The Losin' End of an Xfinity Support Case

It happened again. I had the lovely experience of dealing with a Comcast support person as my digital cable box derped...

Here we go...

Analyst Mandino has entered room (ooh, boy.)

Mandino: Hello Mongo, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Mandino. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Mongo: My Issue: letters dl appear with a rotating line next to it. Unplugged and plugged back in, error code E609 then FR hunt then it returned to the letters dl and the rotating line. Only snow on television.

Mandino: Thank you for bringing this concern to us. I will be more than happy to assist you with this today.

Mandino:  I can’t imagine myself having those equipment issues especially that cable TV is part of my daily routine, no worries, we’ll definitely work on a sure fix to resolve this one way or the other. (wow.. that was really generic and empathetic.  This guy is a bot or is pulling canned text from a command prompt.)

analyst Mandino has left room

Mandino:  That usually occurs when your service is still loading, initializing or dowloading.

Mandino:  We need you to please powercycle your box now Mongo, like unplugging it and plug it back in again after 1 minute. Would that be okay?  (why not just say, unplug it and plug it back in...  Powercycle?!?!)

Mongo: Sure

Mongo: It has been downloading since 7am EST.  (This was in response to his explanation of what the "dl" meant.)

Mandino: : Oh I see.

Mandino:  TI\  (crap, he's a terminator.)

Mandino:  Thank you for that information (oh... so, TI\ is probably some sort of chat autotext command... maybe /TI or TI/  was what he meant to write.  He's not a bot... but he may not be American.)

Mandino:  Lets just do first the power cycle Mongo and lets see if it resolves your concern today?

Mongo: yes. System is now unplugged... waiting 1 minute

Mongo: Plugging back in.

Mandino:  Thank you for cooperating.  (what am I going to do?  Resist?)

Mongo: E609

Mongo: FR 1

Mongo: Hunt

Mongo: DL and circling line

Mandino:  Same message?

Mongo: yes

Mandino:  Have you chacked it back already?

Mandino:  *checked

Mandino: : Oh I see.

Mandino: Thank you for that information. One moment please  (same exact wording as before... must be a quick text command)

Mandino:  Have you plugged it out from the outlet Mongo? (????)

Mongo: yes, unplugged from the wall.  (TIFTFY)

Mongo: It's connected to a power strip which runs to the outlet.. That was what I unplugged, at the wall outlet.

Mandino:  PLease give me a moment Mongo.

Mandino:   I will be more than happy to assist you with this. Just give me atleast 3-5 minutes as I review this concern first. Would that be okay?

Mongo: sure

analyst Mandino has left room (what ROOM?!?!?  Am I on a 90s chat site?)

Mandino: Thank you for patiently waiting Mongo.

Mandino:  After doing some research, In order to resolve this issue, I need to send a signal to your cable box. Please provide me the serial number of that box please. It is found at the top or at the back of it.

Mongo: one second (this lasted ten minutes, because I'm an idiot, my entertainment center is up against the wall, with everything shoved into it... and all of my decorations for Christmas were still up, most of which were plugged in and sitting on top of the entertainment center.)

Mandino:  Just approach me once you are done Mongo. You may take your time and I'll be more than patient to wait for you.  (read:  COME AT ME BRO)

Mongo: thank you

Mongo: There are two stickers on the back. One with just numbers. One with numbers and five X's in the middle.

Mandino:  The one with the X's in the middle please.

Mongo: (hidden number)

Mandino:  Oh Im sorry Mongo, Thats not the one. Im sorry

Mandino:  It should start with "M" or "P"

Mongo: shall I give you the other

Mandino:  regardless if theres an X or none.

Mongo: the other sticker said

Mandino: Yes please. Make sure it starts with "M" or "P"

Mongo: (number hidden)

Mongo: I need to check for the letters

Mandino:  IM sorry but thats not the correct one.

Mandino:  Please make sure it starts with "M" or "P".

Mongo: ok... third sticker

Mongo: (number hidden)

Mandino:  Great!

Mandino:  Thats correct now

Mandino:  Thank you for that information. One moment please

Mongo: good, because I'm out of stickers

Mandino:  hehe. (LOL)

Mandino:  Please give me 1-3 minutes as I will now send the refresh signal to your box.

Mandino:  PLease turn your box on now Mongo.

Mongo: Power button seems to have no effect. still showing the dl

Mongo: so, I'm guessing that it is on?

Mandino:  One moment Mongo.

Mandino: May I know when did this box activated?

Mongo: what year did I receive it, in other words?

Mongo: 2004

Mandino:  Oh I see.

