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I think Television is no longer the right word to describe what we watch each night. Me and LaVonda have been watching a show called The Good Wife. Every night we spend about ten minutes trying to find the damned thing because we can’t remember what service we were watching it on—was it Netflix, Paramount Plus, AppleTV, Hulu, Peacock, MGM, Disney? There’s like hundreds of channels listed when you hit the channel guide on our television, but we’re not allowed to watch them unless we take a free trial subscription that automatically turns into a real subscription unless we remember to cancel within a certain timeframe. And then that subscription automatically renews each year for the rest of our lives (and possibly after) unless we call and cancel before the renewal date. So basically, we’re hesitant to join anything unless one of our children tells us it’s okay. Oy! We’re so old and out of date!
You know, years ago it just took a couple of seconds to see if the show you wanted to watch was on channel 2, 4, or 7. There really wasn’t much to watch on channel 5 or 13 except black and white Farmer Grey Cartoons on 5, or old Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson, Gene Autry, and Buster Crabbe westerns on 13. Say? Have I ever mentioned to you that I knew Buster Crabbe when I was a kid and struck him out in a game of stickball? People are mostly familiar with him from playing Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Tarzan rather than being in old westerns… but he was in a lot of them. Even sometimes as a bad guy! He was a hell of an athlete and was the only U.S. Athlete to win a gold medal in swimming in the 1932 Olympics. I guess that’s why he was picked by MGM to play Tarzan. Maybe they didn’t have the technology back then to make it look like someone could outswim a crocodile and needed someone who could actually do it!
I guess he was about 50 years old but still in great shape when he happened to walk by one day where me and my friend Eugene were playing stickball against a brick wall in the back of an apartment building and he asked if he could play with us.
At the time he lived in a garden apartment a couple of blocks from where Eugene lived and although his days of making movies were over, I would still see him on TV pretty often doing commercials for a chain of gymnasiums named Vic Tanny’s. Can you imagine if some kid today was approached by an Olympic Gold Medal Winner and a big movie star and a guy that was on television almost every day and asked if he could play ball with them? It’s a changed world.
Well, where was I? Oh, yes, back to finding the show the Good Wife. It’s on Paramount Plus, but you can’t watch it unless you pay to subscribe to it. It’s not like the old days where you just bought a T.V. and paid for the electricity to run it and the tubes that burned out every now and then. NOSIREE! Now you gotta pay to see what’s on the TV. That is unless you want to watch free TV and be subjected to watching massive numbers of commercials featuring some of the happiest people you have ever seen in your entire life who all coincidentally have all sorts of terrible diseases. But… miraculously they are all taking various drugs that inspire the most energetic singing and dancing and carrying of rowboats on their heads as they cross crystal-clear mountain rivers and parasail at luxury Caribbean resorts or just casually give their dog a bath in their apartment bathtub. And whom you would never guess in a thousand years are afflicted with all sorts of horrible and life-threatening diseases!
I would be remiss if I did not add that all manner of horrific side effects are mentioned in rapid fire ominous warnings of life-threatening consequences at the end of each commercial with the sage advice of calling your physician to see if that particular drug is right for you?!?!
Sure… Sure, no Problema Muchachos! Just call your doctor and ask, “Hey Doc… is Skyrizi, Rinvoq, Dupixent, Ozempic, Keytruda, or Wegovy right for me?”
When… WHen… WHEN is the last time anyone ever called their doctor and actually got to speak to him or her? If it’s anyone reading this, can you please e-mail me that doctors name and number.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Smoke Inn, its employees, or its affiliates.
