Streaming

Long time no blog, I do realize and I do apologize. I could blame the hot flashes--the decision to go off the Prempro was definitely not a good one (and must be remedied very very soon). Or I could chalk it up to the stress of parenting an incredibly smart, incredibly smart-ass 17-year-old--honestly, that should give me a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for eternity. Or I could point the finger at the Republican presidential primaries, because, well, why not?  I suppose I can no longer blame anything on Katrina or the Gulf oil spill, tho' those definitely provided rather handy excuses for quite awhile.

But the fact is, I've been streaming.

Ah me. I used to live a productive life, filled with a variety of cultural and intellectual activities. I mean. you know, sort of, kind of, occasionally. But now, I appear to be fated to be a 21st-century version of Miss Haversham. Years from now a modern Pip will find me, clothed not in the tatters of a wedding gown but in what remains of my comfy jeans and oh-thank-God-the-bra-is-off tank top, sitting on a dust-covered sofa in a darkened room while the rats and roaches nibble their way through the remnants of pita and hummus on the coffee table.

If you haven't read Great Expectations, the precediing paragraph will have made no sense. Go read it. Quick! Before you start streaming, because once you do you'll never read again.  At least if you're a weak-willed soul like me.

It all started when we bought  a flat-screen high-def Google TV. It comes with this groovy remote that looks like you can program nuclear war. But instead of sending the planet to Armageddon, what you actually do is: Stream. You click a button, and you are watching whatever you want to watch, right there and then. No trip to the video store. No dvd. No envelope to return. Handy for movies, yes, but far far more handy for watching entire television series. You don't have to wait an entire week for the next episode, you don't have to order the next series online. It's just there, saying "Watch meeeeeee. Waaaaaatch me NOW." And so we do. To the exclusion of everything else. We (can't believe I'm admitting this. . . oh, the shame) actually walked out during the intermission of a Swine Palace production of "Pride and Prejudice" to hurry home and get back on the couch. Swine Palace, mind you, is THE premier professional theater company of Louisiana, which probably doesn't sound like much, but actually really and truly frequently matches what I've seen on stage in Chicago, New York, and London--and yet, even so, we left halfway through the play to resume streaming.

Now mind you, I am talking about streaming high -quality tv. We have not sacrificed our social lives and our intellectual development to "The Jersey Shore." [Honesty check: I have never actually watched "The Jersey Shore." Maybe it's a really great stuff. So if it is, just fill in whatever tv dreck you want.] We watch amazing programs that prove that the "idiot box" needn't be so idiotic, that actually this medium is capable of mind-bending, artistically innovative, spiritually challenging, extraordinarily well-written, stunningly acted original drama. (No really. Check out "The States of Tara." Watch "Friday Night Lights." Be in awe.)

Still. No matter how good the programs. Still. I have come to this. Me.  A sofa. A remote. A flat screen. A bottle of wine. Pita and hummus.

And Keith. That's the redeeming factor. Somehow as long as I'm not sitting and decaying on the sofa on my own, as long as there's this sentient being next to me who is also slowly descending into total tv-passivity, it's ok. We can just call it "together time." Amazing what you can get away, with as long as you're in a couple.