Mandino: Thank you for going through all the troubleshooting steps with me Mongo. At this point, we have determined that the best resolution is for us to send a technician. As promised, I am here to make sure to get you the best resolution for that issue on this chat. I will take care of setting up the appointment for you right now.

Mongo: OK. My wife would have to be the person here when they come, but she is not sure what her schedule is. Monday is a holiday so that is probably a no go.

Mongo: Anytime after 4

Mongo: 4:30 is a good bet.

Mandino:  OKay Mongo. Let me check

Mandino:  Great!

Mandino:  Thank you for that information. One moment please

Mandino:   I will personally take care of this for you but before anything else just for security purposes, may I first have the last 4 of your SSN please.

Mongo: ****

Mandino:  Great!

Mandino:  Thank you.

Mandino:  Before we proceed, I need first to provide you your ticket number for this appointment. Please take note of this. It will be (redacted) Please take note of the following important information regarding your technician’s visit: The technician can arrive any time within the assigned timeframe. Someone 18 years or older must be present at the time of the technician’s visit for the entire duration of the technician’s visit. You must confirm that you will be present for the technician’s arrival on the day of your appointment. You will receive a call from our Automated System to confirm your presence at your residence.

Mongo: ok

Mandino:  We have 4:30- 6:00 on Friday Mongo. Would that be okay to you?

Mongo: would this be January 18th?

Mandino: Yes, January 18th

Mongo: Yes, this would be fine

Mandino:  Great!

Mandino: I am so glad to inform you that i am already done processing here the appointment schedule for you Mongo. To recap, we have addressed this concern by performing a preliminary troubleshooting and by coming to the conclusion that we need to send a field technician to check on this. This concern is resolved on our end.

Mongo: yes, thank you for your assistance

Mandino:  You are very much welcome.

Mandino:  Now that we have successfully scheduled a technician appointment for you, I am more than sure this will be addressed and resolved as soon as possible. All you need is to sit back and relax while waiting for the scheduled visit. We have followed all necessary steps and protocols in dealing with this technical issue and determined the resolution with precision. You may consider this resolved as correct process was undertaken, I made sure of that. I have comprehensively documented and endorsed this concern to the correct support.

Mandino:  Mongo, have I resolved all of your concerns to your satisfaction by scheduling you a technician appointment that will rest assured resolve your concern today?

Mongo: yes

Mandino: Great!

Friday came... and went.  I called Comcast and they informed me that the ticket number I was given listed Michael McDonald as the customer.

I said, "Really?  The guy from the Doobie Brothers lives in my neighborhood?"

I don't think he saw the humor...  Then again, neither did I.  We rescheduled and what started out as a two day fix lasted an entire week.  The tech finally showed up and I was given a new box.  Unfortunately, I lost all of my recordings, including the last two seasons of Supernatural that I had been sitting on, waiting for my wife to watch it with me.

So, I asked the tech about the issue.  What happened was that Xfinity.. Comcast... whatever they are called these days decided to send an update to the TV guide programming that is on digital cables boxes.  This update hosed a lot of cable boxes. 

How nice.  In a way, this was liberating.  The one thing that has been keeping me as a customer has been the fact that I had 99% spaced on my DVR filled.  I was so hesitant the last time I entertained the idea of getting something else, like Direct TV.  I began frantically watching all of my recorded shows in the hopes that I could clear them out before the guy showed up.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get Direct TV because I have four trees in my yard, blocking the direction that the dish needs to face.  I've also been told this was a crap excuse from the guy who tried to install it. 

Needless to say, I'm back to watching and recording, and my box is at a whopping 11%.  But, that will probably change as I get involved with other stuff and the weather gets nicer.  Yeah, right.  What a Fool Believes.

Six Shows With High Expectations From Me This Fall

The Fall season has arrived and my DVR is asking for leniency. “Mercy is for the weak,” I tell it. I do not plan my recording schedule to be merciful. But I have been trying to be nice to my DVR. I managed to clear out all but three episodes of Castle from last season, all Glee episodes, and I am working on Bones and Chuck from last season. That leaves me with about 11% free space on my DVR for the upcoming onslaught of shows. I spend waaay too much time watching Sprout (three year old involved) and flipping through classic movies that I have seen 400 hundred times to knock back the rest of my DVR recordings but I blame my wife who was the reason why I haven’t been able to watch these shows because she watches them too. She’s been too caught up in her books and would rather do that. Pffft, books. Who wants to read? Kidding. I’m glad she’s reading. At least one of us is culturally advanced.

So, as my DVR does some cardio to keep up with the cavalcade of shows I want to watch, I am looking for some specific expectations from new and returning shows. Here’s six I’m keeping an eye on this season.


