It's a Beautiful Day, Go Outside!

My sister and I weren't allowed to watch too much TV growing up. It could be because our parents were teachers, although maybe they just wanted to save money on the electric bill.

My parents weren't Amish about it or anything, they just had certain rules. No TV (except for the news or 60 Minutes) during dinner, and very, very limited TV during the daytime. Whenever I mention the "no TV during dinner" rule to people they act like we were from Little House on the Prarie days.

"So what did you guys do while you were eating?"

"I dunno, I guess we just talked. Argued. Passed food around. Whatever normal families did."

"But you didn't watch TV?"

"Not while we were eating, no."

"Were you one of those weird families who had to complete logic puzzles at the dinner table? Did you have to go around the table and give dissertations on current events? Did you share craft projects?"

"We weren't the Tannenbaum family. We just ate. Like normal people around a table. Only we weren't watching Wheel of Fortune at the time."

It's still weird to me when I go to someone's parent's house and they bust out the TV trays. "I suppose I shouldn't say anything," I think. "Maybe they're too poor to have a dining room table, or they've really been anticipating this hour of E programming. Best not to say anything and go along with it."

But if that rule freaks people out, not being able to watch TV during the day really blows their mind. I'm not sure if that was an actual stone tablet rule or anything, or we were just hassled into going outside or given work whenever we were caught watching TV during daylight hours. I do remember an exception was made for Creature Feature every Saturday at 2:00 if I got my chores done, so thanks for that one, Mom and Dad.

So did my parent's TV rules affect us? I'm not really sure. I do know that my sister has a TV in every room in her house, and I almost always watch TV while I'm eating. And I'm generally watching something that I first saw on Creature Feature.

If I'm not eating, I get sort of weirded out watching TV during the daytime. I've gotten over this feeling by eating constantly, but you know those lazy Sundays where you watch football for 5 hours or watch whatever crappy movies TBS decides to run on a constant loop? I can't do that. If the sun is shining, and I'm trying to watch TV, it just freaks me the hell out.

It doesn't help that TV knows that. That's why they show crap on Saturday and Sunday during the day. I don't know if they made a deal with my parents years ago or what, but those days are where they dump all those terrible movies made from TV shows or syndicated shows like Mama's Family that exist in their own phantom time; where the sets look like a high school play and it's impossible to tell if the show was filmed in 1987, 1996 or 2008.

This is TV messing with you. "Why aren't you doing something," The television asks. "We can play this crap all day. You know you can't win. You're not going to catch Jaws or an episode of Arrested Development or even a cool nature documentary. It's going to be episodes of Charles in Charge and Rob Schnider movies all day long. Now don't you want to go outside? Isn't there some work you should be doing?"

No matter how I try to fight, I realize TV will win, as it usually does.

The Saddest Comedy in the World

A couple weeks ago I'm at the gym wondering why the elliptical machine insists on lying about the elapsed time (you can say 3 minutes as long as you want, Mr. Running Robot, but I think we both know I had to have been on you at least 10) and glanced up at one of the closed captioned TVs the gym offers. "Everybody Loves Raymond" was starting and since I needed something to take my mind off my lying robot coach, I started watching, pretending I had just been struck deaf from some terrible accident.

It's in the beginning, before the credits. Ray and his family are in the kitchen, trading barbs and insulting each other. Without sound or a laughtrack, the show was a bleak, depressing rumination on a family that hates each other with a blinding passion and takes every opportunity to point out each others flaws, yet is somehow determined to stick together. It also helped that I was translating everything in overly dramatic 'actorly' voices with lots of pauses, so that it went sort of like:

"Raymond. (pause) You did not empty the dishwasher again."

"I know, honey. I (pause) just (pause) forgot, OK?"

Here's an actual script I found off the internet:

Ray: Take a look at your daughter.

Debra: Yeah, so? She looks happy.

Ray: She’s happy, that’s very happy.

Debra: What, shall we call a doctor, Ray?

Ray: I… look, I’m just saying, look how good it is to be five. Oh, you’re truly happy at five. You’re happiness peaks at five.

