May 19, 2007

White Noise

My resident psychologist, Groucho Marx is of the opinion that television is very educating for every time someone turns it on he’d go to the other room and read a book.

I couldn't agree with him more.

In addition to my radio blues, my TV was out of action for almost two weeks.

Life seemed nice for the two weeks my television was dead; I surfed the Internet more than ever before in addition to almost finishing ICon, the biography of Steve Jobs. But the best thing was, not having to mindlessly surf channels in the pursuit of something half way decent. These days I consider the news channels to be most entertaining.

News is real entertainment for where else can you watch Raju Srivastav's mindless stand up comedy on two channels simultaneously- Star News and Aaj Tak. The dude has his own show on Aaj Tak! Makes me wonder what ever happened to the Sabse Tez channel? Maybe they realized the they were a tad too fast and if they had to continue, they'd have ended up making up news; which they do most of the times- remember the driverless car story in December 2006! Most film channels have taken it upon themselves to recover money for the producers of films like Nayak, Aamdani Athani Kharcha Rupaiya and Lakeer by repeating them week after week either as 'Friday Fury' 'Sunday Mega Movie' or 'Tea Time Treat'!

My mother finally called the Samsung guys to fix the darn machine. The back panel of the TV was unscrewed to reveal five years worth of dirt giving stiff competition to the dirt on TV channels! Tata Sky threatens to make my life jhinga la-la once again!

But did I miss anything while the TV was comatose?

Not really.

After senselessly surfing the only thing that caught my attention were those teleshopping network advertisements featuring a pipe-puffing Sherlock Holmes look alike who insists that English ain’t a language but a lifestyle and convinced me that my lifestyle sucked!


After fifteen days of no TV what do I see when I finally get on- CNN-IBN's promo departments crowing glory proclaiming that they were the only guys who got it right when their exit polls predicted that Mayawati's BSP would sweep the Uttar Pradesh elections. Dream on dudes! You guys were way off the mark on every other prediction and one mistake being turned into a marketing gimmick ain't impressing me.

I like CNN-IBN; I couldn't stand Rajdeep Sardesai till he was with NDTV, why’d I see someone trying to Prannoy Roy when I can see the real McCoy!? But once Rajdeep Sardesai left NDTV and became his own man I started liking his style. When I see him now, I kind of believe what he says to be the ‘news!’ But that advertisement was a little too much to take. Actually with a slogan like theirs, "Whatever It Takes" (freak predictions coming true included!) nothing surprises me anymore.

All hail Bruce Springsteen, the prophet!

Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me

We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on…

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