Technology and Me: A Horror Story

I have a bizarre relationship with technology: it sometimes scares me. Everytime something goes wrong with my laptop or the TV or my digital camera or the clasp which keeps my sock cabinet closed, I panic. I worry that if I try to fix it, it will just get worse. To make anything work these days, you have to be a bloody electrical engineer. It's as if everyone should have a permenant IT team from India living in their apartment.

For example, my partner Jerry bought me a Sony Blu Ray player for Christmas. The whole point was so that we could stream Netflix live to our TV in Jackson Heights, Queens. Since the gift was mine, I volunteered to hook it up. Mistake. Well, the hooking up to the TV was not very difficult. We bought an HDMI cable and all you had to do was attach it to the TV and the Player. That was the easy part. Getting it hooked up to the Internet was the nightmare. It turns out you need a LAN adaptor--whatever that is--to get the internet. Best Buy and all the other chains were out of the LAN adaptor SONY made. Evidently there was a big rush after Christmas. At Walmart, they recommended something called the Netgear Universal Adaptor which supposedly works with every brand. The directions said you had to detach your router from your computer and hook up this universal adaptor to it to program it. I was frightened that if I removed the internet connection from the router, it would be lost and I would have spend 127 hours on the phone to India and I'd have to cut my own arm off like James Franco to get it to work again.

Fortunatley, I got it to work and everything turned out OK. But Netflix does not yet have its entire enormous inventory available for direct streaming to your TV. It did have Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Rocky and Bullwinkle.

I'm also having problems with my Nikon Coolpix digital camera--I think it's the one that Ashton Kutcher does the commercials for. The outdoor shots come out fine, but as you may have noticed in some of my previous blog posts, the interior shots are kinda blurry. Do I have it on the wrong setting, I wonder? I thought all these point and shoot jobs gave marvelous pictures for even idiots like me. I had a Canon that worked very well, but it got banged up and the screen where you see the shots went black. Jerry is going to lend me his camera so I can see if it's better than the Nikon. Moral for me and Bruce Willis: Don't trust Ashton Kutcher.

Memories of a TV Childhood

While contemplating our new huge high-definition TV I recalled how much of a big deal it was just to have color. When I was little, our house and that of just about everyone we knew had black and white. Many of the programs were in B&W and the complete transition to color happened gradually from the late 60s to the 70s. I can remember watching most of the Mary Tyler Moore Show in black and white which premiered in 1970 and ran until 1977 (When the last episode aired, I was acting in a high school production of The Sound of Music. We had a set backstage and as I was playing Herr Zeller, the mean Nazi, I didn't have many scenes and I could watch it.)

My great-aunt Lilly and great-uncle Carl had a color TV and it was so exciting to visit them because we could watch our favorite shows in living flesh-tones. One time we had dinner with them and I remember we watched Time Tunnel which was on Thursdays (I think). I asked if we could have dinner with them on a Wednesday because that was when Lost in Space was on. The first season of Lost in Space had been broadcast in black and white. Then the second year the cast got all new colorful costumes--which I couldn't appreciate because of our cheap b&w set. Back then, I didn't understand why they suddenly change their clothes if they were wandering aimless in the cosmos. Where did they get the new duds? It was like the castaways on Gilligan's Island. Only the Howells had a complete wardrobe. The Robinsons had their black and white space suits and their color ones. Later I realized it was just to take advantage of the color. Judy in particular benfitted from the makeover. In season one she wore this drab dark skirt thing. In season two she was in a bright yellow and purple pants suit. (I later got Marta Kristin's autograph at a sci-fi convention, but that's another story.)

Speaking of visiting relatives and TV, another time we were visiting my Uncle Joe and Aunt Marion in January 1966 to go sledding with my cousins. I remember the date because my sister and I watched the George Sanders Mr. Freeze episode of Batman with my cousin James. (There were three Mr. Freezes, Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach were the other two) That was the third or fourth Batman episode. It was a Wednesday because it was part one. Part two was on Thursday. It was an unusual experience because in those days before DVRs, we would watch Lost in Space on Wed. from 7:30 to 8:30 and see part two of Batman on Thurs. Anyway, we kids were all excited because we thought with all the snow we'd have to stay overnight. I was only six so this was a big deal. But my dad said it was time to go home. Driving back, our car hit a patch of ice and we crashed into a fence. I don't remember how long we were there, but my dad must have called a tow truck to get us out and we got home eventually.