You're Watching DTV!

Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on April 21, 2008 at 8:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Pretty, Jill.

Posted by duplenty (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 8:37 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I love that chair.

Posted by lazz (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 9:35 a.m. (Suggest removal)

i caught a whiff of similar melancholy not long ago when watching some 60s or 70s movie ... all i remember about it are 2 things: 1, it was truly awful, legendarily awful, despite some stellar cast, and 2, when the phone rang, it was one of those rotary jobbers that was owned by the phone company -- THE phone company, MA BELL -- and had your number printed on the slip of paper that went in the middle of the dial, weighed about 16 pounds, fashioned out of Pontiac-grade Detroit steel, forever hard-wired into the kitchen wall, less mobile than the refrigerator, shared by however many people lived under the roof, with perhaps one other in the den for Dad's Business Calls ... and had that distinctive riiiiiiiiing, created by two actual metal BELLS, that is now forever gone ... i gasped audibly, pointed at the screen, and shouted, "a TELEPHONE!!!"
and, so came the insanity ...

thanks for the dtv link ... i need it too, jilla ...

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 10:38 a.m. (Suggest removal)

The QWERTY layout was designed to slow down the typist in order not to jam the mechanism of the early typewriters. We still use it. So, no matter what happens, there will always be that.

And here's what we also will always have: Our suckage as a species also resonates from the birth of the cosmos.

So even though the sands shift through and around our Berckenstocks, take heart and embrace the timeless.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 21, 2008 at 11:39 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Misty, thankayew.
duplenty, I loves the eBays. I have more photos of that chair on my Flickr page. More to come. Entire miniature sets....mmm, tiny manageable worlds.

lazz, I had the same reaction when I heard a busy signal the other day. For a minute, I was confused and then, "OHHH, I remember that..." Sheesh, it wasn't that long ago. Funny how when you think "phone" though, that's the image we all use...stock photos, clip art, etc. I wonder when that will shift. Same with TVs really. It's always some old jobby with rabbit ears and static or color bars. That's a TV. It's weird how digital feels so alien, so disconnected. At least with photography, there's somewhat of a backlash going on.

DOTS, that is, until we evolve into 3-fingered sucker-mouthed sloths. Then keyboards will probably look like a McDonald's register with keys for LOL and OHNOEZ.

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 1:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Do non-laptop computers count? Are we violating the spirit of Mental Detox week as we comment on this here blog?

David Lee Roth is a freak.

Posted by lazz (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 2 p.m. (Suggest removal)

what is the photography backlash, jilla?
away from digital and back to film??

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 6:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Whatever having to google OHNOEZ and not getting the DLR reference signifies, I'm that.

Posted by clayhill70 (anonymous) on April 21, 2008 at 10:10 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Jilla, next year if you find yourself still pining for static tune your radio to a Royals game on AM......especially if your in Wichita.

Lazz, this will date me.....every small town had it's own little telephone building which employed at least four operators working different days and shifts. You picked up your phone and the operator would ask what local number you wanted, if it was long distance you would give them the number and they would ring you back when the connection had been made.Everyone was on a party line.You could have any color phone you wanted as long as it was black.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 21, 2008 at 11:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

clayhill, is it possible that I remember party lines? I remember picking up our telephone and our older neighbors would be talking to people not inside our house. My parents said it was a party line.

DOTS, don't worry...I'm not sure anyone else got the DLR reference either. I wrote DTV and thought...."You're watching Daaaaave TV!"

lazz, I could be wrong, but it seems like there's a resurgence of film use. Even though Polaroid has quit making film, someone else will pick it up I'm sure. And Kodak seems to be making more Super 8 film these days. I ran across a guy on zee internets who shoots weddings in Super 8. I think that's swell. Went to the Steve McCurry thing talk tonight and came away with mixed feelings. He's really good at what he does, but he seems lacking in the....integrity area. Has no problem apparently shooting for big companies. Then again, National Geographic is a big company. Anyway, he said that digital is as good, if not better, than film anymore and I have to disagree. It's like the feel of it is just, different. Hard to describe. Too perfect, too much machine. I thought that was careless of him to say to a large room full of students. I could really go on and on about this...

OJ, Yes. And yes?

