I DON'T NEED TO FIGHT TO PROVE I'M RIGHT

I have a new tv. This is significant because I'm not a big tv person and the one I had before this one was 452 years old and acted like it. When I say "not a big tv person," what I mean is, I will spend years and years in front of a tv if I get reception, so I prefer not to have a tv and if I do have a tv, I prefer not to have reception. But I bought a new one because there was a bike race on television (Yes! American television! Bike racing on American television!) and I had to watch it. Support the sport, man. Actually, fuck the sport. Support hot men in tight shorts riding even hotter bikes.

This new tv has digital channels. I thought you had to pay for digital channels or else be in some kinda club like Sam's Club, but instead of having access to a warehouse filled with toilet paper rolls that come in a package so large that it will provide toilet paper for you and the rest of the galaxy for the next millenium, you get to watch the same channels as regular tv, but with channels with names like CW-D, and NBC-D. "D," of course, standing for "Dummy, it's the same channel, but the blues are bluer."

But no! It is not a scam--digital television is FREE (!) and it is very blue (!), and it has THE TUBE!!!!! Do you know what The Tube is? The Tube, my fine feathered friends, is ALL VIDEOS and the occassional commercial for god music ("Ultimate Songs of Faith," 22 songs of love, 22 songs of passion.)(Apparently, god loves us!)(But only the ones who pay $19.95 for "Ultimate Songs of Faith," so keep that in mind, you pagan fuckers out there).

Today The Tube showed The Who's "Baba O'Reily," which is not "Teenage Wasteland," as I was recently informed by Wikipedia, that bastion of encyclopedic knowledge. I first heard "Teenage Wasteland" when I was in high school, working at my first job, Water Slide Watcher at Prairie Mountain Water Slides and I can tell you, if you want to resign yourself to a life of never fitting in at a job where you have to sit still, the way to do it is to start your working career at a water slide. You will wonder why anyone ever works indoors.

I spent my days telling people, "No, you cannot go head first down the slide." "No, you cannot take a running jump into the slide." "No, you cannot stand up at the bottom and surf into the pool." When anyone did any of these things, against my explicit and toughly delivered orders, I would blow my whistle, and my colleagues guarding the pool at the bottom would adroitly grab the perp when s/he entered the pool and promptly kick them out. I would hold up the line and when the perp walked disheartened to the clothes bins on the deck and then looked back at the slide forlornly before walking out to the refreshment area, I would turn to the rest of the skinny-kneed, snot-dripping-from-tiny-noses kids, point my whistle at them menacingly, and say, "Don't let that happen to you." And sure enough, order was restored to the water slide park and to the world at large.

Until one day when I heard "Teenage Wasteland." It washed over me like a waterfall, that song. Hey, I said to myself, I do get my back into my living. And this water slide? It is out here in the fields. It was, I tell you, we seriously were out in the fields--it was Prairie Mountain, you know. Never underestimate the powers of nomenclature of bored stoner suburbanites who start water slide businesses. Anyway, I told myself, "I don't have to fight to prove I'm right."

So that night, after closing, you know what we did? We took running jumps into the slides, head first. We surfed to the bottom. We used the sides of the slides to gain more speed. Sometimes we jumped from the stairs (!) onto the slide WHILE OTHER PEOPLE WERE SLIDING, which was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. But did we care? NO! Know why? BECAUSE OUT THERE IN THE FIELDS, WE FOUGHT FOR OUR MEALS!

Actually, we dove head first into the slides every night after work. We also surfed, took running jumps, flew down backwards, and drank beer in the pool. But it was all way better with The Who screaming about traveling south cross land and not looking over shoulders. Way better.

This makes me wonder why it took me until high school to discover The Who. I blame the public education system, Reaganomics, and Aqua Net.

Other THE TUBE observations:

In the 80s there was excessive use of synthesizers and really big hair.

I can't possibly be more in love with Annie Lennox than I am after seeing the video for, "Would I Lie to You."

There are about 2,345 Billy Idol videos, all with his signature snarl, which then looked tough and scary, but now looks like the telling effects of excessive drug use, possible muscle degeneration, and a lack of green leafy vegetables in the diet. Though, it is very hot that he insists on storing his microphone in the crotch of his well-worn leather pants.

Prince, I love you. I will love you until the day I die.