Technostalgia

Living as long as I have with an ear and an eye leveled to the ground and an overly developed sense of wistfulness and belief in the importance of my own existence, I have experienced a multitude of world changing moments and snapshots in history that when measured on my own scale of importance should at the very least receive a few mintings of ceremonial coins.  Although I will always remember coming out of the shower and seeing an airplane hit a building and I can quickly recollect sipping $1 beers while forgetting all I had learned that day as Air Canada hung his elbow on the rim, I now feel on the verge of witnessing an historical event that will dwarf anything I have ever experienced before.

As a child of the 80s, my interaction with the changing face of technology has been as intimate and long running as the relationship between Victor Newman and Nikki Reed.  The stark contrast between the hercules monochrome monitor that Pac-Man chomped his way across as I picked Cheerios off my 6 year old face and the shinny new machine that I now type on is greater than the darkest green and whitest white that I could crank up on that honking tube beast.  I could type volumes on the magic of making who I assumed was Larry Bird turn black and white and throw down in Double Dribble as an 8-bit experience that I hold dear but it would be all too banal.  Like all material things, it’s not the circuit boards within them that you hold to your face and whisper sweet C++ to that create that permanent RAM, it’s the human moments that accompany them that allow a pixilated Larry Legend to become soldered to your own history.  As February marches on, we will loose some of that ability as back woods mountain people across North America loose their ability to watch their 4th cousin slide his way out of child support payments on Maury.  Analog T.v.broadcasting is over.

Despite now plugging in my channels, the forced amputation of rabbit ears for those that literally ‘tune in,’ is a sad day for me.  I feel old enough and culturally aware enough to proclaim that our collective hands feel greased with mid-shower shampoo dropping slipperiness as what is left of the good old days circles around the drain and is sucked away.  In the realm of television alone, I have witnessed my parents first discard the radiation king with wood panels, take down the fifty foot antenna from the roof that occasionally picked up Buffalo stations and introduced me to the icons of personal injury law: Cellino & Barnes, erect and then unplug the dish large enough to allow Jodi Foster to make contact and finally, upgrade their more appropriately sized satellite receiver from poor ass regular definition to pore exposing HD.  And although I have the cynicism of an elderly gentleman, I am in no position to specifically recall even Happy Days; my expertise dates back to Family Ties.  These changes have been staggering,  yet until now, I’ve given them as much thought as how to spell Mallory Keaton.

The particular dose of nostalgia that I have been struggling to swallow since first viewing the horror of the public service commercials advertising the end of an the analog broadcasting era is served from a bottle with two names on it:  Raymond Babbitt & Toot.

Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on those Jack Donaghy types behind this digital decision but without analog, how could our vintage Watchman’s pick up Wapner as we stroll through casinos in white suits?  How can we placate our need to watch Trebek while hitting the highway with the top down?  The joy of tuning in my sister’s tiny  handheld T.v. and actually finding more than snow will never escape my memory .  But now, this jubilation will be impossible to recreate for any eventual offspring that don’t believe that iPods owe a lot more to Dustin Hoffman than one would think.  Despite being somewhere in every list of why technology sucks, the idea that new devices make what use to be a journey way too easy needs to be applied to the digital T.v. broadcasting age.  The process of moving your handheld set, or for that matter, the rabbit ears, to the perfect spot to grab a faint outline of a figure was simply magic.  When coupled with tin foil applied to the ends and a well placed teenager with braces, making the obnoxiously large noses of the Raccoons appear out of flickering black and white dots was a religious experience.  Although I currently don’t and probably will never own a handheld T.v. equipped with digital catching ability I can easily guarantee that simply changing a channel won’t convey the apparent legerdemain that Mr.Babbitt was amazed by.

In both saving foods / fixing snaggletooth, as well as in aiding reception, tin foil and braces can only do so much.  When acceptance sets in, the bitter Tim Horton’s coffee is usually another Canadian institution: the CBC.  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation  often wormed it’s way into the lives of us moose hunting igloo lovers through being the only channel strong enough to have reception in the wilderness we settled in and although I didn’t know it at the time, I was better for it.

Spending my summers surrounded by more trees and loons than school friends at the cottage greatly limited my options on the television.  Although the lake and forests garnered the black bear’s share of my attention during the day, I was often plumped  in front of the boob tube while my mom made breakfast.  Being force fed the CBC, I became a fan of a few cartoons that were consistently aired:  the homoerotic Rocket Robin Hood and the….ummm….kinda gay, The Mighty Hercules.

I will spare you a foggy recollection of plot lines and minor characters and focus on the strong memory that I have now associated between the technicolour Herc and his mythical sidekicks Newton the centaur & the mute satyr musician Toot and being so wonderfully isolated in the wilderness.  I can hear the high pitched Toot playing his pan flute for his brawny friend as easily as I can recall the sound of my mother’s voice calling us to the table to eat our Quaker Maple and Brown Sugar Porridge.  If I had the option of flipping through a satellite dish to find a cartoon with at the very least full colour and possibly with a little less topless men (it’s a wonder that I turned out straight), there is no way that years later I could close my eyes and be so quickly whisked back to the days of pajamas and naps.  Choice is not always a good thing.

For most North Americans the end of the analog T.v. reception age will usher in the deaths of antennas and the life of DTV receivers with Ben Stein-esque enthusiasm.  As the rabbit ears pile up in landfills like a garbage can at a Portuguese bbq, I implore you to take a moment to think of all the good analog T.v. has done, though if you turn the vacuum on, the memories might skip across the screen.