TV is DONE
The other night (Thursday, September 19th, 2013) I sprayed a sick joke all over the Internet.
It’s a take-off of that silly GEICO ad where a camel celebrates that Wednesday is hump-day.
Almost immediately my e-mail began ringing with responses.
Most were familiar with the GEICO ad; one even sent me a YouTube link to the ad.
They weren’t watching TV! (Gasp!) They were fiddling their computers — like me.
Does anyone watch TV any more?
My TV reflects my inclination to watch it.
It’s tiny. It ain’t much.
The screen is only 13 inches wide; it was the cheapest I could find.
My brother-from-Boston wondered how I could have such a thing instead of a 52-inch “plasma-baby.”
“My money is in them ‘pyooter thingies,” I told him, pointing. This Apple MacBook Pro cost over $1,100. I have a giant Epson Expression 10000XL scanner with an almost 12-inch by 17-inch platen. It set me back almost $2,000. I have a gigantic Epson Stylus “Photo R3000” photo-quality inkjet printer that cost me almost 800 smackaroos. I bought that large so I can print maps on 17-inch wide paper.
My TV cost about $200.
I have video-cable, but only the most basic service.
What matters is my cable is also Internet-service.
My video-service is so basic it’s secret. About all it is is the local Rochester channels, plus a few others.
I don’t watch TV at all. My TV sits atop a DVD recorder, and that records the local and national news.
Which I play back while eating supper; although that’s only about 30-40 minutes, so I’m not watching all of it.
Nothing is worth watching. Oprah and Dr. Phil are a joke.
“The View” is unbearable. Will they please stop congratulating each other? As if yammering about something on “The View” gives it value and credence. Would Bach or Mozart have a chance?
And what passes for prime-time comedy is dreadfully boring.
It’s quarter-to-nine and my TV is silent.
Here I am banging away on this here laptop — it’s far more interesting.
As a railfan, I can monitor the railroad-radio near Altoona, PA; and even watch the trains pass on a webcam.
All via the Internet.
And I used to play my train-DVDs on my TV, but not any more. This here laptop will play DVDs, and the screen is much more realistic, and larger.
I was born in 1944, which means I came-of-age during the time TV became prevalent, 1949 through the early ‘50s.
The first TV I ever saw was my paternal grandparents’, a giant 400-pound box with only a tiny 8-inch screen.
On it we watched Jack Benny and Bing Crosby.
The first TV my parents had was an RCA black-and-white console with a 12-inch round picture-tube.
By then weight was down around 100 pounds, but we had it repaired a few times, and inside was a fiery-furnace of glowing red tubes.
TV at that time was broadcast over-the-air like radio. Every house had a two-pronged antenna strapped to its chimney — or on the roof, like ours.
You hoped a hurricane didn’t destroy it. —That happened to ours once.
On that TV I watched Hopalong Cassidy, Howdy-Doody, and The Lone Ranger.
News was “Camel News Caravan” with John Cameron Swayze, sponsored by Camel cigarettes.
My father, an ardent Christian against smoking, used to turn down (mute) the Camel ads.
We also watched “Texaco-Star Theater” with Milton Berle (“Uncle Milty”). —My father was a Texaco employee; he worked in their oil-refinery in south Jersey.
That TV lasted through when we moved from south Jersey to northern Delaware, when I was 13.
Then it broke, and my father was not about to have it fixed. He thought TV was evil.
I remember the disbelief and dismay of my high-school English-teacher that I couldn’t watch some Shakespeare play. —I think it was “Ides of March.”
About 1958 color-TV came out, but to my mind it wasn’t worth it.
This opinion lasted through college into marriage. —My college, ardently Christian, didn’t allow TV.
We went at least 10 years without TV, and our first was a small Sears black-and-white portable.
We were in Rochester, and TV came over rabbit-ears; only three channels at first, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Plus a public-TV channel, and then another advertising channel. (I guess Rochester had only one TV-channel at first; it’s not that large a market. In south Jersey and northern Delaware our TV came from Philadelphia, a very large market.)
By the early ‘80s color-TV was good enough for me to buy a Sony Trinitron®.
I also bought a Sony Beta tape-player.
Occasionally I’d record a Public-TV program for playback (like “Nova” with Carl Sagan); and we rented movies.
Video also went to cable transmission. I switched to cable in Rochester, and when it finally went by out front of our new house in West Bloomfield.
