Directv
We just got Directv this past week. Apparently, TimeWarner hasn't laid cable in our part of Brooklyn. I find this amazing and have joked that living in Brooklyn can sometimes feel like living in a remote island nation. No cable in the largest city in the world? Impossible.
So, we resigned ourselves to Directv. Turner Towers already has a dish somewhere on its roof, so we just had to buy the receiver.
I think satellite TV is really trashy. It sounds like something people in trailer parks get on their visit to Radio Shack in the mall. A friend of a friend who works in the cable industry told me something very depressing: the premium packages, you know the ones where they try to sell you 800 channels, plus all the premium channels like HBO and Showtime, are typically purchased by people with poverty-level incomes. It makes me shudder.
It also makes me not want to participate in the cable scam. There are lots of reasons, like the one above, that make me want to boycott cable. Another reason is that they charge per receiver. It's outrageous -- like the phone company charging you for every phone you have in your land line at home. You're buying a service, not a thing, so you should only have to pay once.
Nonetheless, Domenic really wanted to watch FoodTV and I promised myself that I would only watch HBO Original programming and the occasional science piece on Discovery. I'm trying to stick to the promise. I sometimes catch myself being excited to go home and turn on the TV. I feel like an addict when I have these thoughts and think of the remote control as an endless pack of cigarettes, begging me to just flip through one more channel before quitting.
My parents get cable at home in Kentucky. When my sisters and I are home at Thanksgiving, we all end up in front of the TV in the den, nursing our food coma from deep fried turkey and mashed sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows (talk about trashy, but mmm does it taste good).
Strangely, when the satellite started beaming into our new apartment in Brooklyn, I could practically smell my mother's kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner. I felt like I was home, finally, after years of living in a cable-less world. We might've brought out Domenic's rugs from Morocco, unpacked all our boxes, placed tschochkes on bookshelves...but cable somehow made our house a home.
Would it be crossing the line to order TV Guide?