In the classic words of the class-less Joan Rivers: Can We Talk?
Don't get me wrong, I love Joan. If she was classy, she'd be a condescending bitch. But because she's really just one of us only with her own line of gaw-geous paste jewelry and a plastic surgeon on retainer, we love her, non?
Jerry Lewis : The French
Joan Rivers : Middle-aged women.
Anywho...Can we talk about the ridiculous size of electronic equipment?
Hub and I live on an average suburbanish block. That is to say, it is approximately twelve yards from our front door to the curb...then the street is two or three yards wide...then another twelve yards from the opposite curb to the front of our neighbors' house...and another, say, three yards to the opposite side of their living room.
How far is that? Thirty yards? Add to that another ten yards because the home of the neighbor in question is not directly opposite ours, but on a diagonal...so that's forty yards. Damn near half the length of a(n American) football field.
And yet. And YET, in the evening when I come home, as I approach the front door, or as I turn to close the door behind me, if I look up at our neighbors' house I can tell you exactly what the husband is watching on television. I've been in their home and I can tell you that in this rather small (I can say that because it is the same size as ours) living room/front room/parlor there resides a television as big as an up-ended queen-size mattress. I shit you not. In High-Def.
Damn High Definition to Hell. In the good old days all you could see from the street was a faint blue flicker....
So two months ago a new neighbor moved in behind us. The whole back half of that house is glass - no blinds - and faces our deck - which we use liberally, and in this case the distance is a mere twenty yards from our house.
Do you know how we realized someone had moved into the previously vacant house? We were blinded - a la Todd and Margo in Christmas Vacation - by the High-Def glare of her (yes, I said "her") Sistine Chapel-size flat screen.
Her television, from my deck, appears as large as my television from our couch. It is that big, bright and close. And you can't avoid looking at it. It's like one of those spinning spirals that hynotists use to convince you you're a chicken...you can't look way.
Honestly, what the HELL did people do for wall decoration in the olden days, five years ago, before massive televisions took over the living room? I can't remember...I think my memory has been erased by the enormous visage of Anderson Cooper boring into my brain from across the garden fence.
In an effort to make the best of an unusual situation - and in the spirit of economy - Hub and I have decided to cancel our satellite subscription and watch the neighbors' teevees instead. And why not? It's nostalgic - one of our first dates took place at a drive-in theatre.
Only now, instead of King Kong on a single giant screen we get a daily double-feature: sports in the front and news in the back.
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