Just an FYI – despite the hype, wires and cables still rule our lives in a big, bad way.

It’s something that I was personally reminded of a couple of weeks ago while I was trying to setup our new Blu-Ray player.  And granted, you could say that I’m a bit of a tech geek myself, so I don’t necessarily mind wading through the roughly 600 various cables and wires and miscellaneous vitally important doodads and whatnots nestled sporadically behind our home entertainment center on a highly anticipated movie night with popcorn and a cozy wife anxiously waiting, but that certainly doesn’t stop me from knowing the pecking order here in this stereophonic wild kingdom that’s hidden behind our stereo cabinet and big screen TV!  Nope, it’s quite clear that amongst this mass of HDMI and digital audio cables, I am but a meager herdsman simply praying for the cooperation of old Mother Dolby on my quest for crisper audio and higher definitions…

I mean, sure, this is supposed to be a new wireless revolution that we’re experiencing right now, and at times it can be great … the ability to check up on Facebook from the toilet has really been an invaluable contribution to my daily productivity, but of course, wireless connectivity most certainly has its downfalls, too.  Anyone who’s ever tried to use the wi-fi around our house while I’m trying to cook a delicious Ball Park® Frank in the microwave will vouch that they might as well take me out to the ballgame because they sure as hell won’t be getting a signal around here for the next 45 plump-worthy seconds!

* Baseball Vendors: Bored to death by your game, but LOVE your hotdogs – let’s work on some promotions together!

The thing is, despite what the fine folks at Tom, Dick & Harry Cellular want to tell you, wireless clearly isn’t the answer to everything. Take electricity, for example – you want to talk about a horrible application for wireless technologies … you remember the sight of your kid sister’s hair standing on end when she “accidentally” stuck her favorite Scooby Doo fork in the electric socket?!  Imagine that look on everyone, everywhere if electricity was just flying around above our heads all willy-nilly – aside from making Lady Gaga look relatively normal, it probably still wouldn’t be best for society as a whole to walk around looking like we’re perpetually doing laps around the living room carpet in our holiday slippers!

What about security systems? Do you really want to think, “Man, I hope the alarm system has enough bars to be able to call the police…” when you’re cowering in the corner while your house is being robbed?!

Those tin can radios that you used to run between tree houses with a piece of string when you were a kid – take away the “wire” and now you’re basically just yelling your top secret plans to avoid cooties across the yard!

Braces – where would orthodontia be without wires?!

Ok, so wireless braces actually do sound a lot better because I can only imagine that they’d be far less painful than the medieval torture-inspired monstrosities that I had to wear between the ages of 12 and 17 growing up … to this day those tiny rubber bands still give me the heebie-jeebies…

Of course, when it all comes down to it, the good news is that ultimately yours truly did manage to circumnavigate our ancient temple of an entertainment center, inserting cable A into receptacle B and so forth precisely as instructed, and I was able to make it out of the jungle with little more than some minor scratches and a healthy coating of dust dating back to roughly around the time that we moved in, if my carbon dating skills serve me well.  Now it’s all smooth sailing from here as we sit back and relax to spend our evenings and weekends basking in the glorious high definition glow that Blu-Ray has to offer … that is, as long as the remote control is working, anyways!

Alright, chalk one up for wireless.

I have The Power!!!

Well, the power to finally work our home theater system without fumbling aimlessly between eighteen different remotes, anyways, but really, at the end of a long and arduous day when all I want to do is lay around watching reruns of The Golden Girls and eating bonbons, that’s enough for me.

So the story is that recently I found myself in the market for a new remote control – the long and the short of it being that I had picked up a new Blu-Ray player at a fantastic price with the one caveat that its remote happened to be missing.  I was ok with this, as the cold, hard fact of the matter soon transformed itself into an equally fantastic opportunity to also buy one of those flashy, new remote controls that most guys dream about…

Yes, ladies – when we’re not dreaming about sex, or Lamborghinis, or sex in Lamborghinis, we dream about remote controls. We’re really not nearly as complex as Dr. Phil likes to lead you to believe.

Of course, it should probably be noted for anyone possibly living underneath some sort of rock or something who doesn’t watch their federally-mandated 4.5 hours of TV every night that we’re not talking about some ordinary, everyday “Universal Remote” that you pick up at Wal-Mart for $14.95 and then spend the better part of the next three weeks entering all sorts of “codes” into while also praying desperately that you’ll finally find the one that will magically be able to turn something … anything … on!  No, no, no – what we’re talking about here is a state of the art, customizable work of genius that in all reality, no self-respecting fan of the moving pictures should be without…

Yeah, so it was a little expensive, but can you really put a price on happiness … and digital happiness, at that?!  With the press of a single button, this magical device brings me joys that used to come at the expense of pressing many, many buttons, and sometimes the buttons on my old remote didn’t want to work even when I pressed them repeatedly, leading me to eventually resort to just banging the thing against the coffee table in frustration!  But now that this wonderfully designed, ergonomic device has wandered into my life, never again will I be forced to get up from the couch and physically turn down the volume with my own hand because it’s 8:37pm on a random Tuesday evening and the stereo has just plum decided that it doesn’t so much feel like responding to our inferior remote’s pathetic, infrared pleas at that particular moment.  Never again!