West Bloomfield is rural, so no cable at first.
I also was buying train-videos. I still have my Beta tapes; I’ve never got around to tossing them.
Beta went defunct, replaced by VHS. I have VHS train-tapes too.
At least three Sony Trinitrons® passed over-the-years before we got what I have now. —Which was our first flat-screen; everything prior wasn’t.
My current DVD recorder is no longer Sony; it’s “LG.” I got it because it will dub video-cassettes onto DVD. My DVR is number three or four, and has a problem which will eventually cause replacement.
Meanwhile my computer has become triumphant.
Our first was a Windows PC with only a 40-meg hard-drive. That was about 20 years ago.
Since then I switched to Apple Macintosh, but mainly because the newspaper where I worked used MAC.
A beige G-3 Apple desktop replaced the PC, and the G-3 was replaced with a G-4 tower I still have. The G-4 was overkill when I bought it; a 60-gig hard-drive with two megs of RAM.
This MacBook Pro has a 500-gig hard-drive, and four megs of RAM; that hard-drive is big enough to swallow the entire Pacific fleet.
It took 50 years, I’d say.
Television has become stupid.
It’s no longer worth watching.
Even the sports-games my brother watches on his plasma-baby (football and baseball) are boring to me, including NASCAR, and I am (was) a car-racing-geek.
I’ve tried to watch the Super-Bowl, but I lose interest in minutes and fire up this computer. I can stand about 15 minutes of the Super-Bowl.
TV has become worthless, which my father asserted 40 years ago.
But there was coverage of the Kennedy assassination, the satellite launches and the Moon-landings; which more-or-less justify the medium.
The Kennedy assassination was while I was in college, so I was shut out. The Moon-landings etc. were while we were TV-less.
But......
Will anyone be fiddling their computers in 30-50 years?
Will the Internet become moribund?
I’ve heard people are more inclined to do Facebook than hitting a web-site.
That leaves me out!
Do I really wanna “friend” the police-department to be informed?
Would that interest me at all?
I’m falling behind — I’m almost 70.
But the main thing is right now this here ‘pyooter is much more interesting than my TV.
(And others seem to agree with me.)
• “Plasma-babies” are what my macho brother-from-Boston calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.”
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me, she wasn’t interested in TV.
It’s a take-off of that silly GEICO ad where a camel celebrates that Wednesday is hump-day.
Almost immediately my e-mail began ringing with responses.
Most were familiar with the GEICO ad; one even sent me a YouTube link to the ad.
They weren’t watching TV! (Gasp!) They were fiddling their computers — like me.
Does anyone watch TV any more?
My TV reflects my inclination to watch it.
It’s tiny. It ain’t much.
The screen is only 13 inches wide; it was the cheapest I could find.
My brother-from-Boston wondered how I could have such a thing instead of a 52-inch “plasma-baby.”
“My money is in them ‘pyooter thingies,” I told him, pointing. This Apple MacBook Pro cost over $1,100. I have a giant Epson Expression 10000XL scanner with an almost 12-inch by 17-inch platen. It set me back almost $2,000. I have a gigantic Epson Stylus “Photo R3000” photo-quality inkjet printer that cost me almost 800 smackaroos. I bought that large so I can print maps on 17-inch wide paper.
My TV cost about $200.
I have video-cable, but only the most basic service.
What matters is my cable is also Internet-service.
My video-service is so basic it’s secret. About all it is is the local Rochester channels, plus a few others.
I don’t watch TV at all. My TV sits atop a DVD recorder, and that records the local and national news.
Which I play back while eating supper; although that’s only about 30-40 minutes, so I’m not watching all of it.
Nothing is worth watching. Oprah and Dr. Phil are a joke.
“The View” is unbearable. Will they please stop congratulating each other? As if yammering about something on “The View” gives it value and credence. Would Bach or Mozart have a chance?
And what passes for prime-time comedy is dreadfully boring.
It’s quarter-to-nine and my TV is silent.
Here I am banging away on this here laptop — it’s far more interesting.
As a railfan, I can monitor the railroad-radio near Altoona, PA; and even watch the trains pass on a webcam.
All via the Internet.
And I used to play my train-DVDs on my TV, but not any more. This here laptop will play DVDs, and the screen is much more realistic, and larger.
I was born in 1944, which means I came-of-age during the time TV became prevalent, 1949 through the early ‘50s.
