My taste in television shows has always leaned more toward comedies and animation than dramas and news. The serious realities of adult life have not beaten my love of comedies or animation out of me. I have seen every episode of the Simpsons and plan to keep watching it until it is yanked off the air in 2015. Watching psychics on Oprah taught me that I am psychic. I enjoy watching documentaries and behind-the-scenes shows as well. I watch American Choppers and L.A. Ink, but I have no interest in riding motorcycles or getting a tatoo. It is like watching a soap opera without all the fakeness. It is a view of people's lives that I do not normally see.
Something that I have never enjoyed is watching sports. I had a time when I watched tennis and I will sometimes watch basketball, but I never really care about the outcome of the matches or games. When I was a kid, I played baseball for 1 1/2 seasons. I played 1/2 a season because I wasn't good and took myself off the team when the assistant coach yelled at me for not getting hit by the ball (the only way I could get on base). I actually hate watching football (the American version for my three international readers). I disagree with the sport morally (just like I disagree with boxing) and the game play bores me. I also do not understand why anyone has any loyalty to any team that they are not playing on. Most of the players of a profesional football team are not from the area where the team plays their home games so why do people root for one random accumulation of people over another? Before I go too far down the road of this subject (when I should just write an article about sports), I promise to get back to television in the next paragraph.
The two things my wife and I watch concerning football are the Superbowl commercials and the halftime show. We never watch the Superbowl live. We record the show and watch it later so we can fast forward past the boring game and get to the funny commercials. I hear people saying that they would like to watch a show, but they won't be home when it is on. In this day and age, that is the equivalent of saying, "I would love to remember this moment, but I don't have time to pose for a painting. VCRs, DVRs, and TiVos have been invented. You no longer have to watch live TV. In addition, DVDs, Blu-rays, Netflix, video rentals, video on demand, and many other services give you many other options for watching what you want when you want. If you say you do not know how to program your recording device, I think your television watching privileges should be revoked.
For my second to last paragraph, I would be incorrectly representing my television life if I did not mention Forensic Files. It is a show that plays late at night on TruTV and it is my wife's favorite show by which to sleep. The show usually follows a murder that is solved using forensics. This is what my wife has chosen to be our lulliby. Death and murder are not exactly bedtime stories, but I have gotten used to them. I am probably just bored with the stabbings, shootings, and stranglings (oh my).
Television has changed a great deal from when it first appeared in the late 1920s. It switched from being analog to digital, comes to us through a cable, satellite, or computer, and connects to everything from a Blu-ray player to an interactive video game system. The idea of television is simple. You watch moving images on a screen. What you watch on the screen is the complex part. I watched a Marx Brothers movie on Netflix the other day. It was as if I was watching the future and the past at the same time. But as Oprah has taught me, the past and future are merely what you make of them in the present. Actually, it might have been SpongeBob SquarePants.
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