Remember When News Was News?

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of two weddings in Philadelphia and the ensuing brawl and tragic death of the uncle of one of the brides. In fact, I’m sure you’ve more than heard of it – likely you’ve seen the video, over and over again. I know I did.

Or perhaps you’ve been more focused on the fans at the Kansas City Chiefs football game, who cheered when quarterback Matt Cassell left a 9-6 loss to the Baltimore Ravens with a concussion. There’s so much news out there it is hard to choose how to spend one’s time.

Last night I watched a cable news channel in hopes that the resident analysts would direct me to the most important stories. I happened to tune in to the middle of a report about a man who had left a teaspoon full of cereal in the cereal box, and put the box back in the cabinet, not considering the fact that he was taking up valuable cabinet space with an amount of cereal that would satisfy not even the smallest mouth. The show had lined up a panel of experts to discuss the event.

“This is further evidence of the fragmentation of the American family,” one expert said, head neatly fitting in to the box allotted to it on the screen.

“Well, I think the problem is that the husband just assumes his wife is going to take care of it,” said a second. “Clearly the kitchen is still seen as a woman’s domain. We have a long way to go.”

“I take offense to that statement,” said the third expert, a little taller than the others, and who kept ducking to stay within the confines of the box. “This isn’t about gender wars. This isn’t about family, either. This is a conspiracy by bowl-manufacturers in making us think that a teaspoon of cereal is not a serving.”

The fourth box on the screen was reserved for the host, who said to the camera, “What do you think about this guy leaving a teaspoon of cereal in the cabinet? Email us your comment to the address at the bottom of your screen. We want to hear from you.”

I changed the channel to another cable news program. This time the event was a birthday party gone awry. The parents of the little birthday boy had served soft drinks as refreshments, and several of the guests had been raised in homes where the only available beverages were water and freshly squeezed guava juice. One of the kids had filmed the entire thing with his cell phone, and now millions of viewers were treated to a grainy video of children being served soda.

This show had adopted the round table format for its experts. The nutritionist called this behavior “appalling.” The child social worker also said it was “disturbing.” The famous tort litigator – plugging his new book, “Holding Party-Throwers Accountable” – eagerly set forth several theories of liability.

“The key question,” the attorney said, “is whether the parents will be seen as acting with malice in serving the soft drinks, and not merely negligence. If its malice, it will mean big dollars. If negligence, just dollars.” The host of the round table ran the video clip again, and all agreed – myself included – that the parents’ faces were malicious as they poured cola into little plastic cups for little hands. Disgusted, I turned to yet another cable news channel.

At first I did not know what I was watching. It was another video, this one of a man, sitting on a couch, holding a remote control, and starting straight ahead at something, likely a television. He looked vaguely familiar. He had the same pullover fleece and flannel pajama pants that I was wearing at that exact moment. And even the couch on which he sat his slovenly mass looked just like my couch. Perhaps he had been my classmate in high school.

The analysts were breaking down this man’s body language and discussing the ongoing epidemic of people not getting enough exercise. One of the experts started to say that with all the cable news programs available these days, showing clip after clip of ordinary people who do not know they are being filmed, it was no wonder that they can’t pry themselves away from the screen. Then a large monster emerged from the left side of the screen, devoured the expert in one bite, and the network went to a commercial.

I changed the channel to find another cable news program. They’re always going on about how people don’t get enough exercise.

Posted on 10 October 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 5

Remember When There Weren’t All These Crasher Shows?

The other night I was hoping to catch Civil Servants From Outer Space on the Science Channel, but instead my wife had already asserted dominion over the television with a program called Yard Crashers. Have you ever seen this show? The host of the show, Ahmed Hassan, is a licensed contractor, who loiters, along with a camera crew, at a giant home improvement megastore in search of someone with a pathetic yard. Usually there is a multitude of customers begging Ahmed to crash their yards, and he chooses a winner by selecting the yard with the most unreturned propane tanks.

The first time I saw Ahmed accost a potential yard crashee, I thought that he was just going to mow their lawn for them, perhaps mowing it in a cool checkerboard design instead of the swirling splotches that have become my voice in the neighborhood landscape. But I was wrong, as I spent the next half-hour of my life watching Ahmed and his crew help these poor homeowners turn their dump with a swing set into Six Flags Great Adventure, complete with turnstiles and rotating racks of signs that say things like “Jennifer’s Room.”

