Out of control
January 28, 2008I’ve discovered the best thing for a pop culture diet (besides the writer’s strike, of course.) It is the remote control. Or, should I say, my remote control.
First of all, even though it is was created to fit perfectly in the palm of a couch potato’s hand, with contours along the sides so you could comfortably clutch the thing for hours while zapping back and forth between a Project Runway marathon and a Degrassi marathon, it lacks something pretty essential.
If you look at your own controller, you”ll see there’s a bit of plastic that you can take off in order to insert batteries. Well, mine doesn’t have that. I only discovered this after taking it out of its packaging. I don’t know if all RCA silver universal remotes are like that or mine is just defective, but there you go.
So I have to use Scotch tape to keep the batteries in place, and that’s been going okay for the past year or so. But now the AAA batteries are starting to fail. It probably has 30 percent of its juice left, so I’m keeping it going by taking out the batteries or rolling them around in order to jumpstart them to working for a little bit longer. It only works half of the time.
Yes, I know have to get new ones, but I’m putting it off for no good reason–I’ll probably cave around the time I’ll need something ten times more essential, like toilet paper or soap.
So if that doesn’t make TV watching hard enough, I have a nemesis. Its totally inescapable for anyone watches TV (at least in the NYC area), and it’s driving me CRAZY. It is:
And it’s terrible. Oh, so terrible. I don’t know what bothers me worse: the jingle, a faux-rap about cable service compelete with annoying female chorus chant-sings the telephone number, or the random visuals that show some sort of pirate invasion complete with mermaids and treasure chests.
Okay, I know what’s worse: the song. It gets in your brain like fingernails on a chalkboard.
And that’s where my remote control comes in. When that stupid ad comes on, I immediately try to change the channel, but the triple A’s either don’t work or escape the worn tape and roll away to the darkest corners of my apartment.
Which means I’m left to to endure that commercial for thirty seconds, and that’s thirty seconds too many. Plus, it’s on All. The. Frickin. Time. I haven’t had this much hatred for something insignificant since, I don’t know, let’s say red carpet interviews for third rate awards shows (which I might be watching on the TV Guide Channel on mute, while listening to a 2006 episode of This American Life about Amy Sedaris in a fat suit).
In fact, most of my TV watching is done these days without volume, just in case. The best way to keep my sanity is to go to a place that lacks commercials, infomercials, interstitials and coming attractions: good old books.
I just renewed Veronica by Mary Gaitskill from the library, which is supposed to be amazing and I’ve only read one page of so far (despite having it for 2.5 weeks). I guess I can do that. And maybe buy some batteries. But I think I have like two rolls of toilet paper left, so we’ll see.
