The Living Rockumentary

Joe Millionaire? Is it like a bunch of gals compete for his affections cause they know he's rich? My boss at work is into a show called The Bachelor that seems like the same thing. Every network must have a version of one of these shows if they're that popular, I imagine. Well, Max, we still watch TV, about 3 nights each week after Hannah's gone to bed. Either a movie borrowed from the library or rented from Pleasant St. Video or we watch an episode of The Simpsons. Shelly bought me the DVDs of their first two seasons for my birthday a while back. We're done with the first set. Anyone interested in borrowing? But our cable-only TV set means we don't see any actual broadcast TV of any kind. And Hannah watches some stuff too, once in a while. Her DVDs are of the Baby Einstein and Sesame St. variety. Her reaction to them reinforces the idea that TV stifles the imagination. When we plop her in her chair and throw one on, she zones right out. Everything else in the household is tuned out, she doesn't make a peep until the credits have rolled. Anyway, it's not like we had planned to deprive our daughter of television out of some super-parenting decision. The reality is Shelly and I never ordered cable for the year we lived in Haverhill (a budgetary decision) and didn't bother to get it when we moved back to N'ampton. However, one day while hungering to watch The Red Sox in the spring of 2001, I got curious and plugged our cable modem cord into the back of the TV. Voila! All of a sudden, free TV (Well, Shelly's company pays for her cable modem). And it came in handy during Shelly's pregnancy, esp. the last two months where she was on bedrest due to her pregnancy-induced high blood pressure. But when Hannah came along, this kid had no respect for our viewing habits. We'd watch 55 minutes of Law & Order (Shelly's favorite show) and be anxious to hear the outcome of the courst case and Hannah would start screaming for food or a change or something. And that meant one of us attended to her and had to ask the other what the verdict was a few minutes later or we'd both ignore Hannah for just a few minutes and she'd just scream over the volume of the show and we'd miss it altogether or I'd frantically try to pop in a videotape to record the last few minutes. Ahh, just not worth it. Other than The Simpsons, there wasn't a show I watched with any regularity anyway. I don't believe I should be admired for giving up TV itself, esp. not when there was so little I ever cared to watch in the first place. But to give up FREE cable, well, that's another thing. Nice work, ant wes.