No, You’re Not Hallucinating; You’re Simply E!-ing

I was on vacation in Oregon, flipping channels in the hotel room, because that’s what you do when you’re on vacation. This was midmorning flipping, when there’s an inherent danger of running into “The View.”

Instead, I landed on E! Entertainment Television. An actor I didn’t recognize was showing off his house. It was no manse--in fact, I could have sworn I passed by some of his throw pillows recently on my way out of Crate & Barrel. The actor is on some soap opera; his name escapes me. I am sure he is a lovely gentleman. But I had a moment of disconnect, of total confusion, before I realized what was the matter--I was not impressed by his house.

I am old enough to remember when Robin Leach was offering breathtaking views of French Riviera getaways, spewing hyperbole. But those were the Reagan ‘80s. These days, we are lying in an Oregon hotel, bloated on celebrity, watching a soap opera actor shoot hoops in his driveway.

Writer-performer Brian Unger, who last year hosted a short-lived show on E! called “Hollywood Offramp,” jokes that he wanted to pitch a show that would feature celebrities asleep, in 22-minute increments. He wanted to call the show “Famous People Sleeping.” “It works on several levels,” Unger says. “You have Brad Pitt sleeping, he’s A-list, but you also have Tony Danza sleeping. I’m just as curious to see if he drools, too.”

Tony Danza sleeping--it’s as apt an image as any to speak to the quirky appeal of E!’s cheapie library of in-house programming. The channel--begun in 1987 as Movietime, a low-rent promotional vehicle for studio releases, then relaunched as E! in 1990--is now available, according to E!, in 72 million homes domestically and 120 countries worldwide.

A little more than a decade in, the network is running suspiciously low on fresh celebrity meat. And yet, in plumbing the depths of the B-and C-lists, E! has always been a kind of camp treat, a daily experiment in what it means to fill your air, 21 hours a day, with someone doing something that suggests glamour or celebrity.

On Sept. 16, when Joan Rivers pulls frightened celebrities toward her as part of wall-to-wall pre-show coverage of the Emmy Awards telecast, E! will temporarily break out of the stupefying loop of imagery that makes it ideal television to stare at while churning away on a Lifecycle at the gym.

You could say this, I suppose, about other all-something cable channels. This has been a summer in which viewers have witnessed the all-news cable networks play the Condit-Levy scandal to obsessive lengths, though these networks say they’re simply telling a good story over and over to viewers who arrive at different times of the day and night.

E!, by contrast, is not under such constraints, but what it suggests is more profound: The cult of celebrity is so strong we even want to know where a former cast member on “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” lives.

Hoping to get a better understanding of our wretched E!-ness, I spent an entire day and night watching--beginning at 7 a.m. with “E! News Daily” and signing off at 1 a.m. after “Wild On: The Amazon.” It was a week in which Kidman and Cruise were inching toward divorce, Ben Affleck had checked into a Malibu rehab and Mariah Carey was recovering from a reported emotional breakdown. And yet, on this day, I heard very little about any of them (E! got to them later in the week).

But to watch E! for an entire news cycle is to understand the network’s mandate: Air-kiss the industry, sell its products, but don’t touch any story that will compromise your all-access pass or red-carpet position. Satisfy the viewer’s need for dirt with decades-old scandal. Leave Ben and Nicole and Mariah and Lizzie alone. Go after Hedy Lamarr. Investigate, for instance, whether Hedy really did shoplift laxatives at an L.A. Eckerds Drugs in the 1990s.

The day went like this:

* 7:06 a.m.: “E! News Daily”: In news from movie junketland, Nicole is interviewed to promote her film “The Others.” She dodges gently probing questions about soon-to-be-ex Tom from reporter Greg Agnew. Agnew very cleverly asks whether Nicole is a Scientologist, although he codes it as: “Will you and Tom attend the L.A. premiere of ‘The Others’ together?” (Read you loud and clear, Greg.) We do learn that Nicole wants to train to become a helicopter pilot. Says Agnew: “She loves that sensation of just being up there, hovering.”

* 10 a.m.: “The E! True Hollywood Story: Magnum P.I.”: It’s E!’s second-highest-rated series (about 335,000 of us are on hand anytime it airs), and the show’s genius is multilayered. On the one hand, “THS” can play like documentaries for dummies, with the same banal information repeated over and over (“Remember, Universal wouldn’t let Tom Selleck out of his contract ... “). On the other hand, “THS” intones TV trivia--the cancellation of “Magnum,” for instance--in roughly the same manner FDR announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and thus is often very funny. Every episode has basically the same narrative arc: Star rises, star falls, star embarks on the path to enlightenment (or dies, whichever comes first). Where else can you learn that the Black Orchid, the restaurant Selleck and co-star Larry Manetti opened in Hawaii, did better business when it started serving lunch?

