Benny Jay: Weak Signal

I usually have at least two books going at once. But lately I've been in a reading funk, seems like I haven't read a good one in weeks.

Blame it on "The Wire." What a show. I might have gone my whole life without watching it -- never saw it when it was running on HBO, and it's been off the air for months. But Mike, the video store guy, told me about it -- said I absolutely had to see it, said it was the best show ever.

So I rented a DVD and after that I couldn't stop watching it. I'd be renting DVDs every other night. Mike must a made a fortune off of me. I was like a junkie, staying up to all hours, watching up to two or three episodes a night. Ran through five years worth of episodes in no time. Finished with a bang -- four shows in one night. Didn't get to bed `til five in the morning. Woke up in a daze, like I'd been on a drinking binge.

I say this all to let you know that when the night began I thought: Tonight's the night I read a book. But, you know how it goes -- once you're hooked on the tube it's hard to get unhooked. I remember Game Five's on ABC -- Lakers versus Orlando.

I turn the tube to Channel Seven. But Channel Seven doesn't work. Instead, a sign comes on: "Weak Signal."

"Weak Signal?" I mutter to myself. "What the fu...."

I surf around -- Channels Five, Nine and 32. They all work. All the funky little VHS stations work. I go back to Seven. "Weak Signal."

It must be that analog thing. I got the converter box 60 million years ago and Merlin -- our friend, the computer genius -- installed it. It had been working. But now it's not.

I turn off the TV and stare at the blank screen. I'm hoping that if I stare at it long enough, it will fix itself.

I turn it on. "Weak Signal."

I call up to the stairs to my wife. "Hey! The TV doesn't work...."

Silence. She's got the radio playing. So I yell louder: "THE TV DOESN'T WORK!"

"What?" she yells back.

"It's that analog thing," I yell.

"You have to reload it," yells my younger daughter.

I'm stunned that she of all people would have an opinion on this. "How do you know?" I yell.

"I heard it on TV...."

I look at the screen. "Did you say to unplug it?" I yell.

"No, reload...."

"Reload?"

"Yes...."

"Reload?" I mutter to myself. "What the hell does that mean?"

I look at the TV changer. I look at the screen. It's like I'm expecting one or the other to tell me what to do.

"How do you reload it?" I yell up the stairs.

"Call Merlin," yells my wife.

I find the phone. I call Merlin. He's not in. I leave a message, something like: "Merlin, you won't believe this, but the TV doesn't work. My daughter says to reload it. But I don't know what that means...."

I hang up. I try again. "Weak Signal." What a joke. It's bad enough I can't watch basketball most of the year cause I don't have cable. Now I can't even watch it when it's on Free TV. They made such a big deal about how getting rid of analog was gonna improve our lives, but they somehow managed to make things worse.

I throw the TV changer on the table, flop on the couch, and lie still for a moment. I hear my daughter and wife moving about upstairs. I casually look to my left and lying on the living room table -- beneath an old, unread copy of Time Magazine -- is a book: "City of Thieves" by David Benioff.

I remember buying it weeks ago on an impulse. Forgot all about it while I was hooked on "The Wire." I pick it up and start reading. It's about these two young men -- one's only 17 -- wandering through Leningrad in the winter of 1942 when the Nazis are shelling the hell out of their city. You figured it'd be ghastly depressing. But Benioff's got a dark sense of humor. The two boys haven't eaten a decent meal in weeks. They're both constipated. They have this one exchange:

"`When was the last time you had a shit?' Kolya asked me, abruptly.

"`I don't know. A week ago?'

"`It's been nine days for me. I've been counting. Nine days! When it finally happens, I'll have a big party and invite the best-looking girls from the university.'"

I laugh out loud when I read that bit. There are few things in life as pleasurable as reading a passage that makes you laugh out loud. I keep reading. I forget where I am. Time goes by. I'm a hundred pages or so into the story. It occurs to me -- the game must be over. I wonder who won. I click on the TV. "Weak Signal."

I know my wife can fix it -- she's freaking genius with this sort of thing (remind me to tell you about the time she fixed my ex-brother-in-law's vacuum cleaner). But it will probably be months before she gets around to taking the time to figure it out. Oh, well, we'll survive.

I return to my book. We're better off without this shit anyway....

Big Mike: Rachael Ray, What Am I To Do?

