Ode to a TV

I got my television set about a year ago when I moved from Goodwill: $60 and it came with rabbit ears. When I turned it on and there was a moderately discernable picture, I felt like the kid who just robbed the entertainment candy store.

I’ve since learned that the TV is haunted and that the ghost is particularly petulant and not a big fan of me. Numerous times either myself or my former roommate would come home to a turned-on, blaring TV that neither of us had watched for a few weeks. It scared the shit out of a houseguest who thought for sure we were being robbed by the loudest villains ever.

Its location has fluctuated with my mood between the living room and my bedroom, and it doesn’t seem to affect its performance. Occasionally it’ll refuse to turn on for a few days, and it didn’t work a lick from June to August. As I was seriously thinking about going back to Goodwill to get another TV, it started working again, and for two or three blissful days I had actual full-blown television performance.

For the last month or so though, the picture has been fine, but it doesn’t make any noise. I’ve tried everything my worthless law student ass can try as far as fixing it goes, and I’m not very industrious, so I just watch without any sound. This is mostly fine for about 95% of what I like to watch: sports and Jeopardy!, although it has given me an odd set of complaints.

My two biggest problems with Jeopardy! are the fucking clues where they bring on some only-moderately-attractive pseudo-guest reader to read the “answer” instead of putting the words up on the screen and the camera guy who gets tired towards the end of the show and doesn’t pan to the answerer’s mouth fast enough for me to try to lip read the answers.

Sports is enjoyable, because there’s no possibility you’ll hear the blowhards they have commenting these days. It’s kind of refreshing not to have a shit storm of nausea-inducing circular bullshit to have to try to not get stupider from while you watch an event that people who follow it regularly can actually, gasp, form opinions about on their own. If I hear one more knob pronounce, during a football game, that the team with more running yards wins like 75% of the time, I’m going to permanently remove audio as one of my criteria when choosing a television.

I guess I wouldn’t be disappointed if the my TV goblin decided to give me the audio back, but the experience of watching the picture without any cues from the language informs you of how programs direct your attention to certain parts of the screen, and how more awkward shit goes down that I’d never noticed. Like in Jeopardy! right before they go to the breaks all the contestants are on screen acting naturally awkward while robotron Alex is informing the audience for the fifty bajillionith time that they’ll be back after these messages.

Some of it still comes through: They haven’t taken away John Madden’s obnoxious little screenwriter pen thing yet, and every time he does it it reminds me of the SNL skit where OJ draws out ‘I did it’ in football analysis.

I refuse to end this retarded little ramble with a sentence tying this whole experience to a larger theme that purports to explain the essence of human existence. Deal with it.