The first TV I ever saw was my paternal grandparents’, a giant 400-pound box with only a tiny 8-inch screen.
On it we watched Jack Benny and Bing Crosby.
The first TV my parents had was an RCA black-and-white console with a 12-inch round picture-tube.
By then weight was down around 100 pounds, but we had it repaired a few times, and inside was a fiery-furnace of glowing red tubes.
TV at that time was broadcast over-the-air like radio. Every house had a two-pronged antenna strapped to its chimney — or on the roof, like ours.
You hoped a hurricane didn’t destroy it. —That happened to ours once.
On that TV I watched Hopalong Cassidy, Howdy-Doody, and The Lone Ranger.
News was “Camel News Caravan” with John Cameron Swayze, sponsored by Camel cigarettes.
My father, an ardent Christian against smoking, used to turn down (mute) the Camel ads.
We also watched “Texaco-Star Theater” with Milton Berle (“Uncle Milty”). —My father was a Texaco employee; he worked in their oil-refinery in south Jersey.
That TV lasted through when we moved from south Jersey to northern Delaware, when I was 13.
Then it broke, and my father was not about to have it fixed. He thought TV was evil.
I remember the disbelief and dismay of my high-school English-teacher that I couldn’t watch some Shakespeare play. —I think it was “Ides of March.”
About 1958 color-TV came out, but to my mind it wasn’t worth it.
This opinion lasted through college into marriage. —My college, ardently Christian, didn’t allow TV.
We went at least 10 years without TV, and our first was a small Sears black-and-white portable.
We were in Rochester, and TV came over rabbit-ears; only three channels at first, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Plus a public-TV channel, and then another advertising channel. (I guess Rochester had only one TV-channel at first; it’s not that large a market. In south Jersey and northern Delaware our TV came from Philadelphia, a very large market.)
By the early ‘80s color-TV was good enough for me to buy a Sony Trinitron®.
I also bought a Sony Beta tape-player.
Occasionally I’d record a Public-TV program for playback (like “Nova” with Carl Sagan); and we rented movies.
Video also went to cable transmission. I switched to cable in Rochester, and when it finally went by out front of our new house in West Bloomfield.
West Bloomfield is rural, so no cable at first.
I also was buying train-videos. I still have my Beta tapes; I’ve never got around to tossing them.
Beta went defunct, replaced by VHS. I have VHS train-tapes too.
At least three Sony Trinitrons® passed over-the-years before we got what I have now. —Which was our first flat-screen; everything prior wasn’t.
My current DVD recorder is no longer Sony; it’s “LG.” I got it because it will dub video-cassettes onto DVD. My DVR is number three or four, and has a problem which will eventually cause replacement.
Meanwhile my computer has become triumphant.
Our first was a Windows PC with only a 40-meg hard-drive. That was about 20 years ago.
Since then I switched to Apple Macintosh, but mainly because the newspaper where I worked used MAC.
A beige G-3 Apple desktop replaced the PC, and the G-3 was replaced with a G-4 tower I still have. The G-4 was overkill when I bought it; a 60-gig hard-drive with two megs of RAM.
This MacBook Pro has a 500-gig hard-drive, and four megs of RAM; that hard-drive is big enough to swallow the entire Pacific fleet.
It took 50 years, I’d say.
Television has become stupid.
It’s no longer worth watching.
Even the sports-games my brother watches on his plasma-baby (football and baseball) are boring to me, including NASCAR, and I am (was) a car-racing-geek.
I’ve tried to watch the Super-Bowl, but I lose interest in minutes and fire up this computer. I can stand about 15 minutes of the Super-Bowl.
TV has become worthless, which my father asserted 40 years ago.
But there was coverage of the Kennedy assassination, the satellite launches and the Moon-landings; which more-or-less justify the medium.
The Kennedy assassination was while I was in college, so I was shut out. The Moon-landings etc. were while we were TV-less.
But......
Will anyone be fiddling their computers in 30-50 years?
Will the Internet become moribund?
I’ve heard people are more inclined to do Facebook than hitting a web-site.
That leaves me out!
Do I really wanna “friend” the police-department to be informed?
Would that interest me at all?
I’m falling behind — I’m almost 70.
But the main thing is right now this here ‘pyooter is much more interesting than my TV.
(And others seem to agree with me.)
• “Plasma-babies” are what my macho brother-from-Boston calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.”
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me, she wasn’t interested in TV.
posted by BobbaLew at 5:30 PM
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