Screens, Everywhere

Jet Blue used to be a fun treat, before its prices stopped
being a bargain and before the (three then four then seven dollar) bus
from downtown Los Angeles to LAX was invented and Long Beach seemed more
ridiculous and arduous a trek than ever. Especially
since I was then TV-free, I liked having a few hours tethered to my own
personal TV set while I whiled away the trek from coast to coast; when I first moved west, I would settle in on trips back east
and eagerly scour the commercials to see how many downtown LA backdrops I could spot in
the scenes.

Now, I just fly the
cheapest ticket I can get, and this time, with cable TV installed in my place, I intentionally didn’t bring enough
reading material for the plane because, well, I figured since I was leaving my
new utility for five days, perhaps I should attempt to keep watching from the
friendly skies. If only for the purpose of this blog. They have those TV
shows on there, anyway, so I figured it would count for something other than
just movies. I eagerly plugged my
headset in to see this show called Community, because who isn’t craving more of
that? Every single person I know is, in some form or fashion.

When I realized Community
was a modifier for the word "college," that was cool, too, because who wouldn’t be
interested in a show about an educational institution? Especially since I could tell immediately that
it would be Loveboat-style, you know, the kind where several characters develop over time. Plus, Chevy Chase is so charming, even
now (especially now) that he’s all gray.

It took me about three minutes (I didn’t clock it, cause I
turned off my beloved iPhone at the behest of the flight attendant) to unplug
the headset in disgust. It was
such stupid drivel and the characters such cartoons (in the worst possible
sense of the word) that I couldn’t suffer through it any longer. It’s funny how dumb-ed down, populist
stuff is harder to do than you think.
Despite the fact that I’m a native of Brooklyn, I never was much of a
fan of Welcome Back, Kotter, but Horshack and clan would have been far more
compelling.

The Office was up next, but the mystique of that show has
always eluded me, too; if you work all day with a bunch of buffoons engaging in
office politics, why on earth would you want to come home and watch more of the
same? As an affirmation? I just find it all terribly depressing,
that we are all anesthetized by screens wherever we go. How can I feel that way since while
away countless hours in front of another screen? Is it because this one lets me talk to it? After a few minutes, I unplug my headphones and turn on my iPhone, and listen to some talks by the former monk Gil Fronsdal, which I carry with me in case of emergencies like this.

As I finish this, I am sitting in front of a 47 inch Vizio
flat screen at my friends' house in a lovely burg in Westchester. The new device is the pride and joy of a living
room that used to have as its focal point a giant old-fashioned pool
table. We are watching Monday
night football; for years I’ve tried to understand the game and I have this
mental block against it. But it's fun to be with old friends, drinking wine, yapping about the world, ignoring their occasional color commentary. M. is trying to explain the game to me again; I know he has twenty times before; i still don't get or want to get it, but I let him try just for the ego of it.

The man of the house just announced to the two of us that he's got to go to sleep, that he'll be up to run at 545am, right before his long commute to work. Sorry if he disturbs us. That was just after he regaled us with tales of his recent early morning fishing expeditions with an old friend. "It's not that I love to get up early," he said. "But I love doing something useful early. The difference is I used to watch a whole lot more television, and I gave that up to do these other things."

M. and I, liberated from day jobs for now, keep drinking wine, stretched out on the sofas that have replaced the pool table. It's hard to imagine we've all known each other for decades. Somehow we are now killing time, with the Cowboys victorious, watching the Colbert Report, followed by Michael and Michael Have Issues, and a Girls Gone Wild commercial comes on. Time to excuse myself to go to sleep.