On Sunday night I watched the season premiere of The Simpsons – the first episode of the show’s twenty-first season. It was a weak episode, actually. Comic Book Guy writes a comic about a super hero with the power of all super heroes, and Homer stars in the film adaptation, which ends in disaster. Fans of the show, of course, will find the plot a bit too much like the time they made a Radioactive Man movie starring Milhouse.
Nevertheless, The Simpsons is important to me. I remember watching the first episode, and every one thereafter. Its glory days are long behind it, but it still offers up one or two good episodes each season, and, for familiarity’s sake, I’d just assume it go on forever.
On January 31, 1988, I watched the pilot episode of a television program called The Wonder Years. Though the show was set in the late 1960s, I related to it because I was about the same age as the main character. As the series began, Kevin Arnold was starting junior high; so was I - in real life. Through subsequent seasons, the show dealt with many topics relevant to my (or any young man’s) life. But one theme of The Wonder Years was always outside the realm of my experience: Kevin Arnold’s difficult relationship with his father. Many episodes dealt with this topic, and it always made me simultaneously uncomfortable and grateful. I felt uncomfortable because the tension seemed so real, and I knew that many fathers and sons had strained relations. I felt grateful because I did not. And though my life has certainly not been free of regret, and though “I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought / And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste”, I have never had to regret any aspect of my relationship with my father. We have always got along well.
So, as I sat with my father on a blanket under the open sky last Saturday night, watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play “Racing in the Street”, I felt like things couldn’t get better.
Sure, it looked like the sky might open up any time and unleash a raging storm. But aside from a few sprinkles here and there, the weather held out. And, sure, I was a little worried about how bad our view would be way back on the lawn, but that actually turned out great, too. And, if $56 per ticket seems expensive, we did get three solid hours–twenty-seven songs–of rock.
Miriam and I met my dad at my Uncle Tom’s apartment in Tampa. It could not have been more conveniently located. We ate an early dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, which was enjoyable and new to me. We made it to the Florida State Fairgrounds before six o’clock, but they didn’t open the gate for a little while after that. We weren’t too far back in the line at the gate, but there were still enough people that I was slightly nervous about getting a decent spot on the lawn. Plus, while were were standing there, the sky, which had spent the earlier part of the day raining, then the afternoon threatening more, began doing just that. It didn’t last, though, and by the time we reached the grass we were hopeful. Though there was a mad dash for the closest seats on the lawn, we managed to find a great spot.
As I expected, “Badlands” opened the show, but for the next two songs I was nervous. Springsteen’s voice was shot. It wasn’t that he couldn’t sing in tune; he couldn’t sing. I honestly expected him to call the show off. But he drank some sort of hot beverage, saying, “I’ll be better in a few songs”. Sure enough, he was. By the time he got to “Seeds” his voice was strong. In the request portion of the show, which has become a fixture of the last couple tours, Bruce grabbed just about every sign from the pit. I saw some fools asking for “Ramrod” and “I’m a Rocker”. Fools. I did see someone after my own heart requesting “Drive All Night”, though, of course, we didn’t get it. What we did get was “Growing Up”, requested by a child in the front row, “All or Nothing at All” which has only been played six times ever, and “Jole Blon” which hasn’t been played since 1981. So, we did okay, especially considering that a few nights later he played “Ramrod”.
I was hoping to hear some classic songs I had not yet heard live, and I got them, including, in the encore, “Rosalita”. After “American Land”, I figured the show was over. But the crowd was so frantic that he busted out “Bobby Jean” and “Dancing in the Dark”, then, finally, “Hungry Heart”. The place was out of control, and I didn’t think he would try and top it, so we grabbed our blanket and were making our way out when the noise got even louder. Something was happening on stage that we couldn’t see. Then we heard Bruce grab the mic and say, “I guess we forgot one”, before the opening strains of “Thunder Road”. It was incredible.
Still, in a show which included so many highlights (including an enthusiastic version of–of all things–Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More”, which, as you know, is my personal anthem), perhaps the best single performance of the night was an astonishing version of “Johnny 99″. It turned into a rollicking railroad reel with dueling guitar solos and showboating. It was thrilling.
Nevertheless, ages and ages hence, when I think back on that night, I’ll most fondly remember hearing “Racing in the Street” while seated on a blanket with my father under the open sky.
My friend Jeff has had all manner of dirty, back-breaking jobs, going back to our high school days when he washed dishes at Shoney’s. Later, he worked in the sewage treatment business, which sometimes required that he stand waist-deep in unimaginably horrible human waste. He’s had to work long night shifts, drive all over town and outside of town, lift heavy things, and sometimes combinations of those things. But it was always for somebody else, and I don’t think it felt very rewarding.
Several years ago, he moved to Miami. It was a logical move. Unless you have an advanced degree or some other special qualification, Gainesville can be a tough place to find work. Plus, Sandi was in Miami.
About that time, Jeff got involved in a business that is far more necessary and profitable in South Florida than it is here: animal removal. In Miami, if somebody has an alligator or large snake in his backyard, or an opossum or raccoon in his attic, he calls a company to get rid of it. Jeff worked for a business that did just that. Still, it was working for someone else, and the boss was getting wealthy while Jeff did the work.