I soon learned that Yard Crashers was only one of several members of the crasher genre of home improvement shows. House Crashers, where Josh Temple shows homeowners that the secret to having the house of your dreams is a liberal use of the sledgehammer. Bath Crashers, where Matt Muenster trains homeowners to hang up wet towels instead of leaving them crumpled up on the bathroom floor. And, of course, Kitchen Crashers, where Alison Victoria proves that there is a God, and that His name is Granite Countertops.

The current slate of crasher shows might only be the beginning. There could be crasher crossovers, the Yard Crashers and the House Crashers unwittingly crash the same house, and everyone’s embarrassed because there’s not enough pizza to go around.

Or a reverse crash, where the crew chooses a home with a perfect, modern kitchen and after three days the kitchen has warped cabinets with peeling paint, a cracked white sink, and the same gold-flecked Formica countertops that belonged to the homeowner’s mother.

There could even be a crasher show where someone literally crashes a truck through the front of a house, as a way of demonstrating that a home improvement project can always be found.

But why limit ourselves to home improvement? There are other areas of human endeavor that could use some crashing. For example, there could be a show on the Learning Channel called Book Crashers, where people who are behind on their Chaucer are invaded by a literature professor who stays with them for three days, and then sends them a bill for $40,000.

A personal favorite of mine would be a show called Crasher Crashers, were a husband who doesn’t like his wife’s crasher shows is visited by a home channel producer executive who teaches the husband to appreciate crasher shows, and to form an independent opinion of proper home décor that just happens to be identical to his wife’s tastes. And the show would air on ESPN.

The ultimate crasher show, however, would be called Human Crashers. A house inhabited with humans with antiquated ideas, habits, and looks, is crashed by a crew of other houses who help to renovate the humans, giving them new ears and mouths, updating them on the latest trends in fashion and music, and getting them to stop saying things like “a knock is a boost” and “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and from refusing to see the Christopher Nolan Batman movies because “nothing compares” to the 1989 Tim Burton film.

Posted on 30 May 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 11

Remember When Television Programs Didn’t Have Animated Promos For Other Programs?

When I was a young whippersnapper and could eat at McDonald’s three times a week without a health care proxy, there was a separation between television programs, the commercials that funded the television programs, and the advertisements for upcoming television programs that would attract more sponsors, who would fund more televisions etc. I could watch an entire episode of Growing Pains without being distracted by a tiny Tony Danza plugging Who’s the Boss in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, berating Samantha for buying a $300 pair of boots with her modeling money. I watched shows to be distracted from my life. I did not need a distraction from the distraction.

The only superfluous animation on television then was the channel with the stock-ticker, and I was subjected to that only on days when school was closed and my grandfather came over to watch me while my parents worked. I guess he never got the memo that the kids were supposed to choose the show.

But no channel these days leaves the house without distracting animation at the bottom of the screen. It would be like walking around without pants. During a show about an elite fighting force that infiltrates terrorist cells by offering discounted driveway sealing, there’s a little bride-to-be trying on a wedding dress in the bottom-right corner. During a show about how to make zucchini casserole in a coffee cup, there’s a tiny cupcake wearing an even tinier smiley face. During a sit-com about teenagers mouthing-off to their parents, there is a two-inch promo of a sit-com about teenagers mouthing-off to their parents.

I’m sure that when the networks decided to add the moving miniatures at the bottom of the screen, it was after careful market research that showed the average viewer’s brain could handle this level of multi-tasking. For to absorb the full meaning of the television program and the promo, the nervous system has some work to do.

In the same amount of time that Derek Jeter has to decide whether to swing at a pitch, the average television viewer has to decide whether the promo is worth the transfer of primary focus from the airing program. In the time that Derek Jeter has to move his arms, legs, and torso simultaneously to connect the bat squarely with the ball, the average viewer at home has to make note of the name, date, and time of the upcoming show without missing any of the witty dialogue or dramatic irony of the current show in which the viewer has so heavily invested. That so many millions of people can do this for four to six hours a day without going crazy is a testament to the nobility of the human mind.

