TiVo

The guys from Verizon showed up on Wednesday morning to install the Super-Secret Decoder Cards in my new TiVo.

Thank God one of them had actually "seen" a TiVo before Wednesday. Between the 2 of them it took less than 2 hours to do what a qualified technician should've been able to do in 1 hour. This is known as "job security." In all fairness to them, they are "phone company" employees which, in the past, meant hours of boredom hanging off of telephone poles, or down in freezing cold manholes, splicing miles of copper cable together in order to form "The Bell System." These days, though, it's just as likely to mean "the cable company" or "the computer guys." They don't know what the hell their job descriptions are any more. I feel for them.

This is what my TiVo looks like from the front:



This is what it does: It's a digital video recorder. It has an onscreen program guide that puts Verizon's to shame. All you have to do is "point and click" to record any show on the schedule. You can even tell it to record an entire season for you with just a few clicks. It holds up to 180 hours of regular programming (or 20 hours of HD programming). I can stick another (external) hard drive on the thing to up the recordable ante to nearly 200 hours of HD programming and nearly 1,000 hours of regular.

It does all kinds of other "tricks" with time and space (it's nearly as good as an episode of "Lost"). My favorite trick so far is, if I'm watching a show in "real time" and the phone rings all I have to do is hit the "Pause" button on the remote. The picture will instantly freeze. I take the call and after I hang up, 20 minutes later, hit the "Play" button and it will continue playing, as though I had been playing back a tape or a DVD.

It also learns and makes suggestions about things I might enjoy based on my past viewing patterns. This is both good news and bad news.

I am very excited about my TiVo. I'll be even more excited when the TiVo company issues me a refund for the defective unit they originally sold me.

Meanwhile, though, I'm a happy camper.

p.s.

Tomorrow I'm seeing the new Charles Busch play "The Third Story" also starring Kathleen Turner ("Body Heat", "War of the Roses", voice of Jessica Rabbit in "Who Killed Roger Rabbit?")

Full review to follow.

HELP!!!!

Should I buy the above-referenced gizmo? They want nearly $650.00 (including tax) for it. That's with a "lifetime subscription" to the updating service which, apparently, is indispensible if you're going to get the gadget to begin with.

Oh, it's a High-Definition TiVo (20 hrs. of hd or 180 hrs of regular tv).

All this just so I can watch the upcoming season of "Lost" within 48 hours of the broadcast. That's not completely true, there might be one or two other shows I'd "time shift" with it.

I'm only thinking about this because a) my 20 year old Panasonic S-VHS recorder (which cost a grand when IT was new) finally died a horrible death and b) I'm pretty certain there's no point in investing any more money in VHS technology.

So, what do you folks think? Blow the big $$$$'s and finally get with the 21st Century program here... or continue to be my old, Luddite self, trudging along the canal paths of 17th century technology?

I await YOUR decision.

Thank yew.

Bizzy Saturday

I've been pretty busy lately, for an inveterate lazy-assed couch potato.

It rained like an SOB here on Friday which always causes massive backups and delays on the NJTurnpike, at the entrance to the pike from the Lincoln Tunnel extension (I-495). I was cranky and wet by the time I got home at 7:30.

Then I had to be up at the crack of dawn on Saturday because it was time for Mr. Honda's 30,000 mile checkup (his pediatrician days are over -- now he has to go to the grown-up doctor, turn his exhaust pipe and, er, cough). Because it was an all-day (and $575.00) affair, they gave me a lovely loaner, a 2006 Honda Accord, which is pretty luxurious compared to the shake, rattle and roll of the Element. But I wouldn't swap my spacious Element for anything. Every time I got in and out of the Accord I had to fold myself in half to get through the door.

I killed Saturday afternoon by going to see "The Kite Runner." It's a toe-tapping musical comedy about Afghani class structures, revolution, communism, more revolution, religious fanaticism, pedophilia, denial, lies, cancer, backstabbing and, eventually, a happy ending in the New World. It reminded me of my childhood. I exited the theater humming the kite flying.

The car didn't drive noticeably better after its day at the Spa. I could've gotten a two-hour massage for considerably less.

Saturday night I drove 50 miles to my usual Saturday night 12-Step meeting for the LGBT community over in Pennsylvania. We meet in a Unitarian Church there. Unfortunately the church decided to have a Monte Carlo night that night, too, and all the adults were drinking and gambling in the meeting room next to ours, while all of their evil-seed offspring were upstairs, in the sanctuary, dancing up a storm to music that was deafening to us down below.

I had a splitting headache by the end of the hour -- and didn't hear a word that anyone said.

I collapsed in the big, comfy chair in front of the tv when I got home and promptly fell asleep until 1:30 a.m.

Despite my bitching, it was, all-in-all, a very good day.

It's Beginning to Look...

like it's about 4 weeks until Christmas.

Not that you'd know if from my house. I gotta get me a digital camera so I can show you all how I really live. If I posted a bunch of photos of that here I could die in peace. Well, maybe not in peace, but certainly of embarassment.

My fellow blogger, Jake from Chicago and his boyfriend Justin, have just returned from spending Thanksgiving week in Orlando at DisneyInc. and the first thing they did when they got home was to put up TWO trees (the bitches). Check 'em out here. And while you're at it, don't forget to take a look at that chandelier they have in their dining room. It gives new meaning to the word "FABULOUS."

I have a little fake tree I bought at Home Depot a couple of years back. I put it up that year and it's been in the box ever since. I blame it on the real foliage in the living room, which has now taken over the big picture window I have there and, occasionally cries out "FEED ME" after which I have to toss a dentist or several small children into its gaping maw in order to placate it for a while. It's making a guest appearance on Larry King next week. With any luck it'll eat him. Now if I could only get it booked with Bill O'Lielly or Mann Coulter.

Christmas has gotten to be an expensive proposition now that I have grand-nieces and nephews. Before they came along, and back when I was newly sober and didn't have two dimes to rub together, life was simpler. And cheaper. Now people expect gifts. Worse, I expect ME to be able to give gifts.

Luckily, most gifts fall into one of two categories. 1. Cash. 2. Cash equivalents (such as store gift cards). Any idiot can manage these, except they do involve not only getting the cash or cash equivalents but then finding some sort of suitable "container" to put them in, which can then be gift-wrapped to look as though it actually contains something other than money or a gift card.

For those of you who absolutely insist on something substantive in the way of presents, I heartily recommend creating a wish-list for yourselves on Amazon.com which you can then happily disperse amongst family and friends for them to visit prior to shelling out real money for some crap you have zero interest in owning.

That way you'll have no one to blame but yourself for that shitty multi-DVD set of Norma Shearer's Greatest Motion Pictures that you just couldn't live without.

But for those relatives or friends who don't create a wish-list, you can always fall back on that old, reliable, standby.... Entertainment. Get them a gift certificate to the local AMC, Regal or whichever theater chain runs the local goo-goo-plex in your town.

That way they have no one to blame but themselves when they waste your gift on a lousy afternoon spent yawning while watching "No Country for Old Men."

But enough about that. There'll be plenty of time to shop, come Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile, go put up a tree.

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BONUS Christmas Present

The rumor mill is churning. It's been alleged that Larry Flynt is investigating rumors regarding Trent Lott which prompted the latter's hasty announcement of an early retirement by year's end.

The rumor involves a male prostitute.

Thank you, Jeebus.