Cable Me
It’s such a joy, dealing with our local cable monopoly, whose name I won’t mention for fear of suddenly getting nothing but Teletubbies on every channel. Thanks to government re-regulation, I now have to pay for "extended cable." "Basic cable" now consists of the local network affiliates, plus PBS, Home Shopping, and C-SPAN. If you watch more than ten minutes of any of these channels without beginning to mutate and develop actual vegetable tissue, you are probably one of the people who owns the Kevin Costner Boxed Set DVD’s, containing all 257 hours of the director’s cuts of his riveting films, including Waterworld, The Postman, Dragonfly, and ...
Sorry, I dozed off. Where was I?
Anyway, doctors warn that such a high threshold of boredom can be life-threatening, since by the time you sense the boredom creeping up on you, you are already in a coma. However, you are saving a fortune on your cable bills.
I, on the other hand, am now paying 30% more per month. This is only fair, since I get 50% more channels that I can stand to watch. I also get some channels that I can only tolerate ten minute doses of, but they are hipper than those on basic cable. For example, MTV2 helps me by playing all the bands whose CD's I want to make sure I never buy. True, regular MTV gives me my Shakira fix. Although I don’t know the words to any of her songs, I sure love her videos. Very artistic! But only MTV2 provides endless reruns of quality programming like Wild Boys and Bam Margera is a Scumbag (or whatever his show is called) in between shows apparently animated by 16-year-olds on some mixture of LSD, crack, and Twizzlers. Yes, Cartoon Network shares a similar writing staff on Adult Swim. I often find myself wondering at the end of such programs what the hell I just saw. This is how I know it must have been really cool.
But all of this entertainment comes at a price, and I don't just mean the $147 monthly fee. Running the nerve center up in the heavily-guarded cable satellite tower, there is a guy named Bernie. I can’t tell you how I know this without jeopardizing my sources, but trust me, his name is Bernie. He sits all day at a massive control panel, not unlike the one at the SAC NORAD missile command center, only much more important. He monitors all the channels available to area subscribers and with the flip of a switch he can black out any one he chooses. All he needs is an excuse.
Then the call comes in. "It's raining in Atlanta," the caller tells Bernie. Bernie grins maniacally, rubbing his hands with glee. There is a mystery showing on one of the Atlanta "superstations." Bernie's hand rests poised on the switch. The detective says, "It puzzled me at first, but I've figured the whole thing out. Mrs. Milford wasn’t killed by a rogue meadow vole. The murderer is...." Bernie flips the switch, laughing out loud. He is the only one who finds out the identity of the killer. He flips the switch back as the credits roll.
Bernie has an amazing touch, because I personally have missed the crucial part of at least a dozen movies. It is not always rain in Atlanta that gets blamed for these outages. Sometimes it is hail in New York, wind in Boston, or satellite transmission error. The latter means that Bernie had too great an opportunity to pass up, and couldn't wait for a legitimate weather event.
While I seldom watch sporting events when not forcibly intoxicated and tied to my chair, which happens to everyone once in a while, I often attempt to watch the “time approximate” shows that follow. Usually a baseball game actually ends within the three hours scheduled, but this is not enough. There is still the post-game highlights and analysis which consists of such thunderously brilliant commentary as the following: “So, Biff, how come the Wheezing Gophers won this one?” “Well, Skip, they just scored more points than the other team in the time allotted. They’re good at doing that sometimes, except when they lose.” But viewers either just saw the game or deliberately avoided seeing it, so who cares about highlights? Anyway, the post show lasts just long enough so that your show is “joined in progress.” In progress for whom, you wonder? For Bernie, of course, whom else?
Nevertheless, for all its faults, indeed perhaps because of them, cable can bring people together. It can broaden our sense of community, and help us to understand people we have never met. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish planning how to storm the satellite tower with my neighbors.
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