NEW SHOWS
I have managed to trim the fat from shows I watched last season to this season. Gone are Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy. 2010 has a been bit of a down year for me personally and the last thing I need is a hospital drama where people constantly die. But that’s not say I won’t pick up some new shows in a balancing act of comedy and drama.

The only true comedies I’m going to peek in on are Mike & Molly and Shit My Dad Says. (I don't have time to substitute symbols when we all know what it means.) Mike & Molly stars a Pittsburgh native, Billy Gardell, who is finally getting the exposure he deserves as a comedic actor, and that’s really the only reason I’m going to watch it. Shit My Dad Says should be a hoot just because it’s Shatner and I love Shatner. Other than a cursory glance at these two, I am keeping my eyes on two new shows.

WALKING DEAD
Based on a comic book about a zombie apocalypse Walking Dead promises to be what I have hoped for in a long time. After reading the Zombie Survival Guide I was convinced that there needed to be a serialized zombie story. One that moves along at the same pace as LOST and offers a chance to build up a lot of character back story. Granted, the real draw here is the zombies but seeing how society will function, or more in this case dysfunction, after a complete breakdown of the world we know is more of a selling point to me. Sometimes, the bad guys aren’t always the dead ones.

The expectations for this show are simple. I want to see great storytelling along the lines of Stephen King and Team LOST. I want to see some dead walking around and realistic looking dead. I’m kind of hoping for the Romero zombies vs. the Zack Snyder / Danny Boyle zombies. Shuffling zombies can be scarier when you find yourself surrounded then if you are constantly on the run. Seeing as how AMC has been knocking it out of the park with shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, Walking Dead should be pretty good to go.

HAWAII FIVE-0
I confess, I’ve never watched the original series with Jack Lord. My experience with pre 80s television goes as far back as Lost in Space, The Monkees, and M*A*S*H with the first two in reruns. I have done what I can to become familiar with the classics like Wild Wild West and other shows but never got the chance to see Hawaii Five-O. Now, there was a series about six years ago called Hawaii, with Michael Biehn and Eric Balfour that, I felt, was cancelled before its time, and I felt it was a great mix of a procedural drama with some comedy and great locations. That’s usually how it works. I really like a show and it gets cancelled. The fact that Hawaii Five-0 is on CBS and not NBC gives me some hope but it really wreaks havoc on my recording as it is on at the same time as Castle on ABC.

Having the main character be the son of Jack Lord’s character is almost a stretch, though Alex O’Loughlin and I are roughly the same age and my father is almost 70. Jack Lord would have been almost 90 if he were still alive and that is a big stretch considering that there is also a sister McGarrett who is played by Taryn Manning, a 31 year old singer / actress. While I would have made Steve McGarrett, Sr. his grandfather, not his father.

I have no opinion, either way, on Alex O’Loughlin, (though, I hated that Moonlight was Angel Lite) I will give the show a go simply because I like having Daniel Dae Kim on television and would like to see Scott Caan on a weekly show. He’s got some comic timing chops stemming from roles in Varsity Blues, Gone in Sixty Seconds, and the Ocean’s trilogy. As long as he uses that wit and the humor doesn’t feel scripted, all will be fine… and speaking of fine, Grace Park as Kona is a good move.


RETURNING SHOWS
V:
The first season was a bit of a hit and miss effort for me. I am a diehard fan of the original miniseries and to some extent the regular series, though it became rather silly towards the end. So far, I am willing to go another with the update even though the special effects are pretty atrocious. Considering this is ABC and 2010, I expect better than cheesy green screen backgrounds on the ships. LOST set the bar for the special effects expectations and the ones I’ve seen on V last season were on par with the original miniseries.

My hope is that the renewal will give them a chance to really delve into the background of the V’s origins and intentions as well as give the resistance a chance to build out the ranks some. I still don’t know where Scott Wolf’s ageless journalist, Chad Decker, stands in the battle but I’d like to see him grow the character more than a one dimensional puppy. I’d also like to see them grow Morena Baccarin’s hair because she’s very beautiful but this short hair look with that pouty lip makes her look sickly. Rumor has it that Jane Badler is coming on as Anna’s mother, Diana.  This is a true nod to the original miniseries and a check in the win column for me. It would even cooler if they could get Marc Singer to guest as Elizabeth Mitchell’s father and have him be named Mike after his character from the original miniseries.

Season two could be the deciding factor in this series. Look what happened to Heroes in season two and they had a strong first season. V needs a strong sophomore year to ensure the invasion continues into 2011.

