The internet and binge watching have really put a crimp into what was perhaps my biggest talent – an encyclopedialike knowledge of movies, television, music, sports and comic books.
Actually this should probably just be called I’m getting old – Me and my gnat like attention span so wish that I was sixteen right now.
I grew up with 6 television channels and insomnia. There were as many Blockbuster Video stores in my area when I was growing up as there are now – none. My insomnia was so bad that I would watch television most nights for three or four hours and then sleep in a lighted hallway reading the Encyclopedia Britannica until I finally fell asleep. Does a print version of The Encyclopedia Britannica exist anymore? (The answer is no: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/change/)
Some nights I’d be up all night listening to the Larry King show on the radio. OK, nearly every night I was up all night listening to the Larry King show on the radio.
Yet somehow despite my limited options I somehow saw practically every single episode of The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, The Love Boat, I Love Lucy and every later variant of it, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, I Dream of Jeannie, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Hogan’s Heroes (I always thought it was a shame that no one out there knew that Robert Hogan really defeated the Nazis), The Honeymooners, Three’s Company (which is probably the worst TV show ever made – the entire show was about sex and not once did it ever occur), The Brady Bunch, Fantasy Island, and just about every other sit-com that aired before 1980. I absolutely hated the show Scooby-Doo, which of course didn’t stop me from seeing every single episode. Yogi Bear, Tom and Jerry, Loony Tunes, every movie ever released under the Disney banner – including numerous viewings(at least 20) of Gus, which was a movie about a Field Goal kicking mule! How this possible with only six channels I’ll never understand.
When I was growing up, Sunday morning television was even more limited than the rest of the week. There was nothing on before 9 AM that didn’t have to do with the Christian religion. There were televangelists on all three major channels. I saw every episode of Davey and Goliath, despite the fact that it was a show for young christian children and I was Jewish. After 9 AM one channel always showed Bonanza and The Big Valley. One channel would show the Little Rascals, and every week there would be a different (I can’t swear by this because maybe they just showed the same one every week and I didn’t realize it) Shirley Temple movie on. That was it for most of my childhood.
During the week Noon until 3 PM was a complete wasteland. All three major networks showed nothing but Soap Operas, which I couldn’t handle watching at that age. On Channel 43 (UHF to anyone that even knows what that was anymore) every weekday was a horrible D grade movie hosted by John Lanigan, who at least made it known that he “knew” that every single movie they showed was completely unwatchable. Every weekday they would call up faithful viewers of the show and let them try to guess what movie a 30 second snippet was from. They did this three or so times a day. The scenes were non-essential random pieces of equally horrible D rated movies and it wasn’t uncommon for the prize to go unclaimed for what seemed to be at least six months. Yes, that means that I would see that scene maybe 75-100 times before it got reset.
That’s how addicted I was to television and that’s how old I am now. I’d pace back and forth watching these movies like a heroin addict praying that I could make it to 3 PM, at which time I could thankfully watch something really violent and ridiculous like Ultraman or Johnny Socko and his Robot. I preferred Ultraman by the way.
Decent old movies were nearly impossible to see. They would show The Wizard of Oz once a year to huge ratings, because that was the only way you could watch it. The only reason that It’s a Wonderful Life went from flop to classic was because its studio let the copyright on it lapse, which in turn allowed television channels to show it either really cheaply or for free as much as they wanted to. If you wanted to see something like Casablanca, then you had to be willing to watch it at Midnight or later.
When I was a working teenager, I’d stay up until 4 AM watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. At the end of the movie I would swear to be a better person, which lasted for about six hours when I had to be awake and go to work exhausted and cranky.
Yet somehow I not only saw the Rashoman episode of Gilligan’s Island 75 times, I also read everything I could get my hands on. I’m still mentally damaged after accidentally looking through the pictures of my parents copy of Helter Skelter at around the age of 8.
My parents would drop me off at the library for an entire day and I would read every single issue of Rolling Stone Magazine that they had – even the one’s on microfiche. Microfiche!
I saw every single episode of Saved by the Bell, despite the fact that I despised it, merely because it ran all night when I was a trader in San Francisco. I couldn’t sleep and it was literally the only thing I could watch most nights.
The point of which is essentially
1. Again I am old
2. If I had the Internet when I was younger I would have known everything and seen every television show, music video, and movie ever made. It’s ungodly the amount of times that I reread the same books or watched the same movies over and over again. I’ve probably seen Top Gun or some part of it like 450 times. I spent ungodly hours just browsing through The Baseball Encyclopedia, and it was nothing but a bunch of names and numbers.
3. Now that access to all of the stuff I spent years watching and reading in a non sleeping frenzy is so much easier. I’m not even that special anymore.
I saw every episode of Beverly Hills 90210 when it first aired, now someone can just binge watch the entire thing in a week and instantly beat the bejesus out of me in a trivia contest and perhaps even write a doctoral thesis on it. (Really, it probably deserves many)
I saw every episode of Seinfeld when it first aired and never really watched it after that. Now people who saw it over and over and over in syndication discuss episodes in detail that I only faintly remember.
I saw the Shawshank Redemption when it first came out and was a complete flop. Now nearly everyone I know has seen it at least 40 times on cable and can answer the tiniest piece of minutia about it. I admit that due to the internet I now also know the following.
“The American Humane Association monitored the filming of scenes involving Brooks’ crow. During the scene where he fed it a maggot, the AHA objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot, and required that they use a maggot that had died from natural causes. One was found, and the scene was filmed.”
I saw the Big Lebowski when it first came out and flopped and I haven’t seen it since. Now I do my best to figure out exactly why it has become such a cult classic. I liked it when I saw it, but I never thought it would turn into the phenomenon that it has. I’m even a little scared to revisit it.
I saw Office Space when it first came out and loved it and then everyone else saw it 1000 times on cable.
The point being again:
1. I am old
2. I wish I was born in 1999
3. Oh my god what have I done with my life?