So, Jeff started his own business called Miami Animal Removal, and last week he was on TV. Wednesday night, on a Discovery Channel show called Verminators, Jeff was shown capturing peacocks that were creating a disturbance in a residential area. Even on TV, he seemed just like the Jeff I’ve known for years. Sure, he fell down in slow motion, and a peacock defecated on him, but he was on TV, and he’s doing it for himself.
The generation that first witnessed men fly heavier-than-air machines, then sixty years later reach the Moon and return safely to Earth, is no more. The technological “giant leap” that endeavor required is still awesome to contemplate. But the goal, however ambitious, was clear to many, even from aviation’s infancy.
I am not sure the same can be said of television. Certainly, the generation that first developed the technology still lives. But, unlike the pioneers of aviation who predicted space flight, I doubt many involved in the development of TV could have anticipated what the technology would look like today. With the obvious exception of color broadcasts, my early TV experiences were probably not so different from those of kids growing up a generation before me. Our set was fairly small, required an antenna, had no remote control, and received maybe four or five channels. Today, though, TV is unlike anything I could have ever imagined.
While I was growing up, a 27″ television was considered very large. A TV over 30″ was enormous. Anything bigger than that–a projection TV, for example–was something you’d only see at a sports bar. When I moved back to Gainesville in 2000, I bought a 27″ TV at Best Buy on Archer Road. It was too big to fit in the back of my car, so Jeff and I took it out of its box, flattened that, and put the TV itself in the back seat. I felt like a king with such a big screen. For the first month I lived at 1600 4th Avenue North, I got free cable. That is common in Gainesville, since everyone moves in August, and Cox often needs a month to connect new customers, and disconnect former customers. Alas, they had cut me off just before the Sydney Olympics. Today I watch a TV larger than I ever thought I’d own. And it looks better than I suspect anyone fifty years ago thought television could ever look.
On this enormous TV, I can choose from among a couple dozen high-definition channels. Generally, I’ll choose PBS, or one of a handful of network shows that I enjoy. We get a few movie channels in HD, too, which is nice. In fact, I essentially avoid watching anything in low-def now. I don’t mean to sound snooty about it, but once you have seen 1080p, 420i is unacceptable. SDTV is the visual equivalent of hearing the latest digitally-mastered stereophonic recording played on an Edison wax cylinder.
One of the high-def channels we get is MLB, the Major League Baseball channel, and my interest in it came about in a strange way.
Repeats and syndication are probably as old as TV programming. When I was very little, I remember watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and several other shows. Later, when Nick at Night debuted, I loved The Patty Duke Show, The Donna Reed Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Lassie, Mr. Ed, and several others. I spent whole summers watching these black and white sitcoms with my grandparents. I noticed that any television show that enjoyed a decent run would eventually be syndicated. I never thought, however, that repeats of sporting events would be broadcast. “Why”, I wondered, “would anyone want to watch a game for which they already know the outcome?”
Then, a month or so ago, I was flipping through the guide on the DVR, and I saw a listing on the MLB channel advertising a repeat of a June 17, 1978 game between the Yankees and Angels in which Ron Guidry struck out eighteen batters. Now, even though I knew exactly what to expect by watching the game, I watched it anyway. And it was great. So, last weekend, when MLB was showing a 1998 Cubs vs. Astros game in which Kerry Wood struck out twenty batters, I couldn’t resist. This is curious, because feats of great pitching don’t become apparent to the live audience until late in a game. Nevertheless, I wanted to watch a game for which I knew the distinctive feature, and for which I knew the outcome. It makes no sense. Last night, I watched game seven of the 1965 World Series, and followed it with a Bob Costas interview of three former Major League umpires. It was fascinating.
But, most significantly, an MLB channel repeat of an episode from the 1994 Ken Burns documentary, Baseball, so enraptured me, that I straightaway went to the Smathers Library and checked out the entire series on DVD. I loved all nineteen hours of it. The history of baseball really is the history of our country, and while the business of professional baseball is ugly, the game of baseball remains one of man’s few perfect inventions.
The summer before I began sixth grade, I started staying up late. I would watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, followed by Late Night with David Letterman. I preferred Late Night. It was quirky, while The Tonight Show was, in my child mind, too middle-of-the-road. But I remember watching Johnny Carson’s last episode, and David Letterman’s first episode of The Late Show on CBS. I never got into Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.
Shortly after high school, I began avidly watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien. It was the wackiest show around, and it perfectly reflected the sense of humor my friends shared. I spent years staying up until 1:30 in the morning watching that show. In one episode, Conan talked about (fictional) guests he wouldn’t have back. One was named “Johnny Airhorn”, and he had a helmet with two airhorns mounted on either side. Whenever Conan would try to ask him a question or say anything, Johnny Airhorn would blast his horns in deafening fashion. Unfortunately, these old clips are impossible to find.
Miraculously, one of my favorites is on YouTube. I’ve posted it before, but it’s a perfect example of what Conan does so well. The premise alone is insane, and the execution is perfect.
Tonight is the premiere of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Andy Richter is back, Max will be there, and my hopes are high.
