(George Stephanopoulos on set. Photo ABC News. I think that used to be a network.)
I have to move the car today. The leaflet from the box told me in no uncertain terms that the re-paving people are coming to do half the parking lot, and if the Bluesmobile is still parked proudly near the front entrance to Big Pink it will be towed at my expense.
Normally not a big deal, just walk down to the elevator, flirt with Rhonda at the front desk and bonce out the glass doors, fire up the big V8 and move it to curb parking- or the Eglizia lot across the street.
But wait, you say. “You gonna do that in the wheelchair or try it on the crutches?”
It is Day 20. I am going stir-crazy. I have to be careful, and I also have my parent’s urn in the trunk, and the urn has to go in the ground in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
If I can get to the car today, and successfully move it, then I should be able to get to Pennsylvania this weekend.
That is the theory, anyway. We will see how it works out in practice.
I was going to try to explain how freaked out I was by the evening news, and the nature of television itself. It was sort of a test drive of the new big screen television I bought- you know, three-D capable, hi-def, wifi enabled, all that crap.
I have not watched it. Got out of the habit, I guess, preferring real people at the Amen Corner at the Willow Bar. But I am a shut-in, and thought I might try to recreate a world that used to exist- the one where I got home from the office, poured a drink, listened to the Ex describe the tumultuous events of the day in Fairfax County, and see what the rest of the world had been up to while I drove.
Then I would turn on the local news, transitioned into the National News for one or two iterations, and then weaned myself off real news into Access Hollywood or something as that first and second martini eased the day into night.
Last night, I turned on the gigantic box to take it for a test drive. Put the bad leg up, and propped pillows around the brace. It was sort of wild, an entry into a far country. I heard my first political ad of the season. It sucked. Then, one of the proud old legacy networks told me a story about a man treed by a bear in Alaska. it wasn’t news- even anything that looked like news.
It was entertainment- of a sort. Computer graphics of a guy attacked by a bear on a trail near Anchorage.
In my time up there in the 49th state, I always understood it was only prudent to be packing some heat on the trail in self defense, not that you could actually bring down an angry bear in time, but maybe this was too close to the artificial civility of the city or the guy believed in virtue an coexistence.
His call, I thought. Three or four minutes were spent on the bear attack, with lavish production values. I did not blame the Mama Bear. The guy up the tree seemed like a weenie. George Stephanopoulos seemed interested.
In the Clinton Administration, George used to have a heavy five-o’clock shadow. I wondered briefly if he had laser work done, and if political operatives were the new logical pick for anchoring the evening news.
It was pretty amazing to see how far down the mighty networks have come. I think I switched from the Mainstream Media News to watching Simpsons re-runs in 2002 or so. It has been a full decade away from the networks, and gave up on television altogether a year or so ago. The Netflix discs would sit for months accusing me next to the DVD player.
I checked my queue the other day. I am at least three years behind on movie releases.
Amazing that television was one of those things- like hard copy newspapers- that was so integral a part of my life and then- poof!- gone.
Looking at the man up the tree with the angry bear in stunning computer graphics was a trip. This is news? I thought. No wonder we are in deep kimchi.
Or up a tree, as the case may be.
Want to read something provocative? Try this one out.
I am taking no position on it, though it is a way to try to interpret what is happening all around us.
Take it for a test drive to see whether you think we are on the brink of one of those major tectonic shifts in how power is allocated from the people to the idiots in Washington.
Let me know what you think. I will be back in a few hours, ins’hallah, to sit and look blankly again at the computer screen. There is nothing to watch on television, that is for sure.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com