we’ll pass out on the couch

Our first TV in the new house was an ancient LXI 15” model that I happened to have lying around. It was intended as a placeholder for the cable guys to check the connection with when they did the installation a couple weeks prior to my future wife and I moving into the house. I set it up on a table (with a sign saying “this is where the TV will be”) in the approximate location of where the real deal would go when we finished the move. When I stopped by the house that evening to check their work, it was in the opposite side of the living room, with a meager eighteen inches of cable connecting it to the jack. My wife and I spent our first night in the house. Halloween 2004, sprawled out awkwardly on the couch, squinting as we watched The Phantom of the Paradise on one of the Encore channels. From such irritating circumstances do fond memories spring.

We did get the problem rectified in short order, and it wasn’t long before I had my “real” TV, a Sharp 25”, set up in the proper place and digital cable-ready. Sadly, the cathode ray honeymoon lasted less than a month before the picture tube made a most curious “pop,” accompanied by the smell of burnt plastic. It happened on a Saturday morning, while I was trying to get in a couple hours worth of Killzone before my wife got out of bed. Resigning myself to the situation, I headed off to Sears and picked out a shiny new, yet affordable, 27” JVC TV -- which even out of the box filled the entire backseat (and then some) of Super Lumina, and I drove home from the mall with the driver’s seat pushed all the way forward and my knees touching the steering wheel. All was well again, sort of.

Even though I chose that particular model based on how its picture quality compared to other sets on the shelf, it wasn’t long before we started noticing certain issues it was having in the brightness/contrast arena. They weren’t terrible at first, but over the course of the next thirty months got progressively worse, to the point where certain games or movies became completely unwatchable. For example, one of Maura’s favorite films, Donnie Darko, became Pichie Blacko when viewed on it. I checked the internet for any info about the problem, but only ran across a lot of computer chair jeremiads and dubious-sounding solutions involving solid state trepanning procedures performed with a screwdriver and a high risk of accidental electrocution. (what u nd 2 do is poke sumthing sharp btwn the cracks in teh back of the case an wiggul it around it wurked perfect 4 me after that. -INSERT ANIMATED ICP GIF SIGNATURE HERE-)

Even though it became increasingly apparent that something must be done, I held off on replacing the set because:

- we agreed the next TV would be hi-def
- the prices for those sets were still rather high
- my budget didn’t have a lot of flexibility to absorb a big box purchase

(In the household division of finances and labor, things electronic and mechanical fall under my bailiwick, alongside all things automotive.)

Recently, though, I made it to the end of Super Lumina’s loan payment book, thus freeing up a considerable amount of cash per month, and an anticipated bit of car repair was deemed unnecessary, wiping out a planned expense I had already budgeted for. Also, Maura’s annual October marathon of horror film viewing was coming up, and she made it clear that she wasn’t going to deal with watching an almost completely black screen for an entire month. My (self-serving, I admit) argument that "the best horrors are the unseen ones" fell on deaf ears. So, last Monday I checked out my go-to place on the internet for cheap electronics and found a decently priced 32” diagonal RCA LCD HDTV, ready to ship once I hit the “place my order” button.

The notification of purchase said the TV was going to arrive on Friday. I’ve ordered many items from the same firm in the past and their ETA estimates have almost always been spot on, but Maura was still a bit paranoid because of infrequent delivery mixups involving our street and an identically named avenue running parallel to it two blocks over. (Only in New England, I tell you.) I used her paranoia to set up a big surprise reveal. The TV arrived while she was in town with her friend, and each time she called home to see if it came, I told her it hadn’t, even as I was testing connections and fiddling with various picture and sound options. By the time I came to pick her up at her parents’ house her rage had reached near nova intensity, calling down curses on everyone in the distribution chain.

It took her about five minutes to notice the new TV, at which point she shouted something that could have either been “What?!?” or “You bastard!” Pointless mind games make our love grow stronger. (That’s actually kind of true, as it lets me indulge my inborn predilection for emotional manipulation without causing actual harm.) Maura loves the TV, and also loved that fact that in setting it up I did not fall back upon my standard “fire and forget” methods of leaving the packaging and tools lying around everywhere when I was finished. I even carried the old TV up to the attic, an expenditure of manpower that my forearms, lower back, and shoulders are still in the process of paying off.

The funny thing is I don’t even watch that much TV. That’s not some highbrow declaration of snob superiority, but a simple statement of fact. Sitting and watching something on the small screen doesn’t come natural to me anymore, for some reason. Apart from a handful of shows I watch with the wife and the occasional movie, if I have the TV on, I’m either playing videogames (on weekend mornings or vacation days) or have it set to the Retroactive punk/new wave/alternative digital music channel while I’m reading or trying to write something.

My empirical experience has been that folks whose parents wouldn’t allow them to watch television as children generally possess a higher degree of fuck-up-ed-ness than those whose parents didn’t make such a high moral stance about the boob tube. Besides, if television fare ever met the lofty bar set for it by shallow and disdainful intellectuals, they’d just raise their minimum acceptable standards. Elitism isn’t utopian; it’s oppositional. (“Being unappreciated by the vulgar masses” is a selling point unto itself.)

I’m not arguing the merits of Who Wants to Be Mediocre? (hosted by Johnny Pabulum) or the Let’s Laugh at Toothless Rednecks Getting Arrested or Yelling at Each Other show, but any mass medium worthy of the name is going to butter its bread with the lowest common denominator. It’s simple economics; watching an overindulged harridan throw a pre-nup nutty on Bridezillas taps into a far more pervasive entertainment need than sitting through three hours of interpretive dance numbers based on Maya Angelou poems ever could. One could argue that statement is a merely an indictment of the underlying issue, but the truth is that there will always be a wide audience for bear-baiting, no matter what guise it presently wears.

Kursaal Flyers – Television Generation (from a 1977 single; collected on DIY: Teenage Kicks - UK Pop I 1976-1979, 1993) – Poised at the intersection of punk, pub rock, and power pop, which is a very interesting place to be, all said – a paradise of killer hooks and quirky humor. Upon the band’s dissolution, drummer Will Birch went on to form the acclaimed power pop outfit, The Records.

Front 242 – Television Station (from Official Version, 1987) – Comes in like a lion and out like incidental music from an 80’s teen film. Or, as my friend once said about Ministry’s Twitch LP: “It sounds like the music they play in Tello’s.” (We’re talking circa 1991 or so.)

I was in Tello’s not too long ago with Maura while she was looking for a blouse to wear to last weekend’s wedding. They had a box of nipple coverings for sale at the register. I also saw a really nice crushed velvet men’s suit jacket I’d have bought in a second if they had one in red.

Pulp – TV Movie (from This Is Hardcore, 1998) – I’m still not entirely convinced that this isn’t some lost Pink Floyd/David Bowie collaboration, dusted off and presented by Jarvis Cocker and company as a prank.

The best TV movie ever? Bad Ronald, of course.

Black Flag – TV Party (from the Repo Man OST, 1984) – First punk album I ever bought. Listening to it gives me flashbacks to sitting on the Revere Beach seawall in middle of February with the cassette version playing in my off-brand Walkman. Why was I hanging out on the beach in the wintertime? Beats the heck out of me.