Posted by shutyourface (anonymous) on April 22, 2008 at 2:27 a.m. (Suggest removal)

holy shit!

you're right. my first favorite tv looked like it was made out of wood. it had fake, golden drawer-pullers on the bottom, as if someone sawed through the centimeter of SECRET wood and gave you a place to put....pennies? your keys? maybe something to do with the television. i don't know what any of that was about, those drawers. who put shit in their tv's in the 70's? crazy assholes.

that bitch of a 27" was striking a red, "flash gordan" laser beam right through the center during all broadcast, whatsoever, as if taunting that it was zapping my eyesight every second. for something like 16 years of life. i used to hug it, when nobody was looking. mr. magic machine.

fuck it. if you beat the side enough, you'd be okay for thirty minutes. and SECRET wood with golden handles! i buy that. sounds zany.

it's probably dead now. somewhere in a garbage roost. or worse yet, somewhere in mexico. chillin' with my '94 cougar (have proof).

i need to stop getting drunk. you've made me sad.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 22, 2008 at 7:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Huh. The non DLR reference reminds me to make my quarterly gratuitous mention of Black Oak Arkansas from who's Jim "Dandy" Mangrum DLR californiafried his entire shtick.*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osq3o7uMS...

* bonus points for sentence construction

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on April 22, 2008 at 8:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I have to admit, DOTDOT I've never seen anyone, um, "play" a washboard quite like that.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 22, 2008 at 10:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)

This is probably an inappropriate time to say I got your washboard right here.

Anybody else miss 8 tracks?

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 22, 2008 at 10:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I miss 8 tracks. I think my parents still have ours. I hope so. Used to listen to Steve Martin's "A Wild and Crazy Guy". And there was one Christmas tape that I especially liked for the version of Silver Bells. Oh, and Anne Murray. I friggin' loved Anne Murray. Little cross-eyed girl in a yellow, blue, and green summer dress, tearing through the house with a popsicle, trailing a tattered feather boa and a puppy. Ahh, memories.

Posted by clayhill70 (anonymous) on April 23, 2008 at 9:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Grassroots, Turtles, Tommy James and the Shondels.....pre marijuana and the "police action" in Vietnam would be long over before I had to worry about the draft.

Posted by Fritz (anonymous) on April 23, 2008 at 11:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"Oh, rue the day these accursed fountain-pens appeared. Writing shall
lack for the thoughtful pauses afforded by the dipping of the nib in the inkwell, and the mental discipline that comes from the long hours practicing and mastering the flowing strokes across paper, smoothing the hulry-burly mental ramblings into elegant, concise prose."

Seriously, an elegy for static? Does every piece of effluvium this culture accidently creates have to have to be fondly remembered, or worse yet, imbued with meaning?

Can we just accept that:
A) We will discard everything in favor of cheaper, faster, more convenient, and shinier

B) Things are usually replaced because the new thing has features or abilities the original lacked, and that we desperately wanted; i.e., "if this phone didn't have a cord I could take it to my room for some privacy!"

C) The old way wasn't a better way - it's was just the best they had at the time. Summed up best by one of my favorite Onion headlines: "Grueling Household Tasks Of 19th Century Enjoyed By Suburban Woman"

D) The kids always win. Despite the occasional retro fad, (swing dancing, anyone?) your way of doing things will be abandoned.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go now and plan the 1st annual VCR Fest.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 12:35 a.m. (Suggest removal)

"Despite the occasional retro fad... your way of doing things will be abandoned."

I guess that's what happened to smoothing the hulry (sic) -burly mental ramblings.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 24, 2008 at 1:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Fritz, you untouchable bastard. Did you just skim it all and plug in your opinion? Did you MISS that shit about feedback from our very CREATION? Well, gee, digital gets a prettier peek-chor, it MUST be an improvement. Those colors...they're so....hyper-real. Well, my friend, my opinion is v2.0 of your opinion.

New, does not always = better. If that were the case, then Americans wouldn't be such prescription-drug-addicted lardasses and our "progress" wouldn't have made such a skid mark on the pants of the Earth.
KTHNX.

