Monday, March 1, 2010

Back when I was a lad...

I mentioned that The Boy has gotten hooked on a new show call Olivia, based on the popular children's books. When I say "new" I actually mean new to us, since we recently moved and now have more channels than we did a while ago. Unfortunately, our Tivo couldn't handle the new stations until I ordered a lost sensor, so Olivia had to be watched live at 4:00 in the afternoon.

This seemed to confuse The Boy no end. After all these years of watching any of his shows on demand, he was now being told that he could only watch this talking pig girl at certain times of the day. He'd get pretty upset with us, thinking it was some sort of punishment that his cruel parents were inflicting on his innocent person. The fact that these shows didn't just magically appear when he demanded them was a foreign concept. Thank God the sensor finally arrived, so Olivia could join the esteemed ranks of Bob the Builder and Curious George in the magic box.

I recoil in horror at the memory of life before Tivo. Having to rush home to watch a show seems so primitive to me now. Hell, I don't even know when most of my shows actually air, or on what channel. I just tell Tivo to save them and that's it. I used to have a pretty fancy VCR, with the ability to record at several different times and days, but even that seems like a mockery of technology now.

Though it wasn't all bad. There was a certain amount of communal enjoyment back then. You knew that Friday was going to be spent talking about the previous night's Seinfeld episode. My roommates and I were religious about being home in time for Iron Chef. Thankfully it aired on Friday nights so where else would we be?

Nowadays you ask someone if they've seen the latest 30 Rock and the most likely response will be, "I'm three shows behind. I just spent the weekend catching up on all of last season's Lost episodes to clear up disk space."

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