Rocky Top Talk’s Joel has been trying to talk me into getting a TiVo. I, of course, am dead set against it.
Not that I needed additional reasons to avoid having that infernal HAL-9000-with-a-satellite-dish in my house, but now I have extra ammunition to use in my steadfast opposition to acquiring a digital video recorder.
One of the supposed strengths of TiVo is its ability to recommend programming for you based upon your viewing patterns, a la Amazon.com. I find that more than slightly creepy, but now a further problem with this concept has come to light:
My wife, Susan, a wonderful woman whom I love dearly, watches crap!
Also, the name of the device sounds eerily similar to the surname of the Root of All Evil, but that’s a separate issue altogether.
The other night, while Susan was sorting laundry in the living room, I caught her watching "Jon and Kate Plus 8," a "reality" (read: unscripted) show about a married couple who are neither likeable nor compatible yet who have eight small children. We’re not talking about a family with eight kids like the one on "Eight is Enough," in which Dick Van Patten made former "Crossfire" co-host Tom Braden seem palatable; we’re talking about television that will aggravate you 47 different ways.
Last night, before I put our son, Thomas, to bed and she put our daughter, Elizabeth, to bed, Susan made me promise her that, if (read: when) she fell asleep, I was to make sure she was up in time to watch "Step It Up and Dance," to which I routinely refer as "The World’s Most Effeminate Man Competition." How horrid is this ill-conceived offspring of an unholy union between "The Apprentice" and "A Chorus Line"? It’s so bad that, even though it features Elizabeth Berkley standing around looking like Elizabeth Berkley, I still can’t bring myself to watch it!
If I got a TiVo, I’d get home in the afternoon, and that ominous omniscient box would announce, "I recorded the following programs I thought Susan might like. Would you like to see them?"
That’s what I need . . . more crappy T.V. suggestions. Voluntarily providing my wife with a co-conspirator in her incessant efforts to expose me to the worst that our too many channels have to offer? Thanks, but no thanks.
Go ‘Dawgs!