Well, this past week I was looking down into the holler toward Webb’s Creek thinking about how my TV remote control devices must be secretly breeding at night. They mysteriously appear throughout the cabin loaded with different shaped and colored buttons with mind-boggling labels: “aux, live, action, r-tune, zero, angle, enter, lock, counter reset… and on and on. Out of curiosity I have cautiously pressed a few of the more exotic sounding buttons, but Barney Fife still looked exactly the same. Mathematical research has determined that just two of my many remotes have a total of 98 buttons and all of them allegedly impact the viewing experience. Do I really need 100 control buttons to watch championship poker or those crazy guys catching crabs?
Just last week my wife anxiously called to me asking how to turn up the volume. I instinctively shifted to a defensive posture because somehow the whole remote control monkey business has landed squarely on my shoulders. “Do we really need all of these controls? I bet other people don’t have three remotes for one TV. I can’t even turn up the volume!” I tried to lovingly explain to her how incredibly complicated it all is, but she wasn’t buying. Exasperated, I advised her in the strongest terms (with my own personal volume slightly turned up) that she should never ever again touch a control on the actual TV set. I warned her that such a drastic action sends all remotes into tilt mode and all bets are off for changing channels or volume.
Once again after thoroughly analyzing the problem the volume was successfully increased. To avoid the stress of additional remote control issues I called for my dog and we retreated down the steps to watch our big old fat TV that was demoted to the lower level years ago. I personally wired that humongous contraption with surround sound…vintage 1998. Hundreds of feet of wire and speakers hidden behind my hiking gear were supposed to enhance our media experience, but something went terribly wrong. (Mark Twain didn’t even know I bought a surround sound system when he suggested, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”) Suzanne Malveaux of CNN sounds like she is reporting from my bathroom shower instead of the Texas Whitehouse and I’m OK with that, but I’m fairly sure that the kitchen lights shouldn’t flicker when I turn on the DVD machine.
My future is bleak with the recent arrival of HD, plasma, LCD and aqueous televisions. Using a remote for them will likely require support from all of those people who follow that Verizon guy around. Are we going to have blood drives to support the growth of Sony’s plasma sets? Is the aqueous television waterproof? There are so many questions.
I confess that I never even knew that I owned low definition (LD) TV sets. I have been missing the visual elation of seeing little specks of dirt and tiny pimples on actors’ faces. I could call a specialist to help… using my combination camera, music player, video recorder, photo album, internet surfing, tazor shooting telephone…but I don’t think so. Suzanne Malveaux will continue broadcasting from my shower stall and my independent-minded wife truly needs me…at least to help change channels. That is just how it looks from my log cabin.
John LaFevre is a local speaker and co-author of the interactive national park hiking book series, Scavenger Hike Adventures, Falcon Guides, Globe Pequot Press. Contact John at scavengerhike@aol.com or at his blog at Falcon.com. Artist G. Webb lives in Pittman Center, Tennessee. Gwebbgallery.com.
