During the early years of the Letterman show, they did a bit about "How To Be A TV Viewer." It came in the form of a public-service announcement advising you of your many responsibilities as a TV watcher: "As soon as you get home from work, run into the living room and turn the TV on right away. You've got a lot of shows to watch so don't procrastinate: get started on them now."

Ever since I accepted TiVO into my life, I wind up thinking about this whenever I get home from a long trip. TiVO can record up to thirty hours of shows and the first time I pick up that remote and push the "List" button and have to scroll through three pages of listings of what's waiting for me on its hard drive, I go off to the bathroom. Then I go to the kitchen for a bag of something and a two-liter bottle of something else, and then I come back and sit on the sofa with my game-face on and with a true sense of purpose.

I returned home from San Francisco on Tuesday morning, fresh (not really) off the redeye. Right off the bat, I got "Let's Bowl" and "Iron Chef" out of the way, before I even went to bed or started unpacking. You've got a lot of shows to watch: get started on them right away.

(It's not just a question of being a Responsible TV Viewer. It's a question of freeing up space on the hard drive for new shows, and a question of watching this stuff before TiVO gets tired of waiting for you and starts deleting them on its own. In the listings, a Green Circle soon gives way to a Yellow Circle, and before you know it it's a Yellow Circle With An Exclamation Mark (which in the TiVO-to-Chuck-Norris-TV-Movie-Phrasebook translates as "The scene in which the Pope continues his speech to the UN unaware that the red dot of a laser-sight is dancing around his left ear")

And Saturday, after something like four days of TiVO-jockeying, I knocked off last week's episodes of "Ed" and "The West Wing" and it was like crossing the finish line of the Boston Marathon: I was far too exhausted – physically and mentally – to truly appreciate the accomplishment and instead nearly collapsed to the ground before a volunteer wrapped a mylar space-blanket around me and walked me over to the medical tent.

(that's part of the "Gold Package" you can sign up for on TiVO.com; it's an extra $9.95 a month plus travel expenses for the volunteer, but the expense is well worth it if you're a serious TV watcher)

It was so much simpler when all I had was a VCR. Time-wise, the process of taping and watching all of the shows I didn't want to miss while away on business only cost me the few seconds during which I reminded myself that I needed to program the VCR sometime before I left for the airport. Because inevitably, I wouldn't. It was a typically elegant solution to the problem.

Those of you who don't have TiVO don't innately understand that one of its Power Features is the ability to just browse for shows you might be marginally interested in and make endless impulse-buys. My TiVO has its standing orders to tape certain shows whenever they air ("Junkyard Wars," "Bargain Hunt," any episodes of "Jerry Springer" with the words "Hillbilly," "Bald" and "Stripper" in the description) but it also has listings and descriptions of every show that'll air for the next ten days. So when you're channel-surfing and there's nothing on, you just go ahead and browse the listings and the next thing you know, it's two weeks later and you feel like you owe it to yourself to watch that 1980 Eddie Deezen movie that's just been yellow-exclamation-pointed in the listing.

But it was worth it. Totally. Still, I'm glad I accidentally discovered another TiVO Power Feature a few weeks ago: when you have it play a show at double-speed, the decoder on my TV can still extract the closed-caption data. So if it's an episode of "Babylon 5" that I've seen a million times (but I'm still keen on putting my million-first screening on the tote board) I can watch the "A" story at full-speed and fast-forward through the "B" scenes...but still get all of the dialogue.

When I stumbled upon that trick I stood up and applauded and once again made a solemn determination to actually pay for one of these, one of these days, when I have a little extra scratch, what with so much of my surplus income going towards the several local and national charities which rely so heavily upon my generous largesses.

Finally, after a week, I am once again free to just watch television again. And what was on tonight? The New England Patriots playing for a shot at the AFC championship, during a near-blizzard, in a game that went into overtime and was won by the hometown team, and was ultimately decided by a dubious call during the fourth-quarter.

I dislike football. My impatience for the incessant clock-stopping and irritation at never getting to see "The Simpsons" at its scheduled time steamroll any attraction the game might have for me. But man alive...if the NFL made sure that every game was like that one and – this is the most important bit – they only televised the final half an hour of the thing – wow, they'd really have something, there.

