About a month unplugged, and I’m having withdrawal.
Seriously. Today was the first day of Saturday college games, and I’ve been climbing the walls, I really have, and it’s been made worse by folks–yes, I’m talking to you, Kevin and Bonnie–mercilessly rubbing it in; that they’ll be watching THEIR teams play and nyah, nyah.
Monsters. See if I don’t write you into a novel and then rub you out in a big and nasty way.
I thought I wouldn’t miss cable TV all that much because, as I said, I don’t watch TV. Even though there are shows I love–A&E, what moron made the executive decision to cancel LONGMIRE?–I’d rarely watch them in real time or at home. There were some shows I set up to record on DVR and might binge-watch…but that had declined, too. Mostly, I watched shows at the gym where I could kill two birds with one stone: burn off those calories and catch up on JUSTIFIED, THE AMERICANS, FARGO, etc. Even then, I managed only about ninety minutes of watching, and only on those days that I wasn’t out on my bike or in the pool. So…maybe five hours a week, max?
But, boy, have I felt the lack, and it’s so very weird. I think it’s because I’m now very aware of how canned everything feels, how *contained* I am–and in a very claustrophobic way. At the gym, it’s different; I’m out and about; there are people all around. I’ve escaped the hermetic bubble of my house in which I’m trapped most of the day. Now, when the writing’s really going well, that’s not a problem; I manage to escape my room pretty routinely by slipping beneath the skin of whatever story I’m telling. But if I’m tired or things aren’t clicking or whatever…then I feel the “stuckness” a bit more. I don’t exactly crave people or distraction, though I know some writers do (James Dashner once said he goes out to a movie when he gets stuck). But I sure feel alone.
This has gotten worse since becoming unplugged. Don’t get me wrong; Roku is a fun little device, but the reality is that there are only a few apps I use. Besides, if I do have free time to watch anything in the evenings–HAH!–it’s usually with the husband. When he’s out of town, then it’s not such a big deal; I can bop over to Netflix or Amazon and watch an episode of this or that. But when he’s here, I can’t plug into a series because he’ll be bored and I find explaining EVERY LITTLE THING to be really tedious. (Plus, if he doesn’t like the show, I take it personally: like . . . what . . . you don’t like my taste, what?) The prospect of riffling through movie choices is almost daunting. (Something the husband can’t abide either: in fact,the only app he actually likes is Livestream that allows him to watch Newsy stories strung together. No choice involved. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.) So, Roku’s cool, but it’s all still canned and self-contained. It FEELS artificial and the medium itself highlights this artificiality–and all that really bugs me. I feel as “in the box” as the shows themselves.
What’s really hammered this home is the beginning of football season. Understand that, if you’re unplugged, your choices in terms of live sports are dimininishingly few. They come down to places with TVs: bars, gyms. A friend’s house. Or–in my case–a certain Brit named David with a VERY BIG phone and chocolate cake to boot. (David . . . call me. Really. It’s the chocolate cake. I’ll bring the whipped cream.) I tried a bar for a preseason game only to be stuck watching a BASEBALL game to which every single television in the place was tuned. The gym hasn’t been bad, but it’s not as if I’m going to be able to watch an entire game. I mean, I can do about two hours, and then I’m cooked. Any longer, and I’ll be grinding what little cartilage I’ve got left to mush. A bar’s only good in the late afternoon, early evening when you can have a beer and kick back, eat a few jalapeño poppers without guilt because you’ve done your ninety minutes or two hours on the machines.
Try as I might, there’s nothing legal–note, I said LEGAL–I can do to watch live ball. There are illegal avenues, and sure, I could . . . but my objection is the same I have for pirate sites that offer up free books still in copyright: hey, that’s a product you are STEALING. Watching a game on an illegal stream would be like me saying to all those pirates, Sure, my books? Feel free not to pay for the work I’ve done. I just can’t do it.
The problem is that the legal avenues are . . . meh. The best the NFL offers is the privilege of games on delay–and I’m, like, wuh? The whole point of a game is that it’s live (same for just about any sport for me). I’ve had only a little better luck with college ball; fork over $18/month, and CBS Ulive will let you listen to a bunch of games and watch a very, very few (lots of soccer and volleyball there, too, if you want . . . NOT!).
But I finally did do that: coughed up the bucks for CBS Ulive to try for a month. About an hour ago (I’m writing this on Saturday), I decided to try out a combo: gym and a legal app.
It wasn’t bad. I brought along the iPod because I worried that I wouldn’t be able to see the Navy game. A prescient move because while the gym gets every sports channel known to man, the only one they don’t get is, of course, ESPN3, which just happened to be the channel carrying the Navy game. (Okay, they don’t get ESPNU either. Still.) Anyway, it was sort of weird, the whole thing. I mean, it worked, but I wasn’t INVESTED because the game I wanted to see, I couldn’t. Instead, I was stuck flipping between the Michigan game (boring; when one team is crushing another, where’s the sport?), the Virginia game (not bad), the Iowa game (much more entertaining), and even Wofford and Georgia (which I’d never have thought to watch but found not half-bad), while–on the iPod–I listened to the OSU-Navy game and–a side bennie–got instant updates on AF vs. Nicholls (a game I knew I’d never get; I think the only nationally televised game with AF this year is when they play Army).
Anyway, it was total college football overload–but it was fun; I loved listening to real people talking over each other. In some ways, the games were secondary and there were several surreal moments when I saw the CBS Sports Navy scoring update on the iPod before it actually came through for me to hear on the radio feed through the same bloody device.
After all that, I think I understand what it is that I miss: the messiness. The untidiness of life. The moments when announcers are talking over one another, getting excited, shouting when there’s a long run, and the sound of other people cheering wildly. In other words, what I miss is . . . the “life” in “live TV.” Without that, all that comes through my devices is homogenized, synthesized, beautifully scripted, lovingly shot.
But it’s not life, with all its warts and imperfections–and life, for better or worse . . . I miss you.