SUPERNATURAL
When this show debuted in 2005 it caught the tail wind of Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fan base. It didn’t hurt that the creative team behind the show was made up of some great talent from Team Whedon and The X-Files so they understand the nature of the beasts they deal with on the show week in and week out. It’s a shame they lost Kim Manners in Season 4 due to her death from cancer. She was extremely talented as a director and producer. That being said, Supernatural kind of hit a big ceiling at the end of the fifth season, which was supposed to be the last one. I mean where do you go after you’ve released the Devil from his cell, you take out The Four Horseman, and you have Angels and Demons all gunning for the Winchester’s as the apocalypse approaches? Back to the beginning, that’s where.

With Bobby walking tall again and Castiel back to his angelic and extremely hilarious self, the chance to go back and do the monster hunting that made the first season awesome is a great direction. With Mitch Pileggi back as Grandpa Winchester this season looks to not be the last, either. Let’s hope. I do have some expectations.

I want to see more self contained episodes pulling on urban legends and folklore monsters. I want to see Dean Winchester continue to be the wisecracking, sarcastic, demon hunter that has made him a great pop culture observer that he has become in the last two seasons. The spoof on Twilight this year ought to be a riot for the writers of Dean’s dialogue. I am want to hear more classic rock music in the Impala. Having music from bands such as Styx, CCR, Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult and AC/DC is such a big part of what I like about the show. There was a lack of that in this past season. So, more please. Also, don’t cheap out on the effects. This show has pushed the envelope on gore and acceptable violence. Don’t back down on it.  It makes you one of the scarier shows out there. Lastly, can someone please find a way to resurrect John Winchester for at least one episode? If Dean and Sam can die a thousand times over and come back, the least you could do is have Jeffery Dean Morgan pop in for a storyline involving his father in law. After all, the biggest head fake of the show has been that John Winchester was not a lifelong demon hunter. He married into the business.

GLEE
Season one ended on an even note. New Directions did not place at Regionals but were given another year to prove themselves. The one thing that can keep this show fresh is its constant awareness of pop culture trends while paying respects to classics. The first season saw a tribute to Journey and Madonna as well as Lady Gaga. Don’t stop believing in that formula. The other thing that works well is the arrangements of those songs. The duet of "Poker Face" by Lea Michele and Idina Menzel actually made me like Lady Gaga for that one moment and the mash ups they do on this show are kick ass. But, deep down the real glue of glee is the sinister Sue Sylvester. But a lot can go wrong in season two and realize that there is a shelf life for this show. It’s set in high school and no one wants to be Saved By The Bell College Years or The New Class. Finding replacements for this cast will be hard.

As far as expectations go, I want to see the same kind of musicality as season one. I am looking forward to the Rocky Horror numbers and love that Emma Pillsbury is doing "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me." That ought to be hilarious. They need to do some more Billy Joel and find an excuse to do some Jason Mraz. I’d also like to see April Rhodes come back and have a run in with Shelby Corcoran so that we can have a Wick’d moment. The Britney Spears episode makes me want to cringe but giving second banana Heather Morris a chance to shine as Brittany is a great idea. Also, keep Sue in the mix. The season finale as well as other stand out episodes solidified Jane Lynch’s deserving of that Emmy she won and I don’t want to see her soften up or change direction.

FAMILY GUY
Family Guy is such an easy show to hate and love. On one hand it is a pop culture blitzkrieg and you have to be really on top of your game to get some of the references, but during the roast of David Hasselhoff, Seth McFarlane got nailed dead to rights over his continual mooching off of shows like South Park and The Simpsons. The fact that it was coming from second rate comics doesn’t sting much but the devil is in the details. I watch it because I enjoy the humor and the constant need for really awful humor to balance out all that high brow, hoity toity culture I get on a regular basis. It’s all about moderation, folks.

I don’t hold a lot of expectations for Family Guy because I’d rather not be disappointed. I will say that I am expecting a kick ass season finale, titled "It’s a Trap", which can only mean one thing. Return of the Jedi gets the Family Guy treatment. In the last parody episode we got to see Ernie The Chicken as Boba Fett, genius move there. With Jedi, the traditional route would be to have Peter, as Han Solo, bump the rocket pack on Chicken Fett, sending him flying into the Sarlacc pit. However, in true Family Guy Fashion there should be a long drawn out fight scene between the two of them, lasting several minutes and ending with Chicken Fett falling into the Sarlacc pit, complete with Chicken Wilhelm Scream sound effects. That would be sticking to the format of Family Guy episodes. Also, I was wondering if they would go with Meg being cast as Jabba, the Rancor Monster or the personification of the Sarlacc and it looks to be Sarlacc according to WIkipedia. Looks like Joe Swanson will be Jabba, according to IMDB. Scouring the rest of IMDB’s cast listing I see Rush Limbaugh as the voice of the Rancor and Arianna Huffington as an Ewok. It seems likely that they will at least make an effort to joke about the removal of Darth Stewie’s helmet, which will reveal… Stewie. I assume he will look like he normally does which is akin to how Sebastion Shaw looked when Luke Skywalker pulled off Darth Vader’s helmet. Then at the celebration, when Luke goes off to see Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin as ghosts, they ought to make a joke about Lucas replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiensen. Can’t wait to see that one. I can only imagine if they were to go after the prequel trilogies but I kind of hope they don’t.

