Surfing in Venice: Of Cootchy and Kitchens

If you're up late channel surfing in Italy, you get an eye full. After 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays, two adjacent channels offer you non-stop soft-core jiggling. Neither actually has an uninterrupted bounty of boobaciousness. As you'd expect, each has plenty of advertising breaks. Why else broadcast such a slathering of slippery skin if not to sell ad space? But as the two stations' flesh fests run concurrently, they appear to have worked out a rather thoughtful arrangement: they never take ad breaks at the same time. So, even the half-awake channel surfer quickly works out that when there are ads on one channel, there's definitely tits on the other one. I suppose the programmers have to be realistic about the likelihood of their orb-obsessed viewers sitting through commercials. All the ads this reporter saw were for kitchen cabinetry. While I'm definitely down with my insomniac Italian brothers' breast fixation, the association with purveyors of fine counter tops eluded me. Maybe the advertisers are betting on guilt: that you might want to do something nice for your wife after watching all the 19-year-old nipply nubility? The Italians have imported two familiar soft-core brands: one channel pushes Playboy while the other pimps Penthouse. But for some reason they've felt the need to re-name the programs for the local audience. I missed the name of one channel, but the other is imprinted on my brain for ever, a wonder of porn globalization. You can look for it by name the next time you're in Italy and up late. Just tune into Super Sexy Blob. Come to think of it, maybe I should re-name this space. Stay tuned. ..