* 11:06 a.m.: “The E! True Hollywood Story: Herve Villechaize”: Did you know that at age 6, “Fantasy Island’s” Herve “showed maturity” in his paintings, but also an obsession with death?

* 11:22 a.m.: How about that he challenged actor Troy Donahue to a fight on the set of the movie “Seizure”?

* 1:36 p.m.: “Celebrity Homes”: Lorraine Toussaint, co-star of the Lifetime drama “Any Day Now,” says: “This house is an extension of me. Nothing gets placed in here that I’m not passionate about.”

I look around my living room. Am I passionate about anything I see? OK, maybe the leather club chair. I feel fairly passionate about the leather club chair.

But as Lorraine takes me through her tastefully appointed home (locations on “Celebrity Homes” are always a bit fuzzy and stalker-proof), there is just no denying that Lorraine has put tons more passion into her home than I have into mine. This is one of the fundamental shame-inducing features of the E! network. There is “us” programming (homely horse trainers get make-over) and “them” programming (Lorraine, who rescued an arch from a theater company that nicely accentuates her front window).

* 1:46 p.m.: On second thought, maybe there isn’t so much distance between us and them. Jon Huertas, a cast member on the 1999-2000 season of “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” explaining where he eats his meals in his freeway-adjacent home: “This area right here is where I like to eat, ‘cause it’s got a dining room table in it.”

* 2:18 p.m.: “Fashion Emergency”: Note to self: Try strategically placed highlights.

* 3:48 p.m.: “Mysteries and Scandals: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”: Host A.J. Benza is questioning Zelda Fitzgerald’s decision to become a dancer in her 30s. “A little late to be buying your first tutu,” he sniffs. Finally, someone with the courage to take on this issue. Benza is E!’s attack dog, except he sometimes attacks celebrities who are so dead the publicists are dead too, and the show has to use cheesy “reenactments” to tell the story.

Here, “Mysteries and Scandals” reenacts Scott opening his mail, Scott dying, Zelda taking a bath. Asks Benza: “Would Scott finish another novel before the gin finished him?” Benza speaks in a way that makes me wonder if he ever breaks character. Benza ordering a no-foam venti latte at Starbucks: “Cuppa Joe, doll face.”

* 4:32 p.m.: “E! True Hollywood Story: Gary Busey”: I am watching a Dr. Ludwig explain, with the aid of a plastic skull, the exact nature of Busey’s brain injury after a 1988 motorcycle spill. I have been watching E! for about nine hours, and I am beginning to experience that same disorientation you feel in a casino. I no longer know, for instance, what year I’m in.

* 7:30 p.m.: “E! News Daily”: I triangulate my position with a dose of “E! News,” which quotes concerned celebs about Ben’s rehab stint (Teri Polo: “God bless him--it’s an amazingly courageous act.” Question: Isn’t Ben in Malibu?) and plugs “American Pie 2” and the finale of NBC’s “Fear Factor.” The show is hosted by Jules Asner and Steve Kmetko, beautiful people but mellow, as if they’re always mentally having brunch. What is truly unique about this show, however, is the set, with its almost total whiteness, like after you die you don’t go to heaven or hell but to a place called E!, where everything is white except for these big colorful E! capital letters every now and then. Steve and Jules--your afterlife hosts--take you to brunch upon your arrival.

* 8 to 9 p.m.: Benza is back, with a double dose of “Mysteries and Scandals.” First up is Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, followed by Hedy. One hour, two dames, 13 marriages.

* 11:05 p.m.: “The Howard Stern Show”: Stern and his troops are evaluating whether a twentysomething woman is Playboy material. “Stern” is E!’s top-rated series, but as anyone who has seen “Wild On” (or its apparent companion piece, the commercials for “Girls Gone Wild”) will tell you, everything else in the network’s late-night lineup is mere prelude. “Wild On,” in which models from around the world prance around in bikinis (other stuff happens, I suppose), is what network television honchos like to refer to as a “distinctive show with a unique point of view.”

* 12:27 a.m.: “Talk Soup”: Two obese women are kissing and groping each other on a clip from “The Jerry Springer Show.” It is late, and I have been up for a long while, but I do not believe I am hallucinating.

Must ... stay ... strong. Three ... minutes ... to ... “Wild On”!