I will probably see a reduction in my free time as well as the death rattle of my DVR in the near future so who knows what I will get a chance to watch in the upcoming weeks. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Pop Culture Catch Up

I'm a bit behind on my movie viewing, television watching, and video game playing.   As I've gotten older the time I would spend just watching a movie or playing a video game has diminished.  That's not exactly true, I've got my father-in-law playing the Wii and we spend nearly every night playing House of the Dead 2 & 3 or any number of Cabela's hunting games.  But, actual playing of my own games is diminished.  That's partially from the fact that games, anymore, are very complex and in depth and take forever to finish.  At least they do for me.   In any case, here's a smattering of what I've caught up on or have yet to tackle.

Movies
I have yet to see the following:
Zombieland
Adventureland
Iron Man 1 or 2
The Hangover
Up
Avatar
and various other big name films that came out in the last five years. 

I will say that I did get to see Wall-E for the first time, yesterday, although I haven't finished it yet.   So far, I love it.  What an awesome performance by a robot that was animated.   There should some kind of award for that.  I also did watch Reign of Fire, which is eight years old but wasn't bad.  I was expecting it to be a lot worse.  I've also been watching a bunch of movies I've seen thousands of times.   Last weekend on ABC Family they ran The Goonies along with all the Harry Potter movies up to Order Of the Phoenix.  I've also been watching a lot of old school James Bond like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, You Only Live Twice, and Goldfinger.

Television
I scuttled the half of last season's Desperate Housewives and all of Grey's Anatomy due to the lack of time or interest in watching them.  I am still sifting through last season's Castle and would like to get through Bones.  Normally, I would watch these with my wife, but she's been too busy reading..  nerd.   Love You...   Hell, we haven't even watched the season finale of Glee, so don't ruin it for me.  I always wanted to watch Stargate Atlantis, but didn't have Sci-Fi Syfy when it first aired.  I was playing catchup with Stargate SG-1 on UPN which was a season or two behind Showtime and totally missed out on Battlestar Galactica because of Comcast dropping Syfy from the regular extended cable package right after the mini-series.  Oddly enough, I was all caught up on Flashforward and Doll House and they got cancelled.    The only thing I regular keep on now is Burn Notice which I love. Go Team Axe!  I've also been watching old reruns of South Park on the local stations, late at night.  Right now, the ole DVR capacity is still at around 90% full.  HAH.  I better hop to it before everything starts back up for the Fall.

Video Games
Like I said, I spend most of game playing on the Wii and don't spend a lot of time on games other than House of the Dead 2 & 3 and Cabela stuff.   I even bought the new Super Mario Bros. and have barely touched it.   For my PS3, I finally finished Fallout 3 and the broken steel add on, after picking it up in March.  I know, the game came out in 2008.  Guess what, I still haven't finished Grand Theft Auto 4, Mercenaries 2, or Little Big Planet.   I did manage to get through Uncharted 1 and 2 this year thanks to a friend loaning it to me.   Loved those games.  I would like to check out the other Lego games like Harry Potter and Batman, but I just don't have time.   Not to mention there's Resident Evil 5 and I was told I need to go back and play God of War 1, 2 and 3

I should be ashamed of myself for missing out on the last eight years of stuff.  I've kept up through research and news but the actual sitting down and watching or playing these things has gone from my things to do list.   The only good thing I can look forward to is reintroducing a lot of my favorites to my kid.  She loved watching the original Star Wars movies and The Goonies.  I may have to vicariously live through her.   She isn't too bad at the golfing portion in Wii Sports and she's only three.

Friday Night Remote Fight: Best Movies to Kick Off the Weekend

WARNING:
The post you are about to read contains dangerous levels of sugar and caffeine. Side effects include lethargy and feelings of euphoric childhood fantasies.
Consult a blogger.

Friday night. It’s a magical and mysterious thing. Surviving another long week seems almost worth it when you have this to look forward to. Some people have big plans to hit the clubs or some other event. Here in Pittsburgh, there’s a little thing called the NHL Finals going on and we’re down a game to the Capitals, so you know a majority of Pittsburghers will be either in the Mellon Arena at the game, outside the Mellon Arena watching the game on the Jumbotron, or in a bar watching the game on television. But what about the rest of us?