Debra: Oh, come on, I’m happy.

Ray: You’re not that happy. You can’t be. Look at her. Ally, what are you thinking of?

Ally: Candy.

Fill that full of pauses and serious voices and you can see what a depressing view the writers of "Everybody Loves Raymond" have on marriage, childhood, and the elusiveness of happiness.

I can't wait til tonight when I get to dramatize "Two and a Half Men" in this manner.

Cables

So I finally got cable back after a year and a half or so. Sadly, this means that progress on my two-volume history on the Balkan War has ground to a halt, but that is the price the world must pay to keep me in entertainment.

And what entertainment!

Did you know that there are several television shows devoted to parents with 8 kids or more? And at least three shows dealing with cakes? And about a gazillion shows where attractive people solve gross murders with forensic science?

Now that I have hundreds of channels at my fingertips and a DVR to tape them all, I have no use for the outside world at all. Plus, local and cable news keeps telling me how scary the world is anyway. So if I don't see you for a while, don't worry, I'm OK.

Too Much Horror Business

If you've read any of my stuff before, it is apparent that I have no taste or discrimination at all when it comes to media. Hell, I'll watch just about anything. And if that thing is Halloween-themed, I'll watch it even quicker. So after going home sick today I popped in my latest Netflix treat, "Paul Lynde's Halloween Special." I figured the cold medicine would enhance it.

Now, I knew going in that it wasn't going to be good. But I figured that it couldn't be that bad.

Holy crap, was I wrong.

Bad musical numbers and jokes you can see coming from a mile away make you wonder, "Was this for kids?" "Slow people?"

I suppose it can be instructional in showing the kids today how shitty TV could be back in the '70s, and Kiss does a couple songs, but other than that, stay far, far away.

You'd really think Paul Lynde would be much more discriminating in his choices of roles.

In happier media news, I finally got volume 5 of the 42nd Street Forever exploitation film trailer DVDs. Man, I could watch those things constantly. The best thing about this volume is the crazy juxtapositions between cheap-ass kid shows like "Pinocchio's Birthday Party" up next to the barbarians and boobs epic "Sorcerers" next to kung fu and science fiction trailers.

You should totally get that from Netflix. Hell, you should actually pay for it. Just stay far, far away from Paul Lynde.

Yule Never Understand It

So I'm all nestled in the in-law's guest room the night of Christmas Eve, all full of turkey and Christmas cheer. I'm flipping channels on the TV, trying to find something that will help me fall asleep.

Hey look! It's the Yule Log!

For those who don't know, a couple channels suspend their usual programing for a few hours around Christmas and instead show a close-up of a fireplace. I suppose with the right eggnog this can be strangely hypnotic.

I'm about to turn the channel when I notice they're using the audio from "It's A Wonderful Life."

That's kind of strange, I think. I guess they're trying to set a scene, like you're falling asleep in front of a fire while somebody's watching TV on Christmas. That's kind of coo- what the hell?

This version of the movie was taken from a live screening with some sort of mics on the audience, so every couple minutes you'd hear a roomfull of phantom people laughing.

So I keep getting hypnotized by this log and trying to follow along with the movie, which is pretty hard since every couple of minutes a roomfull of Christmas ghosts start laughing at me.

I wasn't the only one. A co-worker happened to catch it at the beginning and thought that the two burning logs were the voices of Clarence the angel and God.
Apparently, this year's grand experiment caused all sorts of controversy with dedicated yule log watchers, who I guess were used to Christmas carols or something as the audio.

Me, I'm itching to catch this psychedelic Christmas show again next year.

Riding the Storm Out

You know what's awesome about our TV being broken? Not having to watch hours of local news clowns stand out in the rain saying stuff like,"Well, we don't know where or when the storm is going to hit, but it sure is windy and rainy out here at the beach." Then they go and harass some surfers who seem to be doing just fine.

Instead, I can just look on the internet and see what's going on.

You know what's not awesome about our TV being broken? Not watching sweet, sweet TV.