Tuesday, January 31, 2006

TV dinner... lunch


The Pork and Chicken dish at Pho88 kind of looks like the Battlestar Galactica.

While visiting the old 'hood where my parents live I stopped by a restuarant I used to frequent, Pho88. I got my, back then, usual dish. It was then when I realized I hadn't watched much TV lately.

It's been a few days since I've watched any TV or rather DVD Television as I don't have reception or cable in my basement apartment. The last series I was engulfed in was the new battlestar galactica season one, a series I bought a friend for Christmas and immediately borrowed once he finished viewing it. I was quite impressed with the show. Good writing, interesting characters and sci-fi to boot.

I supppose there's the option of just subscribing to cable. There's a lot of times I'll visit someone with cable and end up watching crappy virtual reality shows or watch channels being flipped in case there is something on more interesting somewhere else.

Note: if you are a channel flipper and you've gone through all the hundred plus channels of crap at least three times in the last ten minutes then you should tell yourself there's nothing good on tv and do something more with your life (like watching a movie on DVD).

Sometimes it's good to just be a couch potato. As sad as it is, it is part of our north american culture, it gives us something in common to talk about at lunch, around the drinking fountain, and at work. Phrases like "almost there", "You came in that thing?", "I haven't felt him since..." and "At that speed will we be able to pull out in time?" have vastly different meanings if you didn't see Star Wars (episode 4).

I remember working at an ad agency and they told me they wanted some graphics that looked like the opening titles to the X-files. At that point I had never seen the X-files and had to tape it for reference. When talking to people that have watched the same movie or television show in a room with people that haven't you can actually seen the person who didn't watch the show get a blank expression and have their eyes glaze over. Kind of like talking to people that bake for a living about networking solutions using fibre optic technology. Huh what?

So until TV becomes 100% complete crap and we as a society find something better in common to do (like fix the ozone layer, feed the poor, train hamsters to move solar panels to face the sun) so we can talk about it later I suppose I will continue to try to watch the good TV shows and be entertained.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The library will give you movies and tv shows to watch for free. I have been borrowing all the episodes of Dr. Who that they have. My last phase was every Marx Brother film I could find. Sometimes I just pick a title at random from my movie book - watch "The Legend of 1900" - or I pick something up off the shelf - "Dancer in the Dark" was a bit of a surprise! Who needs 100+ channels when we haven't seen everything in our past, and some of that stuff is really good. (My water cooler opener? William Hartnel is my new favourite Doctor...)