TV Trip

I was very disappointed and confused last night when I turned on the boob tube (if that's what you call a 52-inch plasma, high-def, digital television).

Sadness came to me, but it wasn't because I didn't find myself winning the million dollars on GSN's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire."

I was perplexed, but it wasn't the result of the dials on my remote control being mysteriously rearranged.

I felt a bit blue viewing the idiot box, but not as a result of the much anticipated mid-season premiere of "GHI" being a major let down, but for the new "Ashley" investigator.

The puzzling scenario had nothing to do with the fact that my kids wanted to watch something other than "Hannah Montana."

You might think I'd be disapointed with television when I can can't tune into any new episodes of MacGyver, Stargate SG-1, or the Golden Girls, but that wasn't it either (besides, I've got all but one of those series on DVD).

It would be enormously confusing during a tv-watching session if, while flipping throught the hundreds of available channels, there was actually something worth watching, but that didn't throw me off last night.

Most people would cry tears if the batteries in the remote finally went dead (have they EVER been replaced), meaning we'd have to either change the channels manually or get up to find new batteries, however, my batteries were fully-charged the evening prior to tonight.

How bizzare it would be if the food on the Food Network actually wafted their glorious aromas into your living room, but unfortunately, all I smelled during "Man vs. Food" was my own armits.

Melancholy might set in if I was watching a show on the DVR, only to miss the last 5 minutes because the recorder ran out of space, and bewildered I'd be if the reason the DVR ran out of room wasn't because of month's loads of Hannah Montana episodes hadn't been deleted. But last night, the only show in the DVR recorded list was "The Real Lincoln."

If anyone would need comforting if they tuned in to watch their favorite show only to find it was pre-empted by a State of the Union Address, but the evening after two night's ago was not a night Obama spoke to the nation.

A distressing dither would no doubt manifest if a television network ran one of those ". . . this is a test of the emergency broadcast systems . . ." but it was actually NOT a test. But yesterday's evening didn't even bring me a routine false alarm.

So what had me so despairingly dejected and perturbedly puzzled while watching television last night?

I couldn't find ANY Michael Jackson programming!

Maybe I didn't try hard or long enough, or maybe things are returning to normal.

Thank God there's Youtube.