There was a time when I lived for Friday nights. Somewhere in my socially deprived mind I thought that if I didn’t go out somewhere, anywhere, on Friday night I was missing out on some sociological event that would go down in the annals as EPIC! Usually, that meant hanging out at the mall or even in my day, the roller rink. Yeah, for a brief period between the years of 1986 and 1990 I would make it a point to go to my local rink and just be. Of course, that meant be by myself, spend a couple dollars on Rolling Thunder or Xenophobe, watch other people couple skate, and then go home.

Then there were some Friday nights, during my early teenage years, that I just spent up in my room. Ok, it’s not what you’re thinking. This was about 1987 or 1988 and my brother had been in college at the time. Our first home computer took the form of an Apple IIc and my brother’s roommate had volumes of floppy disks with games on them that he copied for me. Now, the degree of advanced graphics and sound cards were still years away but even the simplest of games like Conan or Bruce Lee kept me busy for hours. It would be nothing for me to grab a can of Pepsi, a bag of Doritos, turn up my RUSH tapes, and not be seen again until Saturday morning at 7:00 AM when I had to get up for my paper route. How pathetic is that?

What kind of childhood was that? It was like the real life equivalent of the first twenty minutes of Weird Science, before the bras on the heads. Although, I kept waiting for my bedroom door to explode and have Kelly LeBrock standing amongst the smoky rubble just waiting for me to utter the simplest command. Never happened for you either? John Hughes was such a lying prick, wasn’t he?

Still, I remember, with fondness the days, when Friday meant I was done for the week. It was the time when my brain could just shut down and I could spend the next two days just crashed out in my “play clothes.” There wasn’t a child that needed tending to. There wasn’t a yard that needed to be mowed. I wasn’t responsible for taking out the trash or making sure the litter boxes were clean. It was all about the pleasure principle, and I don’t mean a Janet Jackson album.

Looking back at my childhood, I continually mount a pretty good case for being born too soon. There was of course the Power Wheels defense of 1983. That was just the tip of the iceberg, the smallest visible portion of the massive amount of technological innovations that developed over the years of my life. Those advancements in fun always seemed to be geared towards the demographic just below my age range, robbing me of the latest and greatest in media, toys and other escapist devices. While video game consoles are probably the greatest missed opportunity, the advancement in home theater and movie offerings through DVD and cable providers ranks a close second.

Yes, young Whipper Snappers, you there with your Twit-ster and Space-Book have all the hook up in gadgets and distractions of heroin addict whose house just landed in a Ozian poppy field. OhgodohgodDorothyDorothypoppiesfieldpoppiesfield... (ten points for you old timers that get that moldy oldie reference to geekdom.) I’ve become the Luddite equivalent of my parents talking about walking to school, uphill, both ways, in three feet of snow, but I’m explaining how, in my day, we had to sit in a certain order on the couch and touch the lamp just so we could keep our fuzzy reception of HBO visible. We dared not move or the audio track would go from somewhat discernible to that repetitive “cheet, cheet, cheet,” sound. It was like the whispers from Friday the 13th, set to the speed of Chipmunks and blasted like a Greek chorus, chanting over and over again that we were “cheating” the cable company, yet we continued to fine tune our

I mean, God help me if I was alone. I had the skills of a SETI radio technician, fine tuning the little knob on the device that clipped onto the back of our television, just so I could see the glimpse of a fuzzy pair of breasts from Revenge of the Nerds late at night. You kids, with your DVRs and your Blu Ray. Bah! You don’t know how stressful it was to have only five minutes to return a VHS rental and then realize you had to rewind the damn thing. If only I would have been born in 1985 I’d be knee deep in WoW and failing my Rocks for Jocks that I needed to graduate with a degree in Undeclared Arts. I’d be Netflixing the entire Second Series of Dr. Who while searching for another little jug of iced tea from 7-11. This would all be done simultaneously while texting my friends and updating my status while recruiting more people for my Mafia and send them all flair based on how much I hate Twilight.

But, I’ve gone completely off the point as I tend to do in my pop culture dementia. The entire point of this ever disintegrating rant is to highlight a selection of popcorn confectionery cinema treats that are best served reheated and with copious helpings of greasy, shop delivered pizza and carbonated beverages. This selection is a prime example of a childhood gone completely off the reservation. This is the kind of pre pubescent nostalgia that has you up until way past midnight, fixated on your glowing screen in a quasi reversed Ludovico technique. Instead of causing an aversion to the images and acts on screen, you wake the next day and head out into your backyard or neighborhood, engrossed in an intense imaginative state, reenacting the best scenes from the film. In your possession is a broken stick that doubles as a sword or rifle and you are clad in a newspaper hat and a cape fashioned from your Mother’s hand knitted afghan.

