Lisa’s at work, and she will be for a while, so now’s the time when Benjamin usually pops in a DVD, or turns on the Playstation, and enjoys some well earned, well loved, digital, quality time. And, usually, nearly every time that Lisa’s at work and I’m at home, that’s precisely what happens. I screw around playing games on the internet, I play games or watch movies on the television, and, lately, I might even pick up a book to read. But once in a while there’s a hiccup in the system. Kind of like what we learn Neo to be in Matrix II - an anomaly in the otherwise perfect harmony of mathematic precision. See, my activities for while I’m home alone have been scripted, planned, and preprogrammed in my fragile little mind. However, once in a while, there’s a slip up. I watch regular TV. Watching regular TV isn’t the anomaly, rather, getting caught up in a movie that’s on TV is the unpredictable part of the equation that is, for me, magnetic in its power – drawing me, unwillingly, to it. “So what,” you’re asking me, “we all watch movies on TV.” True, we all do. But here’s the part that bothers me so much. Right now, on television, there are two movies, two movies that I love, that I own on DVD; Shawshank Redemption and The Matrix. I own these movies. I have them on DVD. I can watch them, whenever I want, unedited, uninterrupted by commercial, not formatted for TV in their original, glorious, crisp, clear, widescreen form. But I have the ‘flashback’ feature on my remote control set to the two channels these two movies are on, and when one goes to commercial I flip to the other, and when that one goes to commercial I flip back. I hate commercial. I hate the editing. I hate the sometimes fuzzy picture that one has to accept through basic cable. I hate the full-screen, pan-and-scan formatting. Yet I also hate knowing that there’s a perfect solution just two feet from the television. Just up a bit, and to the right some, there’s three shelves stacked with DVDs, and amongst them the perfectly clear and digital solutions to my flipping problem. So why do I deal with the remote control? The more time drags on, the more I see of these two movies, and therefore the more involved I become in their respective stories. Next thing I know, I flipping, back and forth, not just for commercial breaks but to avoid those certain ‘boring scenes’ that I know are coming. Today, for whatever reason, I decided to be a pinch more productive and write this. I decided to write and tell you about this mental disorder I have called Movicus Televisicus Flippiola (I’m like a doctor or something). Anyway, Shawshank’s at commercial, and the Matrix is at the part where Sipher just betrayed the whole crew after the visit with the Oracle and some crazy shooting’s about to begin. But don’t worry, I’m sure there’s going to be a commercial just before Neo faces down and fights Agent Smith in the subway, which will be just in time for me to see Andy Dufrane defy the Warden and get himself another month in the whole for calling the Warden “obtuse”. |
