Potpourri

I don't tend to lie a lot. Actually, that's a lie; I lie about all sorts of things. But I don't tend to lie about dates. Also a lie; I wish the post office would allow me to postdate my own letters so people would think they'd been lost in the mail. Actually, I am a huge liar. Which is why I'm writing this sometime after 1:00 on Saturday, but I have told Blogger to say it is Friday. I lie.

I have entitled this "Potpourri" because that's what one is supposed to title things which have no topic. So I guess I could have called this entire blog, "Potpourri," although that's probably been taken. I could also have called this posting, "Andy Rooney Can Suck It!" but that seemed rude. So prepare to be dazzled by my ability to complain. Well, perhaps not dazzled.

Does anyone besides me remember a time when it was possible to skip things at the beginnings of rented movies? Like the FBI warning; press the FF button and watch ol' J. Edgar cry. Or previews. FF - gone! There were no menus of options to select. There were no special features to investigate. There were no little games to play with your remote. Put in tape, press FF, press Play, watch movie. If you wanted to get funky, you could press FF twice to see if it would make it faster forward. It usually didn't.

Don't get me wrong; I love DVDs. I like menu options. I love special features. I'm tepid about little remote games, but far be it for me to complain about little things I don't have to endure if I don't want to. What I don't like is this increasing push by DVD companies to create menu sequences that go on for half an hour before they let me press anything, and heaven forbid I try to skip them. It started out with FBI warnings that I couldn't just press MENU and skip, so I had to use the chapter skipper to skip them. Then they disallowed that, so I had to FF through them. Then they disallowed that as well, making me contemplate, in two languages and for multiple agencies, the terror of copyright infringement. I know why this is (MPAA, the FBI warning is not what is keeping people from stealing your products, hint, hint). But then they decided that, not only shall I be unable to skip warnings, I shall also now be subjected to previews... which I cannot skip. Fie to all of them! If I wanted to be able to put in a movie, go to the theater, watch another movie, return, and find the menu sequence (which has become a form of entertainment all its own, with bells, whistles, theme music, thumbprint activation, and bands to beat the band) just wrapping up, I would not rent (or purchase) the DVD in the first place. I would have watched the movie on TV and done my business during commercial breaks. I foresee a time when DVDs have these too. Just you wait.

Lastly, why is it that sitcoms always have a normal-looking man married to a supermodel wife who has obviously never had children. And by normal-looking, I mean schlub. This is not realistic. I demand beautiful people in all roles in sitcoms.

Potpourri.