I, however, have never been able to do that. Yes, I am one of those poor souls who was born with a brain incapable of focusing on more than one thing at a time. I cannot even go through the preliminary decision-making stage without shifting my mono-focus. If I watch a program, and a tiny video or animated graphic appears at the bottom of the screen, I am compelled to convey my full attention to the promo, whether I am interested or not.

And when the brief interlude is over and I just as automatically return my focus to the program I was watching, the program is not the same as it was. The show is duller in comparison to the new and shiny show that was being advertised at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes I even forget what I was watching, and can’t remember until I see a promo for the current show during the airing of the promo-ed show.

And then a commercial comes on and I forget about both shows, and focus only on buying something.

N.B. This is a digitally remastered version of an earlier post on the same topic. MK

Posted on 5 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 14

Remember When Television Screens Weren’t Measured in Acres?

This weekend I am attending the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York. It is my first conference, so I’m a little nervous about what to do and whether I’ll like the lunch that the conference agenda has promised me. Is it okay to take notes at a writers conference? At most times it is considered weird to take notes around other people. But maybe this will be a conference where everyone will be taking notes…taking notes on people taking notes.

Remember when TV screens weren’t all flat and measured in acres, and people didn’t throw terms like “refresh rate” and “1080p” and “contrast ratio”?

I do.

One day, a long, long time ago, I was in an electronics store, staring at a 32-inch Magnovox TV, with screen-in-screen, sleep timer, and a remote control. It looked enormous. The TV’s screen was like a movie screen. Whatever was being shown on it enveloped me, wrapped me up in it its arms. I wondered how I, suburban peasant, could ever hope to possess something so magnificent. I looked at the price tag. It said $750. I sighed, lowered my head, and walked away to whichever parent had pulled the shorter straw that morning.

Twenty years later I’m standing in my friend’s backyard. It is summer, and he is hosting a barbecue to celebrate the day the Americans defeated the British by tossing M-80s and shooting bottle rockets at them. Katy Perry has decided not to dye her hair avocado, and so there is nothing to talk about except televisions.

“Yeah, just got one myself,” my friend says, straightening his stance and expanding his chest. He turns aside and gazes through the double glass sliding doors, into his den, to the television that doesn’t so much hang on the wall as be the wall itself. He gets choked up and looks like he’s about to cry tears of happiness. He shakes his head and smiles.

“How big is yours?” he asks me when he’s recollected himself.

“What?”

“How big is your TV?”

“Oh, my TV. Uh, 32 inches, I think.”

“Really?” He looks embarrassed for me. He pats me on the shoulder and walks away. I decide that maybe it is time for me to get a new tube.

Except televisions aren’t made with tubes anymore. I learned this during the six months of studying televisions and television technology, a mandatory course for all television purchases in my state (exemptions for veterans and celebrities).

This past weekend, my moment arrived. The local electronics behemoth was running a special on TVs for $750, the lowest price I’d ever seen for something that still distorted the space-time continuum. I ran to the store and announced to the first salesperson I found, “I want to buy a television!” I thought these were magic words. I thought I was going to be welcomed with open arms and champagne. But instead he pointed to a long line of humans—a line of disappointed humans—and said I had to wait on that line if I wanted to ask any questions before making a purchase.

As I waited on the line I had a lot of time to look at the televisions on display. All the TVs looked the same to me. Only some were bigger than others, or came with a family living inside.

A salesperson caught me looking at a 46-inch LCD. “That’s a nice picture,” he said. “Yes,” I agreed, “it is a nice picture.” I didn’t really care about the picture. I was transfixed by a school of fluorescent fish that was airing on this fish channel, which apparently broadcast to this TV alone.

“It’s nothing compared to the LED,” he said.

I replied that I did not know there was a difference.

“Oh yeah, man, there’s like a HUGE difference. I mean, I don’t want to talk you out of something if you’ve made up your mind. But just check out those two TVs side-by-side. The one on the left is an LED. The one on the right is an LCD. Now look, see that that cat there?” We were watching a commercial for cat litter on both TVs simultaneously. “See the black splotches in that cat’s fur when she scratches in the box? See the difference?”

Not wishing to fight, I squinted like I was squishing around a glass of fine wine, and said that I did see the difference. But then, I really did start to see the difference. The LED had brighter colors, sharper images, darker darks, wrinklier wrinkles. My mind was made up. I would get an LED. There was just one last thing I wanted to know.