I don't know about you, but I firmly intend to write to my clergyman and town selectman on this issue straight away, as soon as I'm done watching "Who Dares, Wins" and "Trading Spaces," the shows I TiVO'ed during the game.

Update: Oh, wow, this is why I tell TiVO to record every showing of certain programs. "Trading Spaces" is that home-improvement show on The Learning Channel in which two neighbors swap houses for 48 hours. They help a professional designer redecorate a room, with absolutely no knowledge of what's being done to a room in their own homes in the meantime. It's a great show, partly because you get to see what can be done in 48 hours with a strict budget of $1000. Compare and contrast to "This Old House" where at the moment, they're remodeling a house. The budget is $2.2 million. I mean, hey, what homeowner doesn't want tips on how to convert a corner of their ballroom into a mini-theater for impromptu recitals on your grand piano? Sure, you can buy one of those $28,000 pre-fabbed fiberglass inserts at Home Depot, but what if you want the amphitheater's shell to be more conducive to Mahler than Chopin?

But it's the inherent human drama that makes "Trading Spaces" so watchable. Tonight's show was a gem. I had already gotten my money's worth when one of the designers threw a major hissy fit and stormed off the show (temporarily) after the neighbor insisted that they keep their promise not to paint over the homeowners' natural brick fireplace. (Good move. If a designer told me that we were going to paint over natural brick or a natural wood floor, my first reaction would be to go outside and check the tires on his SUV. Because a man who would even suggest such a thing is probably a man who runs over baby ducks for sport.)

And then, at the end of the show, the homeowner saw the result – a very tasteful compromise in which the fireplace surround was covered by a stylish (and entirely un-doable) white facade made from wood veneer on a framework of two-by-fours – and hated the new look so much that she actually started sobbing. "I'm uncomfortable watching such a humiliating and wildly inappropriate outburst on national television," I thought, while fishing through a box under the VCR for a blank tape.

 

Part One of my Macworld Expo San Francisco 2002 report is up. 3000 words and I haven't even boarded the damned plane yet.

May God Have Mercy On Your Souls.

 

One of my favorite 100 movies of all time -- and probably one of my Top Ten Favorite Movies Which Practically No One Else Has Ever Heard Of -- is "Smile." Made in 1975, it's the story of shallow, unread suburbanites and how they latch on to their town's hosting the California state Young American Miss pageant as yet another way to distract themselves from Loftier Thoughts.

Hey, come on...it was still technically the crunchy-hippie Early Seventies.

It's full of Favorite Scenes. The girls (winners of regional pageants) are rehearsing their talent acts. One contestant is Mexican immigrant whose accent triples in viscocity whenever judges and officials are within earshot. She's a cynical pro who wants to sell what the audience will buy, so she's prepared a baton-twirling act accompanied by a patriotic monologue. While she rehearses she's trying to pace out the timing of the twirls based on the crowd's expected reaction:

"'...And in this great, great land of freedom, is there any sight greater than Lady Liberty?' -- applause, applause, applause, -- 'If there is, then it can only be those thirteen stripes and fifty stars' -- cue flag, applause, applause, applause, 'Yes, the stirring sight of Old Glory herself!'"

Like all great movies, you walk away from it a changed man. I for one have never been able to watch a State Of The Union Address the same way since. I can't help but picture George Dubbya wandering around in a little room adjacent to the floor of the House (he's in his boxer shorts because he doesn't want to break the crease in his pants, naturally), going over the Address again.

"'on mountaintops and in caves, they will not escape the justice of this nation' -- applause, applause, applause, 'our country will never forget the debt we owe Micheal and all who gave their lives for freedom' -- applause, applause, applause, 'and for all of the challenges we've faced in the closing months of 2001, the state of our union has never been stronger' -- applause, standing ovation, applause, applause, modestly signal that I'd like to continue the Address, applause, applause…'"

Throughout the ninety-year history of the modern State Of The Union, this speech has been the great beauty pageant of a President's working year. Dubbya should have gone all the way and done it while twirling a flaming baton. His dad made a similar wartime speech, but he didn't add that little extra zazzz. He just took it for granted that as-is, it'd be enough to get him re-elected. And look what the hell happened to him.

Catch up on the many heroic banalities that I posted last month.

This page and its contents copyright © 2002 Andy Ihnatko.