Picture Window on the World

There was a time when I used to make a schedule for weekly TV viewing. Don’t get me wrong; while I enjoy TV, I don’t really plan my life around it. If we have places to go and things to do, we go and do. But there are always certain shows I look forward to more than others.

Now it seems like the more channels we get, the less there is to watch. I know that’s not profound or original (Springsteen, among others, said it back in 1992), but don’t forget why it’s a cliché to begin with – because it’s largely true. At this point, in the average week, there are approximately six shows we make an effort to watch: Heroes, Lost, Top Chef (or Project Runway, whichever’s current), Grey’s Anatomy, ER, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Several of those are more “mine” than “ours”, although she at least tolerates them; and some seem more like remote-control muscle memory than a conscious choice (ER in particular has kind of turned into the classic movie zombie that keeps walking around, never realizing it died some time ago).

The last one, however, is definitely my wife's. I enjoy it OK, or at the minimum it only bothers me when Ty's screaming (there are 16,400 results for "ty pennington scream" on Google), but she gets a "fix" from it: a little burst of heartwarm. Still, it's always pretty interesting at the end when they show the results, especially for an inveterate HGTV watcher. What's always amazed me in those tours was all the flat-panel TVs scattered throughout the house... just always seemed so high-tech and extravagant to me. Then our non-flat TV died.

Actually, it died quite a while back and we've been making do with another old (and smaller) set. Strangely enough, however, as I (we) get older, that smaller set wasn't getting any easier to see, so at length I faced the fact that we were going to have to begin the search.

Our last major TV search was about 11 years ago, and in that instance I really dug deep: we had friends who were getting a new TV, and he was Doing Research, so I waited for him to give me his results and I bought that TV. And it did last about 10 years...

This time around what turned the corner for me was the Annual Magazine Subscription Scam, out of which we decided to get Consumer Reports. And almost instantly they came out with their most current TV ratings. I got a bit of a shock when I realized that a flat-panel TV is no longer something out of one of those HGTV shows where somebody spends a million on their house -- it's almost the only kind of TV there is any more. I felt a little like I went to buy a new car and all they had at the dealer was hovercrafts.

I was going to claim that the CR ratings were all I needed to pull the trigger -- but since I rarely get anyone reading this who doesn't already know me well, I don't think I'd get away with that little white lie. Of course I dithered around, went from store to store, couldn't even decide on the size... but then in the end, I just went for the one they'd designated their Best Buy (although, of course, as soon as I bought it, they came out with ANOTHER set of ratings in which my set was still "recommended" but no longer Best).

So now in my den -- maybe 10'x12' -- I have a 40-inch flat panel LCD TV. And yes, it's a trifle overwhelming at 7 or 8 feet away... but believe me, I am getting used to it. I can tell you that this week when I watched Lost, I gasped for a reason that had nothing to do with the mysteries of time travel, or Ben's pure creepy evilness, or even Jack's beard. But the sight of the

Mysterious Island (OK, Hawaii) in wide-screen, hi-def, big as life, was quite literally breathtaking.

So at least for 6 hours a week (well, 5 actually -- Bravo doesn't broadcast in HD yet, at least on our cable) we'll get to watch our favorites in rather vivid fashion. The rest of the time... I may just leave the set on anyway. A picture like this could make Knight Rider and According to Jim worth watching.

On second thought, I'm really regretting the demise of the test pattern.

TFD: On the 17th Day of Christmas

I made a lot of noise last time about how Christmas was over... but truthfully, there are still little vestiges of the season left around. I can't really say a lot of it is conscious, of course; the Christmas tree is still lying on its side in the side yard because I dragged it out just before we left for our Christmas-break vacation stay at camp. There are miscellaneous decorations here & there that just didn't get put away. The wrapping paper is still piled up in the corner of my office (although I did finally fold up the worktable a couple days ago. Some time soon I will take the folded table out of the office, too).

And despite all my protestations to the contrary, all the Christmas music is still loaded up in my iPod, as well as iTunes. Before Christmas, I was doing a constant shuffle of all the holiday songs; now, at least, I've returned to the full list shuffle. As a result, the Christmas music acts like a little punctuation -- I could say that it's the nutmeg in the eggnog, but that's a holiday-only metaphor. In any case, instead of the whole dish, it's just the spice, which in its way makes me "hear" it a little more.

I tried through the season (the "real" season) to rate my songs using the iPod's 1-5 star system, and it may be that I decide that the 4- and 5-star songs are worth keeping year-round. That will probably almost automatically include most or all of Steven Curtis Chapman's two Christmas albums.

It seems like every time I mention Christmas music, I come back to SCC. One of his songs hit me in a special way this year, to such an extent that I convinced myself that it gave me a fresh insight. I've had some time to think about it, and I guess it falls a little short of, you know, C.S. Lewis-level inspiration -- but I'll share it anyway.

The song that brought Christmas home to me this time was "Our God Is with Us":

Our God is with us
Emmanuel
He's come to save us
Emmanuel
And we will never face life alone
Now that God has made himself known
As father and friend, with us through the end
Emmanuel

(You can hear the song, and in fact the whole album, if you go here and click 'play' next to The Music of Christmas)

It's always been one of my all-time favorites, but one day it hit me at a new angle: he's come to save us. And instead of the conventional sense of the word -- those who believe in him don't have to go to hell -- I took it quite literally. I imagined myself in a lot of trouble, maybe even being held captive, when suddenly the SWAT team arrives to rescue me. OK, I guess in this case it's more like the SWADDLE team, but the image of Jesus coming because it was the only way to bail me personally out of danger made Christmas a little more, I don't know, urgent -- not just another Silent Night.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Silent Night. I love Joseph standing nearby trying to keep his head from exploding with everything that's happened to him. I love the shepherds saying, "Wait -- you're telling us the most important news ever?" I love Mary watching it all wide-eyed, "treasuring all these things up in her heart" (there's a blog I'd pay to read). And I saw one of my favorite Biblical phrases on a Sunday school bulletin board this week: it was a Birth Announcement for Jesus, and on the line for "When:" it said, "In the fullness of time". I wish I could say that's why this post is so "late" -- I'm just trying to achieve the fullness of time for it.

But alongside all that we have the image of Jesus arriving at just the right time -- albeit not in the most powerful or glamorous fashion -- to save us from a crisis... and that, much more than shepherds or wise men or donkeys, is a piece of Christmas I can take with me all year long.