So, here we go. Settle down into that butt shaped groove you’ve made into the couch, Rochambeau your loved one or best friends for the remote with that killer Paper/Lizard/Spock combo move you’ve developed and let the brain take the night off, you deserve it. Now, I’m sure I will have missed some more of the classics and well established films but this is just a sampling.

Comedy

Dude, where’s My Car?
Half Baked
Stripes
Superbad
Old School
Ghostbusters (Could technically be listed under Sci-Fi)
Weird Science (As could this)
Big Trouble in Little China
Heathers
Shaun of the Dead (It splits the genre with Horror)
Meatballs
Caddyshack

Horror

Christine
Evil Dead I and II (Dead By Dawn is more comedy but let's keep it where it's at)
The Lost Boys
Halloween (1978)
The Thing
The Frighteners
Bubba Ho-Tep
Night of the Living Dead
Cabin Fever
Final Destination
Grindhouse
Poltergeist
Jaws

Adventure

Raiders of the Lost Ark
National Treasure
The Goonies
The Mummy
Jurassic Park
Romancing The Stone
The Three Musketeers (1993)
Ladyhawke

Action/Fighting

Kill Bill
Kung Fu Hustle
Crank
Die Hard
First Blood
Commando
Predator
Point Break
Bad Boys
Hot Fuzz

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Fellowship of the Ring
Terminator
The Running Man
The Matrix
Escape From New York
Tron
Aliens
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Stargate
Independence Day
Akira
Six String Samurai
The Black Hole
Back to the Future
Underworld

Those of you who can’t turn your mind off for 2 hours.

Donnie Darko
12 Monkeys
Strange Days
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Memento
Paycheck
Pi
North by Northwest
Cube
Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Rom/Com

The Princess Bride
The Wedding Singer
Sleepless in Seattle
Only You
One Fine Day
10 Things I Hate About You
Failure to Launch

Just be sure to wipe the drool from the corners of your mouth when you're done. Have a good weekend and Let's Go Pens!

So wait? There was a writer's strike? Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?

A long time ago, my parents tried to instill in me the importance of balancing a checkbook. You see, you put in the amount you have in the bank, here. Now, anytime you write a check or use your debit card, you mark it here, and write down the difference on this line. That way you'll always know how much you have available. Subsequently, I bounced three checks. Of course, the punchline to this is a part of an old email forward asking why a bank would charge you money for insufficient funds when you don't have enough to cover the original check, anyways? Needless to say, I never caught onto the whole balancing my checkbook idea. In fact, I decided to just not pay attention to it and just pay attention to my bank statement and life was much sweeter. I never bounced another check, ever.

With the advent of the ability to use the internet to manage my expenses, I've freed up a lot of time, saved on checks, and hardly have any reason to use stamps. See, all my bills, ranging from utilities to credit cards are managed online. Most of my expenses are set to automatically debit my account on a certain day, just like my paycheck is automatically deposited into my checking account every other Friday. It's a wonderful setup. Every month, I get an email update that my account will draft a payment to the Cable Company or Gas Company and I just make sure I always have enough to cover everything until payday. I no longer have to worry about writing checks or balancing books because I always keep an eye on my bank statements and constantly check my account online to see what is available and what is going in or out.

I have adopted the same sort of logic with my television viewing habits. It used to be that I had two VCRs in house at all times and a revolving slew of 6 hour tapes being recorded and erased at a frequency that was more than my attempts at an extended absence greeting for my voicemail. I rotated tapes once a day and kept a system by which the tape on the top of the pile was ready to watch and must be done by the end of the week. You see, you put that tape here which is what you have available to watch. Now, anytime you decide to watch something you back up and only record that much space as to.......you get the point, right? By the way, who killed Laura Palmer?

I realized that the Digital Age was catching up to my viewing habits and the fact that I needed to smoke a fat joint to be in sync with the constant speeding up and slowing down of my degrading VHS tapes was not something I wanted to invest money into on a regular basis. I opted to buy a DVD recorder because I didn't want to pay a monthly fee to TiVo. However, I would have been able to make the payments automatic. So, I spent almost $200 on a DVD recorder and a few rewritable discs. Everything seemed to be working fine, but some programs never recorded because of copyright issues and others were cutoff because there's some new trend with having shows go over a couple minutes from their regularly scheduled time. By the way, what was in that Hatch on LOST?

