Flashback Friday: It's not HBO...It's TV.

The other day I had to catch myself. For a quick second I forgot where the hell I came from. I Tivo'd a show but accidentally chose the non-HD channel and was mad because I had to watch the show with those black bars on the side of the screen and the picture quality sucked.

Who the hell is this negro?

Not too long ago, this was my tv:

[caption id="attachment_1694" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Couldn't tell me nothing"][/caption]

Actually this is isn't the exact TV. My TV didn't have two knobs, it only had one. It was supposed to have two knobs. I don't know what the hell happened to the other one, but we got by just fine with the one. For those who are too young to know exactly how that relic worked... The bottom knob controlled the main channels like NBC, ABC and CBS or channels 4, 7 and 5 here in DC. When we wanted to switch to Arsenio late at night, he came on Paramount's channel 20, so we turned the bottom knob to U (I guess that stood for upper channels, but who knows) and then we took the knob off the bottom and put it on the top. Since we had nothing to tell us what channel we were on, we just turned it real slow like we were breaking into a safe until we saw Arsenio.

It wasn't that simple though. Back then you didn't just turn the channel and watch TV. Every person with a television was a qualified technician. You see, unlike cable TV, you couldn't just turn the channel and have the station come in crystal clear. You had to earn that shit. Maybe you fiddled with the knob, or you moved the antenna.


Move the antenna to the left. Not that far. Okay, right there. Aw damn it. Try putting it up against the wall. Okay, let it go. It's kind of clear. Put your hand back on it. Keep it just like that.

It was an act of God if you got a channel clear on the first try, especially those top channels. It wasn't just grainy. Sometimes the screen would keep scrolling down like the wheel on The Price Is Right. Other times you just gave up and listened to the show as if it were a radio program. If you really, and I mean REALLY, wanted to see something then you'd just stand there and touch the antenna. For whatever scientific reason, your body was one hell of a signal amplifier. You were WAY better than that piece of aluminum foil that people put on top of the antenna.

All of this sounds complicated, but it was so standard that people just adapted to it. You knew not to get close to people's TVs, because if you bumped into it and distorted the signal, there would be hell to pay. You also learned to memorize the entire TV lineup so you wouldn't have to get up to change channels and recalibrate everything. Either that or you called someone on the phone who had a TV guide.

The saddest thing for me, however, was playing Nintendo and Atari on it. (Remember you had to turn it to channel 3 to get to the game?) For the longest time I didn't know that video games were in color. I just assumed Mario and Luigi had the same colors. I remember not being able to play my Nintendo right away because we didn't have an adapter to hook it up to those two screws in the back of the TV. Black and white TVs are the reason I memorized the Ninja Turtles' weapons. I might as well have been colorblind because I couldn't figure out which bandana was what color.

[caption id="attachment_1696" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The flux capacitor of video games. The only thing that makes gaming possible"][/caption]

Fast forward to now and I think I earned the right to be pissed at taping the wrong program, but in reality the part of the screen without the black bars is still three times bigger than my old TV.