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CHANNEL SURFING AND TELEVISION IN GENERAL
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One of the millions of TV channel surfers in the
Not. Everyone to his own. I, myself, NEVER channel surf! (If that matters anywhere in the great cosmic scheme of things) I hate it---when others do it---when guests come to my house---it makes me nervous. When I turn that thing on, I know what program I want. After all, there's a TV printed section in the daily paper, as well as a menu on my control.
(A little aside here: I also, being a hearing-aid wearer, must have my own control. Muting loud commercials is a must, as well as finding a livable volume.)
Interesting remarks from the wives of channel surfers:
(1) "One hundred-fifty channels and you can't find one worth watching?" (2) "I think my husband is searching for the thirteen o'clock news from Mars!" (3) "I know you hate commercials, but must you surf for them just so you can hate them?!" (4)Without his remote control, Billy Bob is helpless!
A surfer says: "I want enough channels so that by the time I'm done surfing, a whole new half hour of programs I don't want to watch, will begin.
Clearly we have opened a can of worms here. We are into preferences, and as they said in old Rome
My dad and the wife's dad were notorious channel "hoppers." They'd take that remote and go up and down the menu of programs ad infinitum, not giving your brain a chance to adjust to the variations in mood, scenes, subjects, or volume. It was brutal! You'd get snippets of soccer, old Olympics, skiing, senate hearings, politicians, CNN, Fox, C-Span, MSNBC, Weather, Ma and Pa Kettle, I Love Lucy, Mexican soaps, Days of Our Lives, game shows, talk shows, cooking shows, Judge Judys, wrestling, and sometimes land on one I was interested in, like women's weight lifting, or "shooting rattle snakes from the hip with a .45," and then---see this was the problem---they'd move right on, while I was just settling in to watch that last one.
My beloved father-in-law would nine times out of ten---stop on a golf tournament. At least it was not loud and raucous. The announcer would be saying, very mutedly under his breath--- (as if announcing a tragedy) something like..."He's getting his seven iron from the caddy now... it looks like a ninety-yard mere chip shot for Arnold..."
Sometimes Dad would stop on an old Gene Autry movie, and I'd get settled in, and just before Gene sang "South of the Border," Dad would move on.
You see why I don't like surfing. It's not a search, really. It's the trip surfers like. As Willa Cather said..."The end is nothing, the journey is all." TV watching for surfers---is THE SURFING! Don't laugh, my friends, we have stumbled onto a gigantic truth: SURFING IS AN END IN ITSELF! Think back with me, outside of golf tournaments, have you ever known of a surfer to FIND a program? I rest my case!
My dad and the wife's dad were notorious channel "hoppers." They'd take that remote and go up and down the menu of programs ad infinitum, not giving your brain a chance to adjust to the variations in mood, scenes, subjects, or volume. It was brutal! You'd get snippets of soccer, old Olympics, skiing, senate hearings, politicians, CNN, Fox, C-Span, MSNBC, Weather, Ma and Pa Kettle, I Love Lucy, Mexican soaps, Days of Our Lives, game shows, talk shows, cooking shows, Judge Judys, wrestling, and sometimes land on one I was interested in, like women's weight lifting, or "shooting rattle snakes from the hip with a .45," and then---see this was the problem---they'd move right on, while I was just settling in to watch that last one.
My beloved father-in-law would nine times out of ten---stop on a golf tournament. At least it was not loud and raucous. The announcer would be saying, very mutedly under his breath--- (as if announcing a tragedy) something like..."He's getting his seven iron from the caddy now... it looks like a ninety-yard mere chip shot for Arnold..."
Sometimes Dad would stop on an old Gene Autry movie, and I'd get settled in, and just before Gene sang "South of the Border," Dad would move on.
You see why I don't like surfing. It's not a search, really. It's the trip surfers like. As Willa Cather said..."The end is nothing, the journey is all." TV watching for surfers---is THE SURFING! Don't laugh, my friends, we have stumbled onto a gigantic truth: SURFING IS AN END IN ITSELF! Think back with me, outside of golf tournaments, have you ever known of a surfer to FIND a program? I rest my case!
My son is also a surfer. He works hard at his job and when it is time to relax, he doesn't want to watch a documentary like "Genghis Khan Invades
Let's leave surfing and talk about television in general. The strange thing about TV these days is everybody's strange tastes. (If your tastes are different from mine, they may be "strange.") Well, personally I don't care for 90% of the shows.
The medical shows, of which there seem to be many, I can't abide. Why would a person over 70 want to watch surgeries, transfusions, amputations, injections, lobotomies, and dopplers? Not much there to interest me! And I don't want to think of my surgeon and his nurse making out in the scrub room, for crying out loud! I'll skip the med shows!
"Amazing Race" is a favorite show of some of my friends, but a bit frantic for me...and maybe a little contrived. What was it with those cheeses as big a spare tires rolling down that hill...?
Then there's "Scandal," "666," "
I have read all of Craig Johnson's western books about the
"
trucker myself!
Well, I'd like to hear your five or ten favorite TV shows of all time, and tell you mine, but guess that should wait until later...and a whole new future post.Until then, my "channel surfer" friends out there...as they say: "Keep surfin'..."
But I think I'll pass.
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BY MIL
12/08/12
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