Then a breath of hope came my way in the guise of my cable provider. I could bundle my phone, internet, and cable into one package and get a dual channel DVR. Ooooh, yummy. Soon, I was using VHS tapes to balance my entertainment center while I zipped through commercials and paused live broadcasts. I kept my queue to about 20% full and regularly watched my favorite shows. Last season (2006-2007) in particular offered a lot of new shows which I would give a passing glance, possibly setting for RECORD ALL EPISODES. If I didn't really care for them, delete the show, delete the scheduled recording. Gotta love it. But then I started to notice that a lot of my newly scheduled to record shows began getting cancelled. Smith, gone. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, gone. Yet, American Idol and Wife Swap, and all manner of reality television trucked along at a steady pace. Soon, I became disgusted by the lack of quality shows on television and used my DVR and Cable box to seek out shows on cable channels that I always wanted to watch......oh look, Spaced is on BBC1. Must see television became must see by the end of the week.....or maybe next. I was so disgusted with the networks and producers that I wanted to go to my window and do my best Peter Finch impersonation. Unfortunately, I have glass block windows in my family room and very small windows that open only about three inches.

Once the season ended an amazing event happened during the summer. I had a daughter. Soon, my television remote gathered dust and I didn't get to watch my shows. It wasn't that I didn't have time. I can always juggle a remote with a bottle and burp cloth. It's not hard to learn. It's just that we kept mostly to one floor of my house with the newborn and I didn't have the DVR attached to that floor's television set. When the fall season rolled around, I already had built up a good 50% queue that I swore I would during 2 hour naps and before she awoke in the morning. By December, I had close to 80% and saw no end in sight. I began to whittle down what I could, but my wife threw up a dastardly roadblock.

"What are you watching, dear?"

"Las Vegas, honey."

"Oh, I like that show. Hold off and we'll watch it together."

"Ok."

And just like that my DVR nearly exploded. I couldn't get to shows that I watched alone fast enough and began fast forwarding through the Crime Lab musical montages on CSI: New York just so I could get all the dialogue and get rid of the episode.4 or 5 weeks of episodes began to pile up. I tried to think of ingenious ways to trap my wife in the room while I stated to watch a show she liked, drawing her into the drama onscreen and allowing me to delete the episode.

"Oh the baby's crying."

"No, that's on the television, our baby's fine."

"Ok."

As of February, I had all aired episodes of some show called Moonlight still queued up, unwatched. I had planned on watching one episode, declaring the show dumb (I liked it better when it was called Angel), and removing it from my recording schedule. Unfortunately, my wife wanted to watch it as well and the shows piled up in my queue and started to stagnate. We managed to catch an episode one night at someone else's house and both agreed it was dumb. I deleted all the episodes and my DVR sighed in relief as if it had undid it's belt after Thanksgiving dinner.

I also noticed something else. My DVR queue was going down and I wasn't watching nearly enough of my shows to affect it in such a way. New shows weren't being recorded. I checked the recording schedule and there were no shows slated to record. What had happened? Did I miss the apocalypse? Were brain hungry zombies wandering around my yard and I didn't notice them? DID THE GODDAMN NETWORK CANCEL ALL MY SHOWS? None of the above, although there is some weirdo wandering around my yard in a bathrobe. I think he may be looking for his newspaper, though. Can't be too careful. BANG!

Apparently, there had been a writer's strike and all of this season's shows depleted their completed scripts and reality television took over in the absence. How the hell did I miss this? I'm usually up to date on these newsworthy items......oh that's right, the baby. I delegated new technology in the form of my DVR to pick up the slack. See, while I had continued to record the shows I liked, I just kept an eye on my queue and didn't notice whether or not they had been adding new shows. As long as I never went over my DVR space, I knew I could watch them whenever. Since I had become so disenchanted with television, anyway, I failed to pay attention to what was happening. I simply started living in my life. I was actually, happy that the strike took place because it gave me some breathing room in my life to allow things to happen in a more relaxed manner. The funny thing about the strike and unions for that matter is that even though about a half of the shows and movies out there were worth watching, when the WGA went on strike, even the piss poor writers got to picket for more money. I think the strike should have been performance based. Granted, these are only my opinions. Still, why should some hack that writes crap for a show that somehow stays on the air get the same residuals as a good writer who has to go through three or four cancelled shows or pilots that were never picked up because the networks and producers go with the lowest common denominator in terms of talent?

Now that the strike is over, and everyone is back at work, I will have to start watching all those shows, because apparently it ended in time to churn out more episodes this season for all my shows, currently in my DVR queue. Now, if only I could get my wife to look at the television.

"Look, Honey. Sawyer has his shirt off." I would say hitting pause.


While I wait for her to close her mouth and settle on the couch for the next 2 hours, I think I'll check my bank account.