Remote locations on the TV dial

For many years of my life I watched a lot of television. As a kid Saturday mornings was the jackpot. Does anybody else remember Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp or “Up at at ‘em Atom Ant!”? As a youth I was always looking for laughs. Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett offered humor which was not hurtful or hedonistic. When cable came into my life I spent more and more time with movies. I will watch Gunga Din no matter what time of day it comes on and Michael Caine was in some really awful movies. Sports have been the constant ingredient in my television viewing recipe. I know where I was when Ed Podolak had 350 all-purpose yards against the Dolphins in ’71, when Danny Manning squeezed the final rebound in ’88, and when Bill Buckner watched a five ounce white sphere roll between his feet changing his life forever and giving hero status to a man with the less than epic name of Mookie.
Over the last few years I have dropped television from my days. There are some good programs on, but there is entirely too much stuff being sent into our homes through that box. Some of the programs remind me of the old nature shows. Marlon Perkins would venture out in the wilds of Africa and show us the behavior of animals whose only concerns were fulfilling the basest of needs and following self-serving instincts. Now Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is replaced by MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 which goes to deepest, darkest Beverly Hills and shows us the same thing only with designer dresses and out of control egos replacing dying gazelles and angry alpha males.
A little while back I spent more time in front of a television than I’m used to. The NCAA basketball tournament still draws me to the flickering blue light like a moth to one of those bug zappers. Fortunately, I do not get so close I experience a jolt of voltage making it so my wings will never caress the wind again. OK, I know I don’t have wings and “caress the wind” is an awfully girly phrase, but I found myself in the middle of a metaphor and I didn’t have another way out…gimme a break.
In my younger days I had the fastest mute button in the west, so I seldom heard commercials (and I was able to get Billy Packer to shut up once in a while). This was not possible for this tournament. No, I haven’t passed my prime. My trigger finger is just as spry as ever. The issue is the mute button itself. Ever since I started living in a house with three walking and talking children it has become much harder to keep track of things. People who do not have children believe the remote control is “remote” because it is used to control something from a distance. People with children know it is “remote” because it is inexplicably transported to remote locations. Locations like the crisper drawer of the refrigerator, under the sofa of the house three and half blocks south of your house, or the backpack of a scientist traipsing along the Amazon River studying Pink River Dolphins. That name is confusing. Is the river it lives in pink or the dolphin itself?
Watching and listening to the commercials brought to mind some questions. First is the color yellow some sort of visual signal for stupid? Remember those two guys who discussed cell phone service throughout the tournament? The dumb one always wore yellow. A German line of cars has an incredibly British guy describing how great they are. Is this just because Americans think all foreigners are the same? I mean we bought Sean Connery (a guy from Scotland) as Mulay Achmed Mohammed in one movie and as Khalil Abdul-Muhsen in another.
The thing I truly do not understand is big time stars doing the voice-overs for commercials. I get why products would want George Clooney to appear in their ad, but if you can’t see him how many people recognize his voice. It is his voice talking about beer. Is there some sort of subliminal message forcing the nameless rabble to follow the voice of a star? Gene Hackman tells us we can build things together with Lowe’s. Somehow I do not expect to see him with a crescent wrench fixing the dripping faucet in my bathroom anytime soon. But the absolute best has to be that Latin sex symbol Antonio Banderas, the heartthrob from Desperado and The Mask of Zorro. He is making house payments by supplying the voice of a sexy bumblebee in an allergy medicine ad. I know when I think of relief from nasal congestion the first thing that comes to mind is a Bombus distinguendus with an Andalusian accent.