I have been meaning to get rid of the porn for years. The four plastic DVD cases reside in the back of one of my sock drawers, and the only purpose they serve these days is that whenever I see them I know I can no longer put off doing the laundry. I’m not at all high-minded about porn. I understand it, and I’ve certainly indulged. Maybe it’s age, or experience, but after watching enough of it, seeing two or more attractive naked people do nasty things in front of a camera is no more exciting than grocery shopping, or smoking a cigarette. I know the ending long before we’re there.
The non-porn movie situation at my house is equally ho hum. That’s because I’ve been living without a DVD player for more than a year now. A friend got me one for my birthday a few years ago. I got it hooked up and working all on my own. The process included a trip to Best Buy to get a box with color-coded cords and plugs that in some bizarre way connected the television with the DVD player. When the player stopped working it only took a few phone calls to realize that nobody really repairs them. It’s cheaper, I learned, to just buy a new one. More useless shit for the landfill, I thought bitterly.
I kept thinking I would pick up a new one, but at the time I was sort of busy not drinking, and there was a very interesting presidential campaign underway, and I became very fond of some truly trashy television programs and before I knew it it was Spring and time for the conversion to digital. A week – an entire week! – before the conversion and with no help from anyone else I was good to go.
Good to go with one exception: hooking up a DVD player would require another series of connections and routings and plugging this into that and reading directions that were clearly fast tracked right past the proofreading desk and on and on to the point where I thought, screw this.
Now it’s October, and it all happened so fast it left me dizzy. First I was at a birthday party and a woman I know and I got to talking. Her mission used to be to eradicate Styrofoam but now it’s to write new lyrics for Happy Birthday. Still, for old times’ sake we chatted a bit about how evil the disposable DVD player situation is. It exploits the people who work in the factories where they’re manufactured, she said. “Ahh come on,” said her husband. “It keeps ‘em cookin’!” Seven days later I was at Fred Meyer with my neighbor and friend Cindy and her husband Chris (he was the birthday boy at the party). Chris knows how to take things apart and hook things up. He took one look at the box and immediately honed in on the text about batteries, which I’d been unable to find. “It doesn’t come with batteries,” he said. “You’ll need to get some batteries.” So I did, but only after the very friendly guy behind the counter in electronics sliced the box open so we could see if it required AA or AAA (it was AA). This is a total aside, but if you’re going to take the time and money to print things on the box of your product, such as “Batteries not Included,” why wouldn’t you go ahead and specify the type of batteries that aren’t included and therefore need to be purchased?
Anyhow, on Sunday afternoon, without reading a single line of directions, Chris connected everything: the DVD player, the digital converter box, the DVD-to-television box and the television itself. Before I knew it the time for a test run had arrived. I went into my bedroom, opened the sock drawer and froze. There was no way. My friends are not prudes in the slightest, but I’m starting to think I am. I was horrified at the thought of walking into the living room with a little travel adventure film about Damon’s trip to New York, or Dawson’s weekend on Fire Island. What had seemed very funny seconds before was suddenly anything but, so I went next door, where my neighbor Steve was power washing a carpet in the driveway. I asked him if he had a DVD I could borrow. “Any DVD,” I said. “I just need one to test the new DVD player and I … I don’t have any.” He said sure, no problem. “I’ll find something that’s worth watching,” he said, and went inside.
And that’s how this week started. Sunday night is a big television night at my house, so I resisted the urge to play with my new toy. But I got up extra early on Monday and made the coffee in the dark. I put on my favorite sweats, plugged in the white string lights – they’re not just for Christmas around here – and parked it on the couch. With a cup of strong coffee in one hand and my third remote in the other, I hit Play at 5:57 AM and watched The Godfather.
The non-porn movie situation at my house is equally ho hum. That’s because I’ve been living without a DVD player for more than a year now. A friend got me one for my birthday a few years ago. I got it hooked up and working all on my own. The process included a trip to Best Buy to get a box with color-coded cords and plugs that in some bizarre way connected the television with the DVD player. When the player stopped working it only took a few phone calls to realize that nobody really repairs them. It’s cheaper, I learned, to just buy a new one. More useless shit for the landfill, I thought bitterly.
I kept thinking I would pick up a new one, but at the time I was sort of busy not drinking, and there was a very interesting presidential campaign underway, and I became very fond of some truly trashy television programs and before I knew it it was Spring and time for the conversion to digital. A week – an entire week! – before the conversion and with no help from anyone else I was good to go.
Good to go with one exception: hooking up a DVD player would require another series of connections and routings and plugging this into that and reading directions that were clearly fast tracked right past the proofreading desk and on and on to the point where I thought, screw this.
Now it’s October, and it all happened so fast it left me dizzy. First I was at a birthday party and a woman I know and I got to talking. Her mission used to be to eradicate Styrofoam but now it’s to write new lyrics for Happy Birthday. Still, for old times’ sake we chatted a bit about how evil the disposable DVD player situation is. It exploits the people who work in the factories where they’re manufactured, she said. “Ahh come on,” said her husband. “It keeps ‘em cookin’!” Seven days later I was at Fred Meyer with my neighbor and friend Cindy and her husband Chris (he was the birthday boy at the party). Chris knows how to take things apart and hook things up. He took one look at the box and immediately honed in on the text about batteries, which I’d been unable to find. “It doesn’t come with batteries,” he said. “You’ll need to get some batteries.” So I did, but only after the very friendly guy behind the counter in electronics sliced the box open so we could see if it required AA or AAA (it was AA). This is a total aside, but if you’re going to take the time and money to print things on the box of your product, such as “Batteries not Included,” why wouldn’t you go ahead and specify the type of batteries that aren’t included and therefore need to be purchased?
Anyhow, on Sunday afternoon, without reading a single line of directions, Chris connected everything: the DVD player, the digital converter box, the DVD-to-television box and the television itself. Before I knew it the time for a test run had arrived. I went into my bedroom, opened the sock drawer and froze. There was no way. My friends are not prudes in the slightest, but I’m starting to think I am. I was horrified at the thought of walking into the living room with a little travel adventure film about Damon’s trip to New York, or Dawson’s weekend on Fire Island. What had seemed very funny seconds before was suddenly anything but, so I went next door, where my neighbor Steve was power washing a carpet in the driveway. I asked him if he had a DVD I could borrow. “Any DVD,” I said. “I just need one to test the new DVD player and I … I don’t have any.” He said sure, no problem. “I’ll find something that’s worth watching,” he said, and went inside.
And that’s how this week started. Sunday night is a big television night at my house, so I resisted the urge to play with my new toy. But I got up extra early on Monday and made the coffee in the dark. I put on my favorite sweats, plugged in the white string lights – they’re not just for Christmas around here – and parked it on the couch. With a cup of strong coffee in one hand and my third remote in the other, I hit Play at 5:57 AM and watched The Godfather.