Frankly, it’s a liberating feeling – knowing that I have that much entertainment available to me with the simple press of a button.  I imagine it must be just like how God feels when he sits down to watch some TV at the end of his own otherwise boring and mundane workday!  It’s a feeling that I think every man, woman, and child should know … well, just as long as the kid’s washed his hands first, that is.  You ever try to get grape jelly out from between the buttons of a remote control?!  You might as well just give up and buy a new one right off the bat … this remote may be utterly amazing, but of the things that it’s certainly not impervious to, grape jelly is most definitely near the tippy top of that particular list…

But don’t let a little jam-based deficiency dissuade you, my friends, for much like winning the lottery or marrying a super hot chick with addictions to having sex and making her husband delicious chocolate cakes, owning this remote has been a life changer on the most grandiose of scales.  Velvet ropes have parted, I’ve been getting pelted with gumdrops falling from the skies left and right, and as for my time spent in front of the old television … well, I don’t like to kiss and tell, but just for the record, my relationship with our home theater system has never been better.

Although now that we’ve got the remote, there was this new 72” flat screen TV that I was looking at…

I knew something was wrong the moment I walked in the door that evening – it was quiet…too quiet.

There she was, sitting alone in the middle of the living room, with not an expression on her face – just glaring at me. It was one of those glares that’s unmistakable – there was no bad day or ugly rush hour traffic to blame for this one … it was all on me. Those are always the worst to deal with because we both already knew what I had done, it was just a matter of what was going to happen next that would determine our future together. No gifts, no swanky music – just me and my own. This was going to be tricky…

“I’m sorry, baby,” I began, desperately grasping for a feel of just how bad the situation truly was. “I know I haven’t been around as much as I should lately…”

No response. It was pretty bad, indeed.

“You see, I’ve just been so busy at work lately – they’ve got me putting in all sorts of crazy hours and by the time I get home, I’m so tired all I want to do is sleep. I wish there was something that I could do, but you know I do it all for you, honey – the bills aren’t going to pay themselves…”

She wasn’t budging – at this point, she’s heard it all before and frankly, I can’t really blame her for being upset. I would be, too, but what’s a guy supposed to do? There are only so many hours in the day, but that excuse just isn’t going to be good enough – not this time. It was a dead glare that said I’d better come up with something – anything – quick or I was done for…

“Listen, dear – I know that things are a little rough now, but it’s gonna get better soon – I promise! In fact, I’ve got this weekend off and I want to spend the entire thing with you … just the two of us. We’ll stay in, put on some of those cheesy, b-movies that you love so much, and just relish each other’s company … like old times. How’s that sound?”

A faint glimmer finally broke the stare of death and I knew that all had not been lost yet again! And while I certainly was far from being out of hot water at that point, anyone who’s been in such a situation knows that it’s far better to be in hot water than to get thrown out with the pot altogether. It may take a fair bit of time to rebuild our relationship after the damage that my absence had caused, but then again, some things are worth that extra bit of effort when all is said and done.

I wanted to use my column this week for the purposes of telling this tale so that others might hopefully learn from my mistakes and avoid such pitfalls of their own in the days to come. Having a big screen TV is something very special and those of us who are lucky enough to have one of our own owe it to the rest to treat them like the beauties that they truly are. It may be tough at times, but an hour or two here and there simply isn’t good enough and unless you want to go back to the times when you didn’t have one at all, you’ve got to learn to make sacrifices in your life for those who are the most important to you. There was a time when I didn’t have my own priorities straight and I almost lost mine, but luckily for me, I mean just as much to her as she does to me. Yep – I found myself a good one…

It’s a good thing, too, because I just couldn’t imagine watching TV in anything less than high definition after meeting her!

That’s right – my TV is bigger than yours.

I’ll allow another moment or three for that to sink in with my male readers and an equal amount of time to allow the ladies a chance to roll their eyes in disgust – scoff all you want, my fine female friends, but as you’ve so eloquently put it in the past, size really does matter…

So anyways, this year I decided to do something special for my birthday because, well, if I don’t, then who will?! It’s just that I’ve been busting the old hump for nearly the past year in an effort to rid myself of that unwanted, slimy credit card debt, so in celebration of the last card that I was able to chop up into tiny pieces, I figured what better way to celebrate than by running up some more credit card debt, right?! Now before folks begin getting all up in arms, I would like to say that in my defense I did talk myself into a pretty good deal – I’m not paying any interest and I’ve even been told that I’ve got a free toaster coming in the mail within the next 6 – 8 weeks, and who could really pass on an offer like that?

