Classic Post: Flippin' Channels

A CLASSIC POST: Originally saved on 5/15/08 - never published.

As you may recall, The Roommate and I got rid of Cable TV a few months back as we were sick of paying the outrageous price for flipping through 600 channels of nothing.

The first few weeks after the cutoff day were rough. We went cold turkey! No TV at all. I would come home from work, flip on the tv (for background noise) and instead of hearing the canned laughtrack from The Bernie Mac show there was nothing. And due to advances in technology there wasn't even the sound of snow....you know that noise I'm talking about? Just nothing.

We had NO broadcast TV in the house at all, fortunately we did have my collection of almost 500 DVD's. Eventually we didn't miss TV because we were doing other things. Like reading Vogue and clipping coupons from the Sunday Paper.

The Roommate broke down first and got an antenna for his room, he "claimed" that he was having problems waking up without the morning news. I fell off the wagon shortly after, because I missed going to sleep listening to the soothing sounds of David Letterman. An antenna now adorns my bedroom dresser pretending to be "art."

So now I find myself sitting here doing the same old thing....flipping channels. Only this time I have far fewere channels to choose from. From flipping through these 20 channels, I've learned a few things.

- Most of those people ARE NOT smarter than a fifth grader.
- There's 58 different "court" programs, from the People's Court to the Baseball Bat Court
- Sometimes I wished I knew what they were saying on the Chinese Channel because everyone laughs a lot.
- Sometimes it's ok to not understand what they're saying, especially on the Mexican Dramas.....aye papi! How do you say "Take off your shirt" in spanish?
- Sometimes when you don't want to watch tv you force yourself to watch the chinese channel so you get bored quickly and then go pick up that book that you put down because you were bored.
- I miss TiVO
- I don't miss the Cable Bill that came along with the TiVO
- If you don't understand it on one spanish channel, you're not going to understand it on the other.
- You know you're really not paying attention to the tv when you've been watching the original 1978 Superman for 30 minutes before you realize that it's in spanish.
- PBS is better than the Discovery Channel
- I don't really enjoy the church programs on Sunday morning, so now I just sleep in.
- Why do they always have British people trying to sell us stuff on infomercials? I think the english accent is meant to make us throw our good judgement out the window. Hey that's what happens everytime Andrea comes for a visit!
- White Trash is White Trash, whether it's in English, Korean or Spanish.
- I never quite understood that old lady in Babar, it was like a reverse cartoon where she was the only one of her "kind."