Behind Closed Blinds

So I recently experienced a life-changing event--the delivery of my brand new 58-inch plasma TV with 3D capabilities (complete with one set of 3D glasses!). Yep, my friends are having babies; I have a new TV. And this 58-inch, 150-lb beauty has already transformed my life. To make room in my life for my new TV, the first thing I did was get rid of my old entertainment center. Then I bought a special table for the TV. Then I had to buy a whole new bookcase to replace the shelf space I lost when I sold the entertainment center, and I also had to rearrange my furniture layout in my living room. Now I'm going to sell my coffee table and end tables so that I can buy new ones that better complement the TV. I have also closed all the blinds in my house like some kind of vampire for fear of letting too much sun ruin the plasma screen. To quote Chazz Michael Michaels from Blades of Glory, "No exaggeration--I could not love a human baby more."

The funny thing is that there was a time in the increasingly distant past when I hardly watched any TV at all and when I did, I had to do crazy things like actually stand up and walk over to the TV to change the channel. And we had just one TV in the whole house. It was all very Little House on the Prairie-esque, which coincidentally was one of the very few shows I was allowed to watch. I remember that I used to get really excited about sitting through the opening theme song of Dallas (the show that came on right after LHOTP), convinced that my parents had forgotten about me and that I was going to get to watch that show, too. I never got past the theme song, though; one of my parents was always around to make sure my dreams of watching adult soap operas were immediately squelched.

Flash forward 25 years. This same family that watched such little television in the 80's now does things like watch 5 seasons of 24 in 10 days; for those of you who don't want to do the math, that's over 100 hours of TV. We often argue about which one of us watches the most TV. My dad vehemently denies it's him and in fact was indignant a few weeks ago when I said something to that effect. All I know is that any time I call my parents after 7 PM EDT, my dad picks up after one ring because he's sitting on the TV room couch right by the phone. Last year when I asked him if he was watching Castle, he said no and pretended not to know what I was talking about, and yet a few weeks later when I was at my parents' house, I found several episodes of Castle mysteriously recorded on their DVR.... There was also that time he revealed detailed knowledge about the lives of the Sex and the City characters after claiming he'd never seen the show. And many of you also know that he was 90210's #1 fan back in the day and later secretly loved Dawson's Creek. He also watches bad movies on TV. My sister told me recently that one of his favorites is Cinderella Story--not the one starring Russell Crowe, but the one starring Hilary Duff.

I actually find my dad's TV-watching to be kind of awesome. I don't know too many 62-year-old college professors who know who Wes from the Bachelorette is or who have opinions about the dancers on So You Think You Can Dance or who call and say things like, "Nina, it's Jack. Teri's been kidnapped" or who actively want to go see movies like Step Up 3D and then say things like, "I've been thinking about that dance scene with Moose and Camille--that was SO bad!"

But as they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I, too, love crappy movies like She's All That which I watch every single time it's on, and I, too, watch lots of TV. All of this is of course why I sold my soul to Best Buy so that I could get the very best buy on the market. So anyway, if you need me these days, I'll probably be in my living room possibly wearing my 3D glasses and perhaps polishing my plasma with a microfiber cloth while I shield it from the sun's rays. Yep, it's a rough life, but someone's got to live it.