Complaints

[rejectomorph]

When I have a cold I always end up watching a lot of television. The medium has not improved in recent years. The more channels there are, the less likely it becomes that I'll find anything to hold my interest. At any given hour, it seems that reruns are at least two thirds of what is available. There just isn't enough programming to fill all those channels. It wouldn't be so bad if more than a handful of those reruns were things that I'd have wanted to watch even when they were new, but they aren't, and I still don't want to see them.

I can't even find any movies I'd like to watch among the dozens available from the cable company's on demand feature. That feature appears to have become the last refuge of bad direct-to-video releases from the last thirty years. Perusing the list of what's available I'd be grateful to find even a Francis the Talking Mule movie, and I didn't think those especially amusing even when I was five years old.

As for the regular channels, when did advertising agencies decide that it would be a good idea to put whistling on the sound track of every single commercial? Now, as far as my ears go I'm a statistical outlier, and I could listen to fingernails on a blackboard all day long with minimal irritation, but my auditory apparatus is set up in such a way that whistling drives me batshit crazy. Certain notes boarder on painful, and having my sinuses stopped up doesn't change that. My thumb is sore from hitting the mute button on the remote.

Well, at least there is a mute button. It there weren't, I'd have to turn the television off and read a book, and reading when I have a cold gives me a headache. So does sitting at the computer, unfortunately. Goodnight, Internets. Maybe I'll recover enough to be less crabby by tomorrow.

Comments

[rejectomorph]

Francis, Ma and Pa Kettle, Abbott and Costello, and Red Skelton were fixtures of the Saturday matinees at the neighborhood movie theater I lived near until I was six years old. I remember almost no details from any of those movies, though, except for scenes that frightened me.

I was horrified when an ice-covered Red Skelton was pulled from the freezer of his ice cream truck in "The Good Humor Man," and for months I had nightmares after someone in an Abbott and Costello movie had a crate of eggs dropped on his head and rose up out of the sidewalk, dripping with egg, on one of those open freight lifts (he stood so still I thought he'd been killed.)

The fire scene in "Mighty Joe Young" also gave me nightmares, but that was supposed to be scary. Comedy that was unintentionally scary always left me far more distressed. I'm grateful to Donald O'Connor and Francis for never having done anything to frighten me.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i think i know what you mean about how scenes like that can scare a child. what i remember most clearly as horrifying is scenes in films for adults that showed people being injured. my dad took us all to terre haute to an indoor theater (the only movie i can recall he went to indoors) to see "The Enemy Below." in one scene, a sailor loading a depth charge loses a finger accidentally in the process. things like that affected me deeply.

"King Kong," on the other hand, was scary in a thrilling way.