Posted by Fritz (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 10:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Jill, Jill, Jill...the real irony here is that the static isn't going away. In fact, if you keep your TV plugged in, that's all it will get after 02/09. So enjoy! (Even if you don't, revel in the fact that, as Mr. Sagan said, we are all made of starstuff. See - beauty in everything!)

And I'm not saying that newer is better, only that new always wins. It wins because when enough of the population craves it, necessary or not, it becomes so ubiquitous we can't avoid it. I could give a rat's patootie about text messaging, but it's the only way to reach the babysitter on short notice, 'cause she sure don't pick up voicemail. Of course, I can never reach my parents on theirs, because they don't have them on most the time - they think cell phones are only for emergencies.

That test pattern art thingy you linked to? I'm appalled that they are not including the old black & white indian head test pattern. But, hey, they don't remember it from their youth, so it must not be relevant.

And don't you have any love for the good old newspaper? The tactile feel, the instant upload, the random exposure to stories you never would have looked up deliberately. Perhaps you should choose to abandon this web technology that is destroying newspapers, and just write letters to the editor, or try to get a job as a columnist. Or perhaps you like the opportunities this new technology has afforded you to willingly give it up?

Which is my point - we weren't watching TV for the wonderment of the static, only to have it cruelly ripped from our embrace. We watched TV with static because it was the only TV we had (and newer models had filters to eliminate the static). There is nothing special about the things we have gotten used to - they are after all the stuff that displaced a previous generations' stuff. Your weeping over TV static joins the pool of tears that includes someone's lament over the end of radio dramas and another's grieving for the disappearance of the touring vaudeville shows.

This doesn't mean that they are bad, but it also doesn't mean that they were any better than what came after. It might, however, mean that most of us who willingly walk away from the old might not be doing it out of some slack-jawed inability to see that we are leaving the poetic for the practical. We might just think that stuff is stuff, and most not worth waxing poetic over (though maybe we do wish we didn't have to get rid of a device that has been functioning just fine for the last fifteen years.)

Oh, and DOTDOT, congratulations, you found a misspelling. You get a cookie.

Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on April 24, 2008 at 4:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)

re: the telephone thing---my parents STILL have to pay an extra seven dollars a month to not be on a party line. See, some crap is sticking around . . .

I, for one, like the waxing poetic over trivial nostalgia. It's not gonna change the world, but sometimes it makes me think about *why* I'm going to miss something.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 24, 2008 at 5:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Fritz, the point was that the static will actually not be the same. Digital static is different, much like digital photos are different than traditional photography. Maybe you just don't see it. TV seemed to be the last analog hold out. .

And the link to the art piece specifically stated that it was the product of those around the age of 30. It's not youthful ignorance. It's specific, not a generalized mourning for all things television.

And what the crap, man? If I took the time to mourn the passing of each former advancement, this would sure be a long read. The POINT was simple. It was contained. You seem bent on naysaying everything. Maybe you should get a blog...or better yet, a good ol' pen and paper journal. Wouldn't that feel nice. Just like newspapers and books still feel nice to many, many people. I'm not worried about e-books or the internet. We'll all get electrical sensitivity disorders before that happens.

"There is nothing special about the things we have gotten used to"

Yes, in fact, there is. That was also the point, the fact that we just don't pay attention anymore, too busy navel-gazing to star gaze, that we take things for granted and discard anything that seems outdated. Thanks for proving my point with your knee-jerk comments.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 9:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"Oh, and DOTDOT, congratulations, you found a misspelling. You get a cookie."

Thank you. But what I did was highlight a delicious irony. I want a fucking cake.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 24, 2008 at 9:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)

DOTs, we're all out of cake.

Posted by Fritz (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 10:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

No Jill, you don't get it - your old analog TV will always pick up the background radiation. Just leave it on when the analog signals stop broadcasting, all you will see is the static (unlesss it was designed to filter them out.) The static is independent of the analog TV signal. So get a hot mug of chai tea and enjoy the glow.

As for the Wooster Collective link, it makes no mention about the age of those who created it, it only references the age group that would understand it. Proving my point, that if it were done 30 years ago, it would be railing against the loss of the familiar indian-head to the hard, too-bright colors of the "new" test patterns.

