It seemed like such a crazy idea years ago: cable TV. Charge people for something they could grab of the air for free? You've got to be nuts! It'd never work!
Now here we are. Just about everyone I know is paying a minimum of $35 a month for cable. One of the leading shows, The Sopranos, is available only through HBO. People are paying $35 a month for basic cable. Now that's what I call crazy.
I remember the early days. My pals Dan and Dave lived in a household that always had the latest and coolest stuff. I was the first kid on the block to get Atari, but that was before we'd become friends. They had buckets of LEGO, not just the primary color LEGO blocks, but space LEGO. They had a VCR. They had a TV with remote control They had a Commodore 64 whose graphics and sound kicked the butt of my Apple //c. Of course, loading anything from that accursed disk drive meant a ten-minute milk and cookie break. The oldest thing of interest in the house was their older brother's tattered Hustler circa 1978. Come to think of it, that magazine was only five or six years old at the time.
Many a sleepover was spent glued to the front of a CRT, either the monitor of their Commodore or their television. Amongst the luxuries that beguiled me was pay TV. We would pile into the living room, our sleeping bags unrolled in front of the TV and bags of Chips Ahoy! cookies within easy reach. We would chat, play Intellivision, or just watch real, cool, uncut movies like Ghostbusters. Wow! Of course, sleeping in the television room had another big advantage: latenight softcore porn. While the parents slumbered, we'd feast on a surfeit of boobies and humping. Just what early pubescent boys need in mass quantities.
Needless to say, my viewing habits have changed over the years. If I need to watch boobies on the screen, I'll pop in a copy of Shakespeare in Love. If I need to watch a cool movie, I'll rent a tape. At some point I may get around to purchasing a DVD player, but I'm in no rush. One of the things that made my friends' pay TV so cool was that someone else was paying for it. Their dad worked hard day in and day out so that his sons and their friends could watch . Now that people are asking me to fork over my hard-earned loot for TV I'm pretty darned reluctant.
How is it that paying $35+ a month has become a necessity? How does cable TV improve our lives? Sure, it may give me more crap to chat about during the lunch hour. Many pop culture references will glide right past me. And who gives a flying fuck how many channels you get? Choice is supposed to be good, but a choice between 100 channels of crap is no choice. There are only so many hours in my life. I have too many books to read, I enjoying the company of my wife and friends too much to sit for hours watching shit that I've paid for. Besides, I've got to finish this cant.
Pakeha