The Cable Guy: Premium Cable, Premium Memories

The Cable Guy

I was raised on music, movies, and the kind of pop culture that burrows into your brain and never leaves. Some kids grew up learning life lessons from their parents. Some from older siblings. And some of us? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason we speak in movie quotes and song lyrics like it’s second nature.

If you were born in the ‘80s and raised in the ‘90s, you know exactly what I mean. TV, radio, and whatever movie you had on VHS weren’t just entertainment—they were background noise for your entire childhood. We memorized sitcom morals, flipped through CD booklets like sacred texts, and built entire personalities around whatever was playing on MTV that week.

And sure, maybe that makes it easy to draw comparisons between me and a certain overenthusiastic cable installer. But let’s not get carried away. Besides, unlike Chip, my friendships have always been entirely voluntary.

Which brings me to Stephanie.

Stephanie was the kind of friend who made life more fun just by existing. She had this perfect mix of casual coolness and contagious excitement—never forcing her interests on you, but making you want to love whatever she loved. She introduced me to so many things, but one of the most lasting gifts she ever gave me was The Cable Guy.

I met her my freshman year of high school and we connected almost instantly, though not just over movies. We both knew what it was like to lose someone who meant the world to us. There were gaps in our lives, spaces where people we loved should have still been, and somehow, in that unspoken understanding, we found a kind of comfort in each other. She once told me I reminded her of someone she had lost, and I took that as one of the greatest compliments I had ever received.

I was about fifteen when she let me borrow The Cable Guy, probably sliding the DVD over with a casual, “You have to watch this,” like it wasn’t about to change the way I saw comedy forever. It was a school night, sometime in the evening. I curled up in bed, snacks nearby, and pressed play, unaware that I was about to experience my first real taste of dark comedy.

I instantly loved it. The weirdness, the energy, the way Jim Carrey twisted his usual manic charm into something both hilarious and unsettling. And then the karaoke scene happened.

Chip Douglas throws himself into Somebody to Love like his life depends on it. Carrey’s version is… unhinged. He turns it into a full-blown, manic performance that is both comedic and unsettling. His screaming high notes are borderline terrifying (in the best way possible). I loved it; I absorbed it. It became part of me. And obviously it also made me think of Jefferson Airplane, a band I had already loved in passing but would now forever associate with this scene.

Stephanie was more than just a great friend—she was a bridge, connecting me to people who would become some of my closest friends in that season of life. Through her, I truly got to know Clint, Ricky, and Daniel. I had classes with some of them, but it was because of Stephanie, and her connection to Clint’s older brother, that I ended up in their circle. That’s the thing about friendships like ours—one good person has a way of leading you to other good people, and before you know it, your world is a little bigger and a lot brighter.

And then, of course, there was the Marilyn Manson flag.

Now, to be clear, I was never a huge Marilyn Manson fan. Not that I had anything against him—he just wasn’t my thing. Truthfully he kind of scared me a little. But Stephanie? Stephanie had this Marilyn Manson flag that she no longer wanted, and she decided I should have it. I wasn’t sure what to do with it at first, but then I realized it had an unexpected secondary use: as a deterrent.

At the time, my stepdad had a revolving door of less-than-ideal drinking buddies, many of whom had an unfortunate habit of stumbling into our house, using the bathroom outside my bedroom, and generally disrupting my peace. But as it turned out, nothing clears a hallway faster than a giant, looming Marilyn Manson flag. Something about his piercing eyes and skeletal aesthetic was enough to make even the drunkest of men reconsider their choices. Stephanie had unknowingly gifted me not just a piece of band merch, but a personal security system. And to this day, I don’t think I ever told her just how well it worked.

By the time I graduated high school and started finding my footing in the world, people had already decided who I was—the hippie. It wasn’t just about music or the way I dressed; it was the way I carried stories from an eclectic past, the way I talked about nature like it was an old friend, the way I gravitated toward spirituality and Native American customs like they were stitched into me. I had a deep love for music, a respect for the earth, and an instinct for finding meaning in the smallest things. So when my dad looked at me in my early 20s and said I reminded him of Grace Slick, I knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t just the dark hair and bangs—it was the energy, the aura, the quiet but undeniable presence. And honestly? I wore that like a badge of honor.

The Cable Guy was the beginning of something for me. It introduced me to a kind of humor I didn’t know I needed. It led me down a path that would later include Death to Smoochy and a dozen other films that took comedy to darker, stranger places. It became a comfort movie, the kind you revisit not just for the laughs, but because it reminds you of a specific time, a specific feeling, a specific version of yourself.

Stephanie gave me a gift in The Cable Guy and a Marilyn Manson flag that once gave me unexpected protection. Life is weird like that. It hands you moments, little gifts wrapped in absurdity and meaning, and sometimes you don’t even realize their value until years later.

The end of The Cable Guy always kind of lingered with me—two people lying in a satellite dish, looking up at the stars. Because even after everything, after all the noise, all the absurdity, all the chaos, all the reruns and rewinds, we all end up doing the same thing in the end. Searching for stars.

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