Video Asylum

Posted by petew (A) on January 05, 2002 at 16:21:24

In Reply to: Re: Don't hold us in suspense? posted by rod M on January 05, 2002 at 12:09:39:

Rod, you know me...I'd been researching a new TV for years, but when it came right down to it, I never could justify it because, seriously, there's nothing to watch. All the best films are black and white and 4:3, and with very few exceptions (count on one hand) there's absolutely nothing to see in regular programing--there's no there there.

To make matters worse, is there anything out there to rent DVDs besides Netflix? Cheeze 'n Rice they suck! I've yet to rent a disk from them that hasn't been used as a cutting board or ballast under a spining tyre on a stuck truck! I have a que with ~50 films and haven't received one in months! What are they doing, making the films themselves? Oh you can get "Freddy got Fingered" delivered from the Left coast in 3 hours, but try and get one of the classics, and forget Foreign films entirely!

Like "Breaking the waves"...it's a horrible transfer--even worse than VHS, but that's not the rub...scene 25, the critical point of the film--the bit that the entire story turns on--is so butchered that only one pixel out of every 10,000 gets displayed! And that's the only chapter that does this! I have to believe the Christian Right is behind it....oh, the horror of censorship!

but I digress...

so anyway I'm researching plasmas on the internet, and at one point I walk away from the computer to refil my glass and the wife goes in to take a call from work (looks like her client is pulling an Enron...the horror...have you seen how far the stock has fallen from the high 12 months ago?...that's just the tip of the iceburg, but you didn't hear that from me)....when I come back there's a post-it note on the screen, right on top of the 50" Panasonic HDTV plasma--the state of the art in High Definition display:

"No $20,000 televisions!"

Well.

That really ticked me off. So I began looking at the Vidikron Vision One X (mil spec components, unlimited options...retails like a Lamborginni Diablo), even though there's no way they would fit inside the house.

So I ordered the 42", and put it on her credit card (since I don't have a job, I can't get my own credit card...I have to buy everything with cash...like the Volvo...you should have seen the guy's face when I pulled out a brown paper bag with all those $20s...I don't look like a dope dealer...I bet he shit his pants trying to decide how to take all that cash to the night deposit box...but I digress,,,)

Anyway the thing arrived the day after I ordered it (an Italian delivered it. I know this because I saw his truck down the street at house number 2, knocking on the door. My house is number 11. You figure it out. He couldn't. Or maybe it's not Roman numerals, maybe he's just demonstrating he can do arithmatic, something our president is learning...I hope). But the mounting bracket and component cables still haven't arrived, so I just uncrated the screen and leaned it up against the sofa.

Just then the phone rang. It was an old friend from my hang gliding days, who knows (the real) me all too well. He says we're going to the auto show next Wednesday with Kurt, who did two semesters at the University of South Vietnam in a river patrol boat exactly like the one in Apocalypse Now (now he designs toys...in New Jersey...the horror...) to look at the Boxter S, sit in the Lambo (assuming I'm capable of lying on the floor and rolling into it, as I've lost the ability to "hunker down" and gain entry in such a vehicle with any kind of dignity), and drink way too much Extra Stout while we lie about "the good ol' days" and hustle pool at the Dock Street brew pub (for some reason the yuppies who hang there are even worse at pool than I am, which is incredable, but nevertheless, profitable. I told him of my moment of weakness and he laughed and laughed...he knows the wife too, and like me, he's afraid of her...very afraid. Then he stopped laughing. Then he started laughing again...and would not stop. Like me, he believes that the only reason to have friends is you can abuse them mercylessly without the risk of bodily harm.

His great sin is that he once owned a Jaguar XKE convertable in British racing green with tan leather...and sold it.

He's gonna burn in Hell for an eternity (as if he's not suffering now).

But this guy is brilliant, and he had the answer. The wife has no idea that just one run of "good" speaker cable costs more than her Lexus, but somehow she knows that these plasma things are way too expensive for someone like us (Quakers...we're supposed to be just plain folk, but for some unfathomable reason i"m having trouble with that part--might be all the money we "made" trading equities during the Clinton administration, but who can say?). Then again, she thinks nothing of giving a fortune to some "charity"...like the new home for the Philadelphia Orchestra (Named fittingly after some Fortune 500 company, like the Enron Center or something...I suppose naming it after a musician or the Native American tribe the Quakers murdered so Bill Penn could take the land to build the "City of Brotherly Love and conceiled carry" didn't occur to them, but I digress...it really is awesome--the very best concert hall in the world, and no, I don't need to hear them all to know that, and yes, Elton John still has his chops). so my friend had the answer: put on a dvd and find a nice bit of film with a landscape shot and press pause. With the plasma mounted on the wall she'd think it was just a picture--nothing wrong with expensive art!

Do you think men would have ever learned lying and deception had it not been for the invention of wives?

When the wife came home and saw it leaning against the sofa she put on her game face and said, "...husband..." in that accusatory way only wifes can inflect...but then an astonishing thing happened: she melted: "oh that's nice!"

That's how beautiful it is. The thing is so awesome it looks like art just leaning against something...not connected--with a blank screen. It looks like -- the future.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The truth is, she'd been working late, and whatever crimes her client had confessed to that day were so horrific that even faced the material evidence that I'd not only lied to her, cheated her, deceived her, embezzeled funds from her account, and defied her righteous admonition to shun the material world of "toys", it was insignificant by comparison to what she does for a living.

The thought sort of...took the fun out of the moment, but a few hours playing with the kids and we got over it. She told me she may not have a job on Monday, but the chances of her going to prison for a long time are nearly zero. Nearly zero.

I'm still waiting for the mounting bracket and the cables. The order guy said something about a foot of snow at the Atlanta airport (what a crock! everybody knows it never snows in Atlanta!)...there's no snow here...and we've had less rain this past year than Death Valley...go figure. The Jews are moving back to New York and Philadelphia to get out of the Florida snow!

anyway...I have this bit of modern art leaning against the wall.

it is the most beautiful non-living thing in the house.

you have to love technology, when it looks like that...

it truely is the most beautiful thing...breathtaking.

I'll post again if the hook-up cable ever arrives, and Netflix ever finds a readable copy of "Jean de Florettes".