I certainly couldn’t, which is why I am now the proud owner of a brand-new, fifty-two inch high-definition television, capable of bringing new life to my entire DVD collection while simultaneously reducing my need to leave the house on a daily basis by nearly 82%! With Dolby Digital® surround sound encapsulating my living room like a warm and gentle cocoon of musical sweetness, the concept of the home theater is brought to a whole new level when you enter my apartment to find the lights dimmed and that all-too-familiar, “Don’t Copy This Video or We’ll Club a Baby Seal”-message from our friendly friends at the MPAA blazing across the screen with glowing, digital clarity. All I need now is a popcorn popper…

There’s just something about owning a gigantic television in this day and age – it almost feels like a necessity to me to be able to say that I’m at least trying to keep up with the latest technology, when in fact I’m still typically 1 – 3 years behind the rest of the advancing world. Keep in mind that I just bought one of those keen George Foreman grills, like, a month ago – the same ones that were all the rage back when the fun President was still in office, so if anything I like to think that this one was a pretty big step forward for me! And then again, some might say that I’m also extraordinarily lazy and that it’s really no surprise that I’d purchase a big-screen TV long before anything related to eating healthier foods, and of course my only response is simply, “Hey – you’ve been paying attention all of this time – great!”

So I guess looking back on this column, I honestly didn’t have any important messages to send out to the masses, or really anything funny to say, either – I just wanted to take a moment here to share my latest technological advance with everyone here today. Of course, some of you may translate that to read: “I just wanted to take a moment here to brag about my awesome, new TV…” which is actually pretty darn accurate, too! Fortunately for you, however, us high-definition owners have a thicker skin than normal that is virtually impenetrable to your hateful sneers and jeers. Mind you, we can also walk through walls and shoot laser beams out of our eyes, but do us a favor and try to keep that under your hat…

Happy Birthday to Me! If anybody needs me, you know where I’ll be…but don’t come without bringing more popcorn…

It takes a certain breed of person to be on television nowadays – honor, integrity, self respect, pride – I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that none of these things have been witnessed on broadcast television for quite some time…or at least not in my area. I can’t seem to find a single source of information that provides the facts with a minimal amount of bias, allowing its audience to form their own opinions, and to be completely honest with you, it’s one of the reasons that I don’t make it a point to watch the news on television anymore. Instead, I’ve opted to stick to more substantial sources such as newspapers, the Internet, and those planes that write messages in the sky, and although I know that these outlets can be just as slanted as the tube, maybe they’re just easier for me to stomach because I can control what slanted stories I want to hear about and I don’t have to sit through twenty minutes of “Coming Up Next…” messages just to get to them…

But the sad thing is this – apparently the majority of people don’t even want to form their own opinions anymore because, “…eh, it’s just too tiring!” In the long run, it’s simply easier to let somebody in a $500 suit make the call for you and serve it up fresh with your macaroni and cheese every night on the six o’clock news. I guess when I think about it myself, it’s not really the national news that I’m concerned about because honestly, who could disagree that the massive forest fires and mudslides out west are a bad thing, and come to think of it, it’s not really the local news that I’m too concerned about either, for the most part, even though I’m still baffled as to how Mrs. Stuttsman’s cat getting stuck in a tree warrants a two minute breakdown during dinnertime. No, I’m willing to deal with all of those kinds of stories – the singing and dancing in the park, and the opening of a cutesy, new cookie shop downtown, and even the wild and wacky adventures of Mrs. Stuttsman’s cat, but let it be known that I do have to draw the line somewhere!

You’ve all seen them, I can guarantee it. They’re usually the stories that the producers hold off until the very end of the show, taunting us with that “Later On in Our Program…” graphic that makes us actually sit through forty-five minutes of renaissance festival coverage and promising weather updates just to find out “What product in our household could be limiting our children’s mathematical potential right now as we speak?!” These are typically stories from the absolute bottom of the bucket, at least as far as ethics and integrity are concerned, and yet our televisions are graced with a different newsflash each and every night because hey, “It’s our right, as citizens of this fair city, to know that our tax dollars are being spent to allow local college students to watch porn!”

Maybe I should’ve stuck it out in college for a couple more years!

