Play it Again, Sam!

We have a DVR at home, as do many people nowadays, and I admit it is spoiling me rotten.

For the few of you who don't know, the DVR enables you to, among other things, record your favorite shows and store them for viewing later. You can even categorize and file them, digitally, so your TV suddenly turns into a sort of computer hard drive.

The other thing the DVR does--and this is the spoiling part---is allow you to pause, rewind and fast forward shows you are currently watching, including live sporting events. So you turn into your own replay specialist.

We are DVR reliant at home. We only have one, connected to the big screen TV in the front room. And it gets a work out. Lots of pausing, like when nature calls or my wife needs to check on laundry when she's watching something of note. The pausing can sometimes lead to fast forwarding, especially during commercials.

By the way, there's nothing better than fast forwarding through a four-minute commercial jam. Nothing!

We also like to have someone else in the house see and hear something that they missed, especially now with political season in full swing. So there's a lot of "Honey, you GOTTA see this!" and "Listen to THIS!"

Being a sports junkie, I'm constantly going back and forth with the rewind and play, reliving great moments by my Detroit sports teams, like the latest Miguel Cabrera moonshot.

But with only one DVR, that means when you're in the bedrooms or in the basement watching the telly, you don't have DVR capability. And that's rotten.


Oh, how many times lately I've been watching TV on a non-DVR set and have longed to go back and relive something, or try to catch something I missed. But I can't. The moment is gone forever (sort of).

Then I have the audacity to actually grumble that I can't go "back in time."

It gets worse.

I'm having DVR withdrawal in the car now, while listening to the radio.

Since I am nothing other than a very responsible driver who does nothing other than pay 100% attention to the road (don't look at me like that), things get said on sports talk radio that I am only half listening to, but which perks my ears up like a rabbit's.

I have found myself, lately, wanting to hit "rewind" on the radio! It's almost instinctual now, because I do it so much while watching TV.

That's a sign of someone who's gotten spoiled by the DVR.

It hasn't gotten so bad that I have had the urge to rewind people, but I'm afraid that's next.

Then again, if I had that power, I'd also want to edit what they said. And frankly, I don't have time for that. Especially during political season.

Comments

Post a Comment

As you will...

Popular posts from this blog

Life, Interrupted

Image
I don't take in late night television too much anymore, which actually follows a pattern I have throughout the rest of the day. If it's not sports, or a special about the JFK assassination, I pretty much don't watch it. But I happened upon the David Letterman show a few years ago---I remember this distinctly---and I was taken by the bubbly, perky young woman chatting up Dave to the audience's, and Dave's, bemusement. She was breezy without appearing loaded. Engaging without being ditzy. She just seemed like a lot of fun; there was nothing bimbo about her. It wasn't very long after that when I caught her in a movie with Ashton Kutcher, a comedy called "Just Married." She was terrific in it. That's how I remember Brittany Murphy. Murphy, who died suddenly at age 32 yesterday in California, wasn't typically mentioned when the discussion turned to America's finest young actors. She had her moments, though. There was her turn in "8 Mile,&qu
Read more

Del--icious?

Image
Another taco place is opening up near me and suddenly it's 1979 again. Taco Bell was a mostly unexplored food experience for me and my friends when word got out that they were constructing one on Merriman Road in Livonia, just north of Plymouth Road. We'd been, but always via car, somewhere else, and on precious few occasions. But this new one would be only a nice, worth-it bike's ride away from our houses. So it opens, and if we didn't go on the first day, it was pretty darn close to it. My friends were amazed at how much Taco Bell I could consume. Kind of like today, when my wife and daughter are amazed at how much Taco Bell I can consume. Still. It's a great bang-for-the-buck, really. You gotta love any fast food place anymore that has items on its menu for under a dollar. We wore out that new Taco Bell for a period of time, enamored with its newness and novelty status. And I typically ordered the most food. Back then, I could probably gorge myself for about thre
Read more

Murder in the Backyard

Image
Twenty-four years ago, I read a book and it scared me half to death. That's what'll happen, when you read about gruesome murders that took place right in your own backyard. The book was titled "Michigan Murders," by Edward Keyes, and it chronicled---sometimes in gory detail---the killing spree of one John Norman Collins in and around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti in the late-1960s. Collins, who's still in prison up in Marquette, was only convicted of one of the murders---that of Karen Sue Beineman---but it's widely believed that Collins was responsible for the deaths of up to six girls, mostly college students from Eastern Michigan University. What made the book so stark in its reality was that I was foolish enough to read it while attending EMU, in my senior year. Many of the events took place in Ypsilanti, near the EMU campus, and Keyes describes them in detail---sometimes with addresses---so it was damn near impossible not to get the creeps reading it, consideri
Read more