“How come the LED is $100 more than the LCD?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but I’m not allowed to answer questions. If you have questions, you’ll have to wait on that line over there.”

Posted on 20 January 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 9

Remember When There Weren’t Any House Shows?

Every Saturday morning, instead of going to synagogue like the Torah commands, I sit in my living room and watch my wife watching what I’ve come to call “house shows.” You know what I’m talking about. Shows where people decorate houses, renovate houses, buy houses, sell houses. Shows where contractors troll the parking lots of Home Depot and Lowe’s, looking for the unsuspecting owners of living rooms and yards in desperate need of television crews.

The first house show that I remember was called This Old House, hosted by Bob Vila and his flannel shirt. At the end of the show would be an old residence, beautifully restored, like a Victorian or Neanderthal cave. I don’t know how the show began because the only reason I went to that channel was to watch Gummi Bears, and This Old House came on right before it, and in my haste I sometimes went to the channel before This Old House had ended. And as Bob Vila sat back on the stained porch he had just added to a Sumerian mud hut, I would say to myself, “How could someone stand to watch a show like this?”

Fast-forward about fifteen years, and pretty much the only kind of show we watch in my house is a show like that.

I never understood the interest in these house shows. A show put together by professional contractors and designers. People that know how to knock down walls, pour concrete, and install plumbing. People that can rearrange entire homes in their minds. People that can draw a straight line. Homeowners, living in ordinary homes, with ordinary husbands who would rather be writing blogs than hammering nails, watch these shows and wonder why their homes don’t look like the homes on television.

Because the houses on these shows are far from ordinary. Kitchens with a backsplash made of tile reclaimed from a Pompeian mosaic dug out from two tons of igneous rock. New living room floors from hard wood reclaimed from that house that got swallowed up in Poltergeist. The only thing that isn’t reclaimed is my use of the remote control.

And the shows all have catchy names. One show that’s been getting a lot of playing time is called Property Brothers, where one brother is a real estate agent who shows the homeowners a few houses they like, and then leads them to a house they can afford, and the other brother helps stays up all night renovating it to look like the houses they liked.

I think a better show would be called Property Spouses. The home would be already bought, and it would be husband/wife team that would help decorate it. The husband would put in a leather couch and large television, and the wife would come in afterwards, replace the couch with a fabric chaise lounge and the television with a baby, and make the husband redecorate the garbage right out the kitchen.

Another show that gets a lot of playing time is called House Hunters. Here is a typical episode. A young couple puts on camouflage and grabs their rifles and heads out into the woods. A small cape cod, three bedroom, two bath, leans over a brook and takes a cool drink. The man is slow to unshoulder his rifle, but his wife is quick, sets her sight, and fires. Her aim is true, but the house heard the husband’s Droid beeping and turned, catching the wife’s round in the chimney. Panicked, the cape cod runs through the woods leaving a trickle of blood running down the outdated — but in good condition — vinyl siding. The wife and her husband set in pursuit. She gets off a few more rounds, but it turns out the home is a short sale, and the bank holds on to it until long after rigor mortis has set in.

But the house show that has become my favorite is probably DIY Disaster. In each episode, a pair of homeowners have an unfinished project, so they bring in a professional contractor to finish the project while the homeowners stand around drinking coffee. In one episode, a man had attempted to fill an inground swimming pool in the middle of the couple’s living room. But halfway through the project, he had gone insane from too many viewings of that “discount double-check” commercial with Aaron Rodgers, and was committed to an asylum with the pool only halfway dug out. Further complicating the situation was that to save time he had started filling the pool up with water as he worked, so that the halfway dug out pool was halfway filled with water, and the standing water had become home to many bugs and aquatic life.

Luckily, the host of the show arrived on the scene and was able to finish the project, using the aquatic life as independent contractors. The sea otters turned out to be natural talents, and were used in subsequent episodes, until a labor organizer got hold of them and had them balancing picket signs on their noses.

Posted on 5 December 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 16

Remember Voltron?

Remember the 1980s cartoon Voltron?

I do.