I watch this kind of drivel and I feel like these guys are actually competing for water cooler time, which is a shame because when it all comes down to it, what do you think the hotter topic at work is going to be – Porn on College Campuses or Ross Asked Rachel to Marry Him?! When it all comes down to it, the million dollar cast of Friends is always going to beat out local gambling schemes and transportation woes and even the corruption of city hall, so it would make more sense to me, and be more beneficial to the rest of the citizens of this fair city, if they would just drop the flashy graphics and cutthroat reporting styles in exchange for an ounce of dignity and respect for their actual viewers. Pornography 101 - sure, you might think it sounds awful, but let us make our own call; Our Local Sports Stars Got Drunk Last Night and Caused a Ruckus at a Local Bar – hey, so did I; The Mayor’s Banging a New Secretary Each Week – well, our mayor’s a woman, so I might actually pay to see that one!

Just kidding, mayor…

Give us a choice and we’ll make up our own minds from there – keep me informed, but unless you can do it tastefully without pointing a finger at a concept that isn’t really as unreasonable as you think, make it quick and get back to that feature on Mrs. Stuttsman’s cat falling down the well – oh, that darned cat is always getting into all sorts of trouble!!!

Unless you can finagle Ross and Rachel themselves into roaming around campus to uncover the true filth that my tax dollars are paying for, I’m sad to say that I’d rather watch about the cat…

I honestly don’t know how I went this long without it. I’d been hearing all of the hype and rumors about it for years now, but nothing quite compares to trying it for yourself. They say once you try it, you’ll be hooked for life and I must say that I’ll agree. This Christmas I found my savior – it came in the form of a small, grey box made by RCA…

That’s right, I finally took the plunge and upgraded to a broadband Internet connection at my house, quite possibly making it the best home improvement step I’ve ever made! You could probably consider me one of the original Internet geeks, ranging back to the times of telnet and gopher, when a graphical interface was nothing more than a wet dream. The first time I connected to the Internet was sometime in the early 1990s; I was only about 11 years old or so. We didn’t really even know what this Internet-thing was all about, but after months and months of pleading I finally convinced my Dad to let me try it out. We only had a 1200 baud modem (translate: r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w…) and the computer itself was a “laptop” that could maybe display four or five lines at a time, so there wasn’t much to see…

Obviously things have drastically changed since then and the entire concept of the World Wide Web has been completely altered to now accommodate graphics, music and even animation. Am I the only person who remembers Lynx??? Ok, those days pretty much sucked and we knew it, but at least you could view the full potential of a text-based Internet over a dial-up connection using it. Nowadays it’s not uncommon to be able to take your lunch break and return to find that the page which you were attempting to load before you left is still loading…I hate to use such a cliché, but does the term World Wide Wait ring a bell?

I had used “permanent” Internet connections in other places before, mainly businesses and schools, but trust me, this doesn’t even come close to having a real connection! Besides, who wants to look at porn in the middle of the campus computer lab, anyways? Let me tell you, the difference in speed makes surfing the Internet an entirely new (and even tolerable!) experience! There’s certainly no more waiting for those dirty pictures of Anne Heche to load, or so I’ve heard…

Anyone who uses the Internet for anything more than checking e-mail once a week owes it to themselves to invest in broadband, whether it be via cable modem or DSL. If you live in that rural of an area where it still isn’t available, then I suggest that you either move or start making daily phone calls to your local cable company until they bite the bullet and realize that it would be cheaper to run a special line out to your house rather than keep an extra person on staff just to answer your phone calls! And ladies, even though you think that your man is only using the ‘net to look up sports scores and stuff, he’ll definitely appreciate the increase in his ability to download pornography, too! He’s going to look at it regardless, so why not speed up the whole process a little? You know what they say: What’s better than downloading your porn 10 times faster? Downloading your porn 100 times faster, of course! Hmmmm, 100 times faster…

The truly addictive part of the upgrade was that I didn’t just get the cable modem. Oh no, the package also came complete with digital cable as well, which as any couch potato knows is the next best thing to having an actual life! Some may call it the poor man’s satellite (although after seeing the bill, I couldn’t imagine why…), but 250 channels is good enough for me, at least for now! I’ve got over 50 different movies I’ve already seen and another several dozen sitcoms I couldn’t care less about available at my fingertips at any given time, not to mention the specialty channels such as Animal Planet, Discovery’s Animal World, The Science Channel presents Animals, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Live and The Spice Channel…

I figure between cable tv and my laptop with Internet access, there’s really no reason for me to ever have to leave the couch now. I do get hungry from time to time, but if I leave a trail of money by the door, the pizza delivery boy will usually catch on and bring it right to me. I’m still working on a solve for the whole bathroom-thing because I just don’t have good enough aim to use the empty beer bottles and I definitely won’t be trying the diaper thing again…

If the last bit made it sound like I was a little lazy, that’s not my intention at all because in real life I’m actually extremely lazy! And you know what, I really have no problems with that – They say I’m lazy, but it takes all my time – words spoken by a true man. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a little downloading to do…