Sometimes I forget how tight a cocoon I've woven for myself. I like to think of myself as being much smarter than the average bear. Toward that end, I've sworn off broadcast TV, commercial radio and other artifacts of the illiterati such as USAToday.

Oh, I'm as smart as an extraterrestrial visiting Earth. With rare exceptions, I don't even argue with people about politics or social issues, preferring instead to roll my eyes and bury myself in my New York Times when guys insist on buffeting me with their uninformed opinions. Yeah, I'm smart.

I play chess rather than poker (although I shouldn't be too hard on that game - a university professor I know paid for his doctorate studies as a professional poker player.) I don't just root for the Cubs; hell, I pore over the most minute baseball statistics and analyze trends with all the zeal of an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health.

For laughs, I read P.G. Wodehouse rather than watch Jimmy Fallon. My car is a Prius. I cook with olive oil rather than butter. I do the laundry in cold water to conserve energy. I'm typing this on a MacBook, not - puh-lease! - a PC. I even wear horn-rimmed glasses.

I'm so smart smoke ought to be pouring out of my ears.

My constant efforts to cultivate this streak of elitism in me - and let's be frank, that's really all it is - have cut me off from, well, American life.

A great way to submerge one's brilliant self in the normal world is to stay at a Holiday Inn. The Loved One and I are spending a week in Bloomington, Indiana so we can look at homes. In our cramped room, the TV dominates. Even the lobby, with its plush leather sofas and cushiony armchairs, is dominated  by an enormous flat screen tuned to whatever peppy talk show is on at the moment.

And since The Loved One forgot to bring her alarm clock, she's had to use the radio alarm that comes with the room and seems permanently tuned to the local oldies station.

Here's what I've gleaned thus far in my descent into reality. The radio, first. I was in that delicious few minutes of half-sleep this morning when suddenly the radio alarm began to blare the Beatles' "Back In The USSR." Only it sounded as though the Fab Four had swallowed a jugful of amphetamines before they recorded it. I realized that a lot of commercial radio stations still use that speed-up technique to quicken the pace of records so they can sound more "energetic" than the competition. I was transformed from sleepily serene to jaw-clenchingly tense before Paul McCartney could sing "Man, I had a dreadful flight."

Unfortunately for me, The Loved One had gotten up before the alarm and was already in the shower. I would have had to roll all the way over to the other side of the bed and stretch out to hit the snooze button. Horrors! So the speeded-up blaring continued.

Next up, the news. I guessed, correctly, that the lead story - the only story - would be the impending termination of the human race by swine flu. It was the kicker at the end of the newscast that informed me radio news readers still employ that stale old format of ending on a wry (read: stupid, dull, and guaranteed to make the brain dead titter) story. This one was about a Chicago guy who wants to open up a hot dog stand called Felony Franks. He wants to staff the joint with ex-cons. Now, that might be a sort-of interesting tidbit but the news reader found the names of the entrees to be the meat of the story. "He wants to serve Pardon Burgers and Misdemeanor Weiners," came the voice over the radio, "this is ABC News."

I suppose the news reader intended me to respond he-he or ho-ho. Instead, I moaned "Shut the fuck up!" which elicited the query from the shower, "What's wrong?"

I decide to go down in the lobby for a cup of coffee and write this post. I'm immediately overwhelemed by The Early Show on CBS. Well, whaddya know - the big story is the coming collapse of civilization due to swine flu. A jittery couple at home wearing surgical masks answer the host's questions. Their teenaged son has developed flu-like symptoms and was tested yesterday for the virus. While awaiting the results, they're doing what comes naturally to Americans - panicking. The kid is off-screen somewhere, coughing occasionally, as if on cue. The host asks them, "Is this the worst day of your life?"

Man, this human-race terminating, civilization-collapsing swine flu couldn't have come a moment too soon, for my money.

After a commercial for a lawyer ("If someone you love has died after using a pain patch containing fentanyl, call...,) The Rachael Ray Show comes on. The maniacally grinning face of Rachael Ray has infested more grocery store aisles than all the ants and mice that have ever lived. Now, apparently, she's a life coach, too. Today's show features a segment on The Recession (that will, of course, collapse civilization.) A woman calls in to say she'd recently lost her job and asks what she should do next.

Again, she called Rachael Ray for this vital advice!

I can't take it anymore. I dash over to Barnes & Noble to buy Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica." I have to hurry up and read it before civilization collapses.