Road Trip

it's road trip eve right now. my better half and i are packing up and heading to las vegas for thanksgiving weekend. i've always been a sucker for road trips -- yes, partially because i'm too cheap to fly but moreso because i've just always enjoyed road trips. i thought it would make an interesting blog to write about some of my favorite things about the good ol' road trip - and i will spare you the maudlin "it's the open road and this country is so beautiful when you just drive it" stuff*

anyways, i's sure both of you have been on a road trip or two, and maybe you can relate to some of these...

1. your food standards go down. way down.

now i'm no health nut by any stretch of the imagination. i belive that in times past i have actually seriously believed that we should put colonel sanders on the $10 bill in place of alexander hamilton, but when you've been on a freeway for 150 miles, all of a sudden hostess cup cakes, hot dogs on rollers, and overcooked coffee that has been there for about 6 weeks seems way more reasonable than, well, pretty much any other time in your life.

2. the idea of "making good time"

i'm sure you've been on the road somewhere and at some point, usually at a lull in the conversation, somebody will ask what time it is and remark what great time you are making on the trip - even if you're taking the same amount of time to get somewhere that you always do. in the eternal optimism of the road trip, as long as you're not stuck in traffic all the way there or your car doesn't break down, you will always be right to say that you're making great time. case in point - ever since i was a kid, it has taken us 5 hours to get to my grandparents' house. it doesn't matter when we leave, or what route we take, it has always taken, and will always take 5 hours. i'm pretty sure if we left my parents' house, headed due west until we hit ohio, cut through pennsylvania and drove to my grandparents' house through canada, it would still take 5 hours. (once, my brother insisted he made the trip in 4 and a half hours; he didn't. it can't be done) as long as it looks like we'll get there in 5 - 5 1/2 hours, we're making great time - nobody will dispute that.

3. the name game

everybody knows some variant of this game - and for some reason, the only time you ever play it is when you are on the road somewhere, or if you're in college, you've probably played it as a drinking game (then again i played chutes and ladders as a drinking game in college, so take it with a grain of salt.) it's good to kill about a half hour on any road trip, or until someone names malcolm x and the next person to go sits there puzzled for 15 minutes before changing the subject to something they just saw on the road.

4. travel onset delerium

anytime i'm in a car for a long enough time (4 hours and above,) inevitably the cabin fever sets in and something completely illogical comes up. all of a sudden, 45 minutes later you're still laughing about the fact that someone at the last rest stop made an innocuous comment about splenda's market share in the artificial sweetener market. the thing is, whatever you were joking about for so long is never that funny, and when you try and retell the story to other people, even though you never realize it at the time, its always a had to be there story.

5. the travel mix

whether cd or ipod playlist or (if you're still driving an 89 sentra) mix tape, for a long trip, chances are, someone will end up making a travel mix. done well, this could be the only thing you listen to all the way there, but done poorly, you'll be skipping tracks on the first listen. so please, if you're making a mix, do it right. your passengers will thank you.

i'm sure you have others - i'd love to hear them. i'm off to pack :-)

* even though there is a nugget of truth to that sentiment - i just dont want to write a maudlin drippy blog

VH1 - has it changed, or have we?

recently, as in a couple of weeks ago, i was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and as it often does, it got to television; most specifically vh1, and we got to talking about their broadcasting now vs. the broadcasting back in oh, say 1991, when at any given time you'd never have to wait more than 36 minutes to see the video for "everything i do, i do for you" by brian adams; the mediocre love song from the mediocre robin hood movie starring kevin costner and christian slater.* specifically, we talked about how much mtv and vh1 we watched back then vs. now.

now, as 1991 has become 2008, both channels have abandoned music videos almost entirely and have moved on to train wreck reality programming, and if you're looking for intellectually stimulating television, you're not watching either of these networks. my friend, who is 26, and i, the wise 32 year old sage that i am, turn our brains off for "rock of love" more often than we do for "the real world: tanzania (or wherever they shoot that show now.)" compare that to 1991, when we both spent a lot more time with kennedy and dave kendall than whoever the hell was on vh1 at that time (i think they just had mtv retreads, but i'm not sure.)

