The Weed of TV Bears Bitter Fruit
Baseball season's started and the Yankees are on TV this afternoon but other than that, I still am as down on television as I've ever been. While I can recognize some really talented sparks behind a lot of the crap and cliche and garbage onscreen, the overall effect, to me, is of a time-draining, mind-numbing void in my day. How much time could a lot of us save if we weren't aligning ourselves with the networks' half hour grids? Don't wait for the ending, just turn it off...
I've found that I've fallen into a habit of turning the thing on while I eat, and then shutting it down as soon as I'm done. Not sure what the point is in that other than I've been feeling compelled to distract myself from my own thoughts. So lately I've been listening to Old Time Radio (OTR) broadcasts over the internet. You can find just about anything (as far as I know), including the original broadcasts of shows like The Shadow and Suspense.
I was listening to an episode of The Whistler the other day when my daughter came down to visit. She sat down on the floor, listened for a few minutes, then asked me to pause the playback. "What is this?" she asked.
Before there was television, I told her, there was radio. It was like watching TV without the pictures.
Interestingly, rather than equate the radio to reading aloud, she compared it to television and said, "How do you know what's going on?"
The same way you do when you read a book, I said. You read the words and the story takes place in your imagination.
"Ohhhhh," she said, as if it may actually have been dawning on her.
The next day my son came down. He's almost four and I stopped The Shadow and found a character he's familiar with: Superman. The show came on and like his sister, he sat on the floor and listened for a minute. Then he started looking all around him, several times.
"I don't see it," he said.
Before I could tell him he wasn't supposed to, my daughter said, "Ricky, it's in your imagination."
So now that I've gotten them used to hearing voices in their heads... [Evil laugh goes here.] I have them now...
I've found that I've fallen into a habit of turning the thing on while I eat, and then shutting it down as soon as I'm done. Not sure what the point is in that other than I've been feeling compelled to distract myself from my own thoughts. So lately I've been listening to Old Time Radio (OTR) broadcasts over the internet. You can find just about anything (as far as I know), including the original broadcasts of shows like The Shadow and Suspense.
I was listening to an episode of The Whistler the other day when my daughter came down to visit. She sat down on the floor, listened for a few minutes, then asked me to pause the playback. "What is this?" she asked.
Before there was television, I told her, there was radio. It was like watching TV without the pictures.
Interestingly, rather than equate the radio to reading aloud, she compared it to television and said, "How do you know what's going on?"
The same way you do when you read a book, I said. You read the words and the story takes place in your imagination.
"Ohhhhh," she said, as if it may actually have been dawning on her.
The next day my son came down. He's almost four and I stopped The Shadow and found a character he's familiar with: Superman. The show came on and like his sister, he sat on the floor and listened for a minute. Then he started looking all around him, several times.
"I don't see it," he said.
Before I could tell him he wasn't supposed to, my daughter said, "Ricky, it's in your imagination."
So now that I've gotten them used to hearing voices in their heads... [Evil laugh goes here.] I have them now...
posted by Rick Ollerman at 11:25 AM
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