In this SLO County household, we binge ice cream, not TV shows
I confess. I don’t watch much TV. I don’t do Netflix. For years, I thought Hulu was a “Star Wars” version of a classic Hawaiian dance and a “streaming service” was a fishing guide.
Yeah, I know. I’m weird, especially these days. I understand that the COVID-19 restrictions have many people glued to their screens, binge watching for hours to relieve coronavirus-related stress.
Not us.
For Husband Richard and me, a binge is something you do with high-test ice cream, not a TV series like “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”
Of course, we do watch news. Professional interest, dontcha know. I’m a reporter, after all.
We also enjoy an occasional cooking show. Same reason. We are former professional bakers and caterers, and I was a professional cake decorator. As bakery owners, our alarm was set at 2 a.m. and we got out of the TV habit then.
Occasionally now, we’ll tune in to a mystery series. Not a blood-and-guts, blow-’em-up type, but a show with a super story line, maybe a little humor, some snappy dialog, good character chemistry and a Poe-style ending. If we can find one.
We yearn for a TV version of “Running Scared,” in which Chicago cops Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines had a hysterically funny relationship, nonstop banter, good plot and a world-class car chase.
For a quality mystery like that, I’m so there.
Unfortunately, most of the time, they’re not.
We do watch “Jeopardy!” to remind ourselves how trivia-dumb we are, and how little I really know about Renaissance history, mythology and a bunch of other topics.
Sports? Not much. Most sports broadcasts send me in search of the nearest book. Or a nap. Or even that stack of dirty dishes glaring at me from the sink.
I know, it’s un-American to not watch football, baseball and basketball, cheering on your favorite squad while wearing T-shirts, caps and snuggies emblazoned with the team logo.
But I don’t watch games for the same reason I don’t take sports photos for the newspaper. To be a good sports photographer, you have to understand the game well enough to good-guess where the play is going before it gets there, so you can point the camera.
That’s not me.
Husband Richard? He maintains that, for most people, the love and deep knowledge of those sports is fostered in school and are enhanced thereafter by your memories of playing or rooting for the home team.
Not his or mine.
I attended 13 high schools in three years, all across the country. Team loyalty? How?
He grew up mostly in small railroad towns along the Southern Pacific line. One high school’s census was so tiny, he said, that there were 21 students in the entire school, and “three of them were from our family.”
There, ALL of the boys had to play basketball. Not well, mind you.
He said, “One kid had a heart problem, so he was the team manager.” And with Richard’s bad eyesight, it was hard enough to see the basket, let alone hit it.
That bond between boy and sport? Didn’t happen for him.
But back to TV.
Sure, I remember the thrill we had when my grandmother got the family’s first set. And the amazement of watching our first color TV. And the relief when our new one finally had a remote!
I remember yelling out the window while my husband turned the antenna, telling him when the picture on the screen was at its best.
Those bonds with and excitement about the magical moving-picture box are gone now, at least for us.
Sorry, these days, we think most of TV is a wasteland. Comedies that aren’t funny. Reality shows that aren’t real. Game shows that are terminally silly. Action shows that show way too much.
Cable? Hundreds of channels with nothing on them we want to see.
And then there are the ads.
Can you imagine what Rip Van Winkle would think of us if he awoke to a TV screen blaring out ad after ad after ad? (I can remember when the Federal Communications Commission had a limit on how many ads could run consecutively.)
Rip might say to himself, “These people are SO sick! Look at all the medicines they take!”
Do I feel out of the loop when people enthuse at length about the latest TV series, streaming app or digital show? A little. It’s like being in a foreign country and not knowing the language.
But then I go home, to the land where I’m comfortable, the words make sense and the TV screen is almost always dark.