And navel-gazing? Coming from the queen of it, I should be honored. But methinks you got it backwards:

"Something my children, should I choose to spawn, won't know anything about."
(Just like the countless things of your progenitors that you don't know about, yet it isn't weighing down your day)

"As shallow a medium as television is, this is how we knew it, with colored bars, antennas..."
(No, this is how YOU knew it. Your parents knew it as a tiny black and white screen and maybe three channels. My kids will remember it as a flat screen connected to a cable. What makes your version the one we should cherish as the best? Why should its passing be seen as any more sad than anything else?)

MY poist is the wider picture. You worry about the loss to humanity when the soft glow of the analog TV shuts down, because the thing next in line is lacking some part of it. Yet a few generations ago, the thing you find some reason to keep was itself viewed as crushing to the spirit (in particular, children's imaginations). It was seen as the end of something important and good by many.

So were they completely wrong? Should they have waited until now, where you have put your marker down, because the world just needed to wait for your supierior judgement to be right? Because we could wait another generation for the kid who will rage against the end of the flat screen with the coming of 3-D.

Posted by Fritz (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 10:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

All of this "progress" is due to the hydrocarbon economy of the last 200 years, so you probably won't have to wait to long for it to end. Of course, you won't be pondering how great it is while sipping coffee down at the 'tazza, it will be during a break while you work fourteen hours in the fields just to feed yourself that day.

My own blog...tempting, but the folks over at http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.co... kind of beat me to the punch. And while I usually enjoy kidney punching the conservatives and liberatarians over at the LJ forums, pricking the pretentious balloons of the Lawrence hepster class has its pleasures as well. Plus, since I went to grad school as a stepping stone to the real world, and not an escape from it, job and family fill my day. Only when I travel like this do I find some time to dive in and play Defend-Your-Thesis with the local literati. Which also means, unless my flight is delayed tomorrow, this is the last you will be hearing of me for a while.

So turn that frown upside down, grumpjilla! You have many moons to celebrate the enlightening wisdom and perspective that only the unique specialness of you has the power to reveal to us foolish lemmings. Carry on, brave warrior, buoyed by the fawning comments of the eight other people who read these things. Til I return, my sweet adversary, anon!

Posted by Fritz (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 11:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Oh, and Dottie, since the line you pointed out referred to organizing thoughts, and not grammer, your find was neither delicious nor ironic - it was merely a mistake. So no cake, and I'm takig your cookie back too.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 11:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Fawning comments? Now you hurt my feelings, you big ol' real life grad school too busy with job and family to waste your time unless you have absolutely nothing better to do meanie! I am the troll in these parts. Give way, you beast!

I'll 'ave the chicken.

Posted by Fritz (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 11:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)

And a fucking cake...it should be enough that a cake satisfies your cravings for sweets. Now you want it to slake your sexual cravings as well?

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 24, 2008 at 11:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Grammar. Jesus, Fritzie. And no take-backs on irony. Your not getting it excuses neither the pretentious complacency with which you write or the sniveling meanness of your "poist."

And I'm not givig back your cookie.

..

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 25, 2008 at midnight (Suggest removal)

Hells bells, I'm not reading all of that. Who woulda thunk it that a simple little farewell to static could provoke such a response. Aww gee.

Fritzypants, I get paid to be a bitter old biddy. What's your excuse?

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 25, 2008 at 1:25 a.m. (Suggest removal)

"Who woulda thunk it that a simple little farewell to static could provoke such..." static.

Am I the only one who sees it, much less enjoys it so much? Probably, and not the first time.

This is like the best blog ever.

Fritzie, there will come a day when you have absolutely nothing to do, and I have absolutely nothing to do, and we will toss cookies. You and your Grad School, and me and my High School dropout.

I miss Grand Pianos. I miss Marshall McLuhan. I miss a Leslie speaker. I miss sound men who know how to mic a Leslie speaker. I miss analog synthesizers for their sound and their interface. I miss the days before pure and beautiful (sterile) sound reinforcement. I miss tinners who new what it meant to solder snap-lock so it wouldn't leak under 6" of mercury.

I miss a guitar. I have two, but they are so deep in the closet that I still miss them. I miss people that give a shit about what they do. I miss Johnny Carson. I miss Pat Traverse. I miss Led Zeppelin and Chopin.

