Why do I look around the apartment when I'm trying to think of something to write about? What am I gonna find there? I find there exactly what I find there all the other times I look around. A cat on the couch. A box of corn flakes and a bottle of vodka on the coffee table. Guitars lying on the floor begging for me to rock the party. An ironing board that I bought almost as a joke ("Whoo! Look at me! Making all my shirts all wrinkle-free! Woohoo! Pass the vodka and corn flakes!"). This is not inspiring material.

I suppose I shouldn't worry too much about it, since it's likely that one way or the other, I'm getting thrown out of this apartment pretty soon anyway. I don't want to be. I like this place. It's nice and spacious, and the way the artificial generic-brand synthesized prefabricated "logs" burn in the fireplace fills me with comforting visions of home as a young child. But I'm gonna get thrown out, and it's all because of cable television.

Apparently there are some unspoken rules in this place about the smells that can come from our apartments. I'm not sure what kinda fascist communist Third Reich crap this is, but they really should mention it in the lease. I come home expecting to be able to live my life in the fashion to which I've become accustomed, without fear of reprisal from the other people living around me, just because of the horrendous, godawful, unholy, unpredictable stench seeping from underneath my front door on any given evening. I'm only human, fer chrissakes.

See, I wasn't happy with just "Basic Cable". "Basic Cable" in central New Jersey, for those of you who are unfamiliar, consists of the City Council Meeting Channel and "Channel Thirteen", which is some strange channel that features very ugly people talking about very serious things. "Basic Cable" costs about $2 per month. If you want anything else, like ABC, NBC, or KKKTV, that's another C-note. But I can't have my viewing choices constrained like that. I need to see everything that's going on in the world, particularly if it has to do with Brittany "Britney" Spears or roasting 15 pound turkeys in rotating, fat-dripping rotisserie ovens. Yes, I prefer to "set it, and forget it." If you get that joke, get a fucking life, loser.

"What channels do you offer that occasionally show naked people at 2 AM on Saturday nights?" I asked innocently. Well, there were several choices, but all of them involved getting the Prime Gold Diamond Optimal Retina-Burning Eating Potato Chips From the Cushions of Your Couch package, which entitles you to, nay, hoists upon you, several other channels which you would never admit you watch in a hundred million years, especially if you were writing a daily column on the internet. Certainly not channels like the "Game Show Network", which I am told but am not sure because I never watch it features reruns of Match Game, which theoretically (since I have no direct experience with this) stars the brilliant David Ogden Stiers, may he rest in peace.

(That's "Charles Nelson Reilly".) Hey, if you say so. I dunno, I don't watch that crap.

So there I was searching around for naked people at 2 AM on a Saturday night, innocently, when I accidentally came upon one of the three thousand channels for which I am now authorized. It's called "Food TV". I like food. I like TV. Sure, I'll give it a shot.

The first show I ever watched on Food TV is a show called "Emeril Live". Unbeknownst to me, Emeril was already on his way to becoming a big star because of his show, "Emeril Live", on Food TV. But I understand it, because this show is the best goddamn show on TV. This dude named Emeril, who is Live by the way, stands up there, acts like a wiseass, and cooks stuff. He's even got a band. A cooking show with a band. What's next, "Stupid Animal Carcass Tricks?" Haha!! Get it? Boy, I kill me.

While I'm here, can you guys remember to remind me to remember to not write columns at what is now 10:32, when I had to be asleep by 10:00, or else I'm gonna be a mess tomorrow? Wouldya? Thanks.

Anyway, so Emeril stands up there and cooks the crap out of the place. He's like Martin Yan crossed with James Gandolfini, and cooks for an hour, and actually -- get this -- has fun while he's doing it. Not like all those other bastards on that stupid network. And I won't mention Martha Stewart, Ming Tsai, Bobby Flay, and that other guy by name, but you know who I'm talking about.

I can't turn away from this show. I watch it the whole hour. And he's throwing spices and flour and chicken parts around the kitchen all over the place, and there's calf liver splatted on the wall and blood is flying everywhere and the band is playing and he's maniacally stirring things which you're not allowed to stir in 21 states. This is fine. Television is meant to provide entertainment.

But no, I sit there and I get inspired. "Look how easy it is!" I scream (which reminds me of the other complaints I've received, but that's a different column.) "He's just having fun and basically doing random spasmodic movements and he is creating masterful culinary tours de force like they're going out of style! I can do that!!.

Yah.

Turns out, though, I can't. Turns out, you actually have to know the proper ingredients and how to organize and cook them in order to prepare something which could be identified as "food" in a court of law, if necessary, which I hope it won't be. Turns out, it's not all that easy.

Turns out, neighbors don't take kindly to impromptu science experiments that blast clouds of noxious fumes through the halls all in the name of autistic gourmet cookery. I've explained that my creativity should be left free to blossom, and they've explained in turn (through alcohol-soaked rags) that their flowers are wilting and their dogs are farting and their children are growing green spores.

Always one to look on the bright side, though, maybe once I get thrown out and find a new apartment, I'll arrange the couch, guitars, cat, ironing board, corn flakes and vodka bottles in a more inspirational way.