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I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m getting old. I mean, I’m only 26, still in my mid-twenties and denying the fact that I am aging. However, it seems like the world around me is constantly reminding me that I am no longer a kid, especially my stupid TV. I don’t get why my TV feels the need to make me feel so old. I treat it well. I watch it all the time, tell it how much I love it. It’s my best friend! That doesn’t stop the big high-definition bastard from telling me how old I am almost every time I turn it on. I’ve threatened to turn it off, but it knows I can’t stay mad at it for long.
It’s depressing and makes me want to rip out all the hair that I can see turning gray. So how exactly does my TV tell me I am getting older? Come find out.
- I remember when MTV actually had music videos on: I know it wasn’t so long ago that Music Television (MTV) actually featured music. Now it’s all idiotic horny teenagers acting like morons on a multitude of banal reality shows. What the hell happened? Clearly I’m outside of their target demographic these days, which only makes me feel older. I don’t care how pretty the people they put on TV are, it’s just not worth my time.
- There are so many people on TV younger than I am: It used to be that I could turn on the television and every teen show featured actors that were older than me. Not any more. The biggest shock came when I learned that Cobie Smulders, who plays Robin on How I Met Your Mother, is the same age as I am (even within three weeks).
- I remember when HBO used to be a movie channel: Back in the day HBO didn’t have original programming, they used to show movies all the time. Granted, this is a change for the better, as some amazing shows have come out of HBO recently, so I won’t complain. Sometimes there are benefits to age – like with cheese!
- I never see commercials for toys or breakfast cereal: Well, I do see some cereal commercials, but they’re usually trying to tell me how heart-smart they are. I’m talking about commercials for all those colorful, super-sugary junk cereals with the cartoon characters on the boxes. These, along with toy commercials, used to be on all the time when I watched TV. For a period of time I actually believed that they had stopped advertising this stuff until I realized they just showed the ads during children’s programming. Ouch.
- I remember when Glenn Close, Christian Slater, Harvey Keitel, Holly Hunter, et al were movie stars: Not that there’s anything wrong with moving down to the television, but it seems like in Hollywood it is far more prestigious to be a movie star. Personally, I think TV is a better medium. I love that you can tell a long, epic story without having to worry about cramming everything into two hours.
- I don’t recognize anyone on Sesame Street: I was surfing channels the other day and stopped on Sesame Street. I watched for only a few minutes, but quickly realized that the show has changed so much. There were a slew of muppets and humans that I didn’t know. It made me feel old… and it made me sad.
I can only imagine what’s going to happen in 10 or 20 years. How will my TV betray me then? How will it show me how old I am? What about you – anything on TV these days making you feel really old?
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Clacked by Bob Degon
on Oct 15, 2008 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
I had a TV making me feel old moment during Mad Men, when Don used a rotary phone. I’ve got about 10 years on you and remember when touch-tones were the new thing (at least for my grandmother – she had rotary well into the 80s). Now I don’t even have a land line. Time flies…
I had a moment like this a short while back. A friend of mine and I were watching the MTV music awards and realized we didn’t know who half the people were that were performing or receiving awards.
I remember when MTV had videos, I remember when MTV2 started and had videos. I remember when my buddy called The Box and ordered Dennis Leary’s “I’m an asshole” twenty times in a row on his step dad’s credit card. I remember when stations went off air at night.
This happens every time I watch sports. For the longest time I could always assume I was younger than every football and soccer player I saw on TV. Not so much the case. Landon Donovan, who just got his 100th cap for the USA National Team, is only 26. My age. And Eli Manning won a Super Bowl and is still younger than me. And my favorite new Seahawk, tight end John Carlson, is three years my junior. Its disheartening because there’s something nice about being young and athletic and always having that glimmer of hope in the back of your mind telling you if things had fallen different you that could have been you. Now those dreams are clearly gone forever.
I’ve got plenty of things that make me feel old and the TV’s just one of them.
I remember sitting in my college apartment waiting for MTV to go live for the first time.
I remember test patterns being the norm late at night.
I remember when color television “sets” (that’s what we called ‘em back on the Oregon trail, sonny!) had screens whose sides were rounded so the consumer could easily tell them from the B&W ones.
I remember sitting in front of our color set as the cable was being hooked up and we got 8, count ‘em, EIGHT channels!
I remember riding my bike down to the local K&B drugstore with a paper bag filled with the tubes from my parents’ TV to use the tube tester they had by the front door so we could fix the TV.
In case anyone’s wondering, yes I might already be dead I’m so old.