When I go digital, I will miss my (carefully researched) 27" CRT. During our brief excursion in to broadcast, my family was deeply offended by static, snow, and ghosts. They were alienated by my excitement, and baffled by my nostalgia.

Posted by Eric_Melin (Eric Melin) on April 25, 2008 at 9:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Great blog, Jill.
I'll bet somebody has recorded the static from the cosmos, so that now you can enjoy a digital copy of it in all its fuzzy, distorted glory.
I watched some old VHS recordings I made from high school off the TV and got very nostalgic just recently. Not just for bad hair and crappy quality, but this naive sensibility I noticed in everything. The world is so much (I hate to say it) smarter, aware, and cynical than it was even 20 years ago. Where we will be in 20 more--with communications being what they are today--is terrifying.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 25, 2008 at 10:02 a.m. (Suggest removal)

knew

Posted by lazz (anonymous) on April 25, 2008 at 11:04 a.m. (Suggest removal)

wow, there's a conversation that went in unexpected directions ...

"Hells bells, I'm not reading all of that. Who woulda thunk it that a simple little farewell to static could provoke such a response. " -- well spoked, jilla.

makes me nostalgic for the days when you had to use a damn stamp -- a TEN-CENT STAMP, mind you -- to deliver your pretentiousness in a long-winded note ...

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 25, 2008 at 1:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Travers

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on April 25, 2008 at 2:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Hey! Remember the 80s?

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 25, 2008 at 10:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)

OJ, I hate you. p.s. I don't hate you.

DOTS, very nice. I have no idea about these things that you miss, but I'm sure somewhere in there, I agree. Ok, well, I know what a Grand Piano and a Johnny Carson is.

Melin, thanks for that. And I did my installation piece on this topic, so I have a recording of static...and yes, it's in digital, so it's not the same. ;) I did just find my parent's old Super 8 camera though...maybe I'll document some before the BIG DAY. And I don't know if we're all more intelligent, but certainly more informed...and yet misinformed. The next 20 will indeed be something...something something.

lazz, you're right...gone are the days of good ol' fashioned hate mail...except for those laced in anthrax. And that's not style, that's just mean.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 26, 2008 at 7:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I miss Jeff Healey. He died in March of this year, and I didn't even know. A truly great guitarist in the true sense of the word great.

The thing about progress is that I can google my own nostalgia.

Weird.

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on April 26, 2008 at 8:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Hate me if you must, but Goat Boy will always love you.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on April 28, 2008 at 10:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Dear god,

What installation piece? I supposed I missed that too.

..

Posted by lilchick (anonymous) on April 29, 2008 at 11:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Holy Crappoli!!! I don't read the blogs for a week (okay 2 weeks) and look at all I miss out on!
A blog about t.v. static, which I have a lot of....yea only having 1 channel that probably won't survive the distance the signal has to travel when the big switch occurs!
A triple bonus of BOA and 8-track mentions.....we do have a few BOA 8-tracks AND a working 8-track player in the Charger!
I don't have a grand piano, but miss them all the same....I do have a Hammond and am learning to play.
And finally, I'm so late on this post that noone will probably read this, but I wanted to get my 2 cents in.
Rest in Peace static. Your death most likely means the death of my watching t.v. once a week. *tear*

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on April 30, 2008 at 2:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I reads it!
You have a working 8-track....in a Charger? What year is this automobile?
That is swank.

Posted by lilchick (anonymous) on April 30, 2008 at 6:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)

It's a '69.....very nice. It even has the optional stereo toggle thingy. Yea marrying a guy with a cool car collection!
And Yea Jilla for reading my post! And I don't know why Fritz has to be so grouchy. Go hug a baby or smell a flower or something.

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on April 30, 2008 at 11:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)

My best friend in high school had a metallic blue '69 Charger w/a 440 Magnum. Fastest car I've ever been in -- I was in the back seat when it hit 140 once. I've never been much of a car guy (I drove an old Toyota pickup until I was 22), but those were some good times. But he put in a CD player as soon as he got it. The original 8-track is probably buried somewhere in his parents' garage.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on May 1, 2008 at 10:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)

General Lee!