now here's where the conversation gets interesting...my friend, and to protect her identity i won't tell you her name but i will tell you it is definitely not maria, is pretty insistent that she watches vh1 more than mtv now because while vh1 is at least watchable, mtv has crossed the line and has become unwatchable. to distill her opinion down to its essence, vh1 has changed for the better and mtv has changed for the worse (i know i probably should have just said that first...)

without getting into a debate on the merits of mtv vs. vh1, i think the reason that my friend (who is not named maria) and i watch vh1 more often than mtv is a reason bigger than just the fact that mtv stopped showing "the state" and "headbangers ball" and swapped them out for "parental control" and "true life." while both have changed, i believe that the root of the issue is that so have we. in a moment that made me feel just a little bit older than i did before, i realized that while neither of us are in mtv's target demographic anymore (and i haven't been for quite some time) we have slid right into vh1's wheelhouse. also, i have a hunch if we could talk to the programming directors for both networks, i'd bet you a case of pbr that they'd agree with me.

so i guess the question is, who's right? i admit that my writing is biased towards my opinion (because, well, it is my opinion,) but think about it; has vh1 changed for the better, or have we just become the target audience? talk amongst yourselves; i'm going to go get a good look at the back of my eyelids...


*bonus points for that song because for years after, teenagers awkwardly slow danced to it in high school gyms everywhere for about 5 years. it just might have been a more popular song to awkwardly slow dance to than "close my eyes forever," by ozzy and lita ford, but that's up for debate. maybe i'll do a blog about awkward slow dancing songs sometime in the future....also, i'm not sure when robin hood, prince of thieves actually came out, so please don't be a smarmy knowitall if that movie didn't come out until 92 or 93; i know i could have looked it up on imdb.com; i just didn't feel like it..

I'd be stunned - an intro

this is my first blog entry on blogger.com, and going back to the title, i'd be stunned if anybody read this whole thing (i'd be stunned if anyone got past the first sentence.)

i'm not totally sure what i'm going for with this blog; my half-assed vision is that i'll just write about my take on various things that catch my attention. it will be a little bit tv, a little bit sports, a little bit stuff i notice just by going out there and being in the world (as you've probably noticed, one thing you will not see much of is capital letters.)

on to tonight's rambling...

thursday night. the dvr ate our recording of grey's anatomy, the same way a piece of crap vcr will occasionally eat video tapes. i'll explain. i'm not sure what happened*, but in the middle of the recording, our dvr decided it would rather record a rerun of law and order on usa than grey's anatomy on abc.

i kicked around a couple of theories, and in the interest of giving both people who will read this only the best, i'll just tell you the best one i came up with.

the best thing i can come up with is that after a couple of months of recording everything dutifully for us and never infusing its own opinions, our dvr feels comfortable enough with us that it wants to start making some decisions about what we record. it's kind of like when you get a new job; for the first few months you do your best to just quietly go about your business, stay under the radar and not ruffle any feathers, until you feel reasonably comfortable in your surroundings and you start making your opinions known. i've always suspected that electronics (especially computers, which is what a dvr essentially is) are more human than we give them credit for, and perhaps this is a little evidence of that.

it's not totally unheard of; i've heard that tivos will recommend shows based on what shows you watch and record. i just find it kind of interesting that our dvr seems to be taking the extra step of actually replacing the stuff we want to record for what it thinks we should be watching. also, i'm not sure the dvr's choice of programming is much better than ours. while i admit freely that grey's anatomy is a glorified soap opera with acting only slightly better than porn, it's not like syndicated episodes of the later seasons or law and order are really any more than a lateral move.

looking at the whole experience, while i am glad our dvr is comfortable enough with us to chime in on what shows we watch, i just wish it wasn't so heavy handed about it. maybe next time there is a difference in opinion, the dvr can just flash a message when we hit record, asking us to consider other options. i don't mind my technology having opinions; i just don't think i'm ready to give it full veto power.


* actually, i know exactly what happened. it was just a weird glitch, but thinking of other options is more fun. besides, if i just said that it was a glitch from the beginning, this would be an awfully short blog.