Voltron was a cartoon about five robot lions that combined to form a giant robot humanoid warrior named Voltron. The lions were not self-animating but were each piloted by a human being. I did not really care about the human beings. I don’t profess to know the history of Voltron, the story of Voltron, or even the names of the characters. In this pillar of geek culture I am, at best, a dabbler. Doctoral dissertations have likely been written on this subject and I am humbly aware that there is nothing that I can say that will contribute anything new to the analysis of 1970s anime that evolved into this show and its progeny.

All I can contribute is what Voltron meant to me. And what it meant was five robot lions forming a giant humanoid robot warrior with lion-heads for hands and feet, all to very awesome music.

My entire reason for watching Voltron was to watch them form Voltron. I watched He-Man for the moment when [spoiler alert] Adam turned into He-Man, and I watched Voltron for the moment when the five robot lions formed Voltron. These lions would be fighting some evil force in the universe – a giant alien monster, a giant alien robot, Grendel – and things would not be going well, and all of a sudden one of the lion pilots would suggest forming Voltron.

I never understood why they did not form Voltron the minute they saw the evil-doers coming over the Throgs Neck Bridge. But I will try to describe the experience. The pilot of the leader lion would press some controls, the key to his lion would shift around in the ignition and glow, there would be a collage of all five pilots of the robot lions saying “Voltron Force,” and then the music would start.

Oh that music. All great cartoon moments involve music. Voltron formed to electronic trumpets, guitars, and drums, and my image of the battle between good and evil formed to Voltron forming. The pilots of the robot lions would talk the audience through the formation.

[Trumpets, trumpets]

“Form feet and legs!”

[Guitars, drums]

“Form arms and torso!”

[Trumpets, guitars, drums]

“And I’ll form the head!”

I remember that Voltron was formed in exactly this manner in every single episode. I don’t recall any “express” formation of Voltron where certain steps were truncated. I don’t recall ever seeing Voltron show up to the party already formed, smoking a cigarette and sipping a giant robot martini.

The moment Voltron formed was the most exciting moment of my life for that day. There was nothing more satisfying to my pre-adolescent mind than the combination of electronic fight music and robot lions interlocking to form a giant humanoid robot warrior. But as happened with so many shows for me, the plot of Voltron became too complicated to follow. Something about a love story and zoning regulations. Perhaps I sustained brain damage from eating bowls of Count Chocula. Whatever the reason, I did not care about the story. I just wanted them to play the music and form Voltron, again and again. But alas, my family did not have a VCR at the time, and thus I had no means of recording the show. The forming of Voltron would be just another childhood gem that would live only in my fading memory.

And then along came this thing called YouTube, where an adult can be a kid when he’s supposed to be working. It did not matter that there was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and a pile of dirty snow in the driveway. I had returned home, at last, rocking back and forth in my chair, heart racing along with the music, watching them form Voltron again and again, and remembering the days when, in between commercials, good battled evil.

Posted on 9 February 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When Beavis and Butthead Was a Popular Show?

Do you remember Beavis and Butthead, that cartoon on MTV?

I do.

It was spring and I was in ninth grade. A friend of mine quoted some dialogue at the lunch table one day. I watched the show that night and thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. It was on at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., I believe, and I started taping an episode every night on the VCR. The characters spoke to me. I too was a young man who saw the world divided into things that were cool and things that sucked.

One time my mother watched the show and forbade me from watching it anymore. I had to watch and tape in secret. I figured out how to tape the show without the television being on. I would bring the tape to a friend’s house and we would watch it and laugh and I would think to myself, “This show is never going to go out of style.”

The two main characters spent a lot of time watching television. Whenever an image of fire came on to their screen, they would shout, “Fire! Fire!” not in alarm, but in excitement. I too was excited by images of fire at that time.

Parents were outraged. Educators were disappointed. Congress got involved. The “Fire! Fire!” got edited to “Fight! Fight!” which did not make any sense. Until that time I had thought censorship was something that happened only in places like the Soviet Union. Now I knew the truth.

A few years ago while I was cleaning out some old boxes of stuff, I found my tape of Beavis and Butthead. It was marked with a simple “BB” so that my mother would not know what it was. I dusted off the VCR and popped in the tape.

You know something? It was still funny.

Heh heh. Huh huh.

Posted on 11 October 2010 by Mark Kaplowitz 0