet the audiences sat spell-bound to hear the real-life tales of this week’s guests, a jewelry-maker from Marshall, a secretary from Hubbleton, and a student and spokesperson for St. Coletta’s School in Jefferson.
Next week, and the week after that, it could be anyone: flutist, domestic engineer, and computer consultant. Davis trusts that they too, have a story, as the guests this week proved they did. Something about a talk show invites immediate intimacy, and the tendency by guests to reveal almost anything, no matter how tawdry, to gain a moments sympathy.
The
same dynamic went to work here in Waterloo, Friday night, with one exception.
Prickly humor notwithstanding, the revelations that came out about people who
volunteered to speak weren’t trite, but rather, glimpses of their souls, and the
stories they shared not to gain themselves sympathy, but to lend strength to
others. After a spate of humorous tale about his life as a Liberace
impersonator, Marshall resident Randy Anderson turned suddenly serious as he
turned the topic to his personal life. “I’ve lost 37 friends to a nasty
disease that’s been trying for 14 years to claim me—I think my mother must have
given me tenacity.”
With that, he began to speak of his friend Michael, who lost his mother at the age of 12, and lost his father at the same time to alcoholism. Later foolish judgment took down Michael’s promising career, but he built it up again, finally buying that cozy little home with his life partner. “I was supremely jealous—he even had a gardener,” Anderson said, then laughed the though off, growing quiet. “He had to deal with so much in his life, I was happy he finally had what he wanted out of life.” “I can’t tell you the shear terror I felt the last time I drove to Las Vegas to see him, “ Anderson said, “his neck was only that big,” he said indicating the breadth of a large drinking glass. “I thought, my God, he really is going to die.” “I have a lot of similarities to Michael,”
Hubbleton resident Sherrie Avery-king said, appearing
next. “When I was 8, my mother died of cancer, which gave my father the
excuse to drink himself to death.” Living in a silver trailer with two
other families, Avery-King sought solace in a “painted fantasy” of the Victorian
house down the street. Her fantasy seemed to come true when the lady of the
house took her to live with them, three months of whirlwind memories. Then
one day, the magnanimous lady led little Sherrie to the bar where her father
drank, giving her a little push and saying, “I’m so sorry Mr. Avery, but this
child just isn’t fitting into our family.” “Piss on you, you don’t fit
into my family either,” the adult Avery-King remembers thinking, drawing from
this incident a knot of courage that would carry her through, and which would
keep her connected to her family; sisters, daughters, in a positive sense
throughout her life. “In bad times, your mettle is really tested,” Avery-King
said. “You can either buckle under or pull yourself up from your bootstraps and
take what you have learned to make a better life for yourself and other,” she
said, with a nod from the crowd of family members who came to support her that
very night.
The final guest for the evening, who promises many further returns, was Jim Meier of St. Coletta's School in Jefferson. His philosophy on life? “At St. Coletta’s, we try to focus on the good stuff rather than the bad stuff. Let me be the one to give it, in the best way possible.”
It was not exactly an all-star lineup, at least in the sense of network talk shows and big approval ratings. But without stars, why did the audience emerge from the theater with such bright smiles?