LONGVIEW, Texas — I was sitting in a hotel room in Houston the other night, no duties awaiting me until the morning, too full from a late lunch to dine, too tired to do any serious reading or writing.
Fact is, driving to Houston from Longview wears me out in a way that traveling to Austin doesn't. Maybe it's the fact that once you get close to Houston, the traffic gets crazy, people weaving in and out as if they were being chased by law enforcement. Sometimes they are, so you have to keep a lookout for flashing lights.
Then suddenly, a four-lane highway on which everyone is cruising at a sedate 75 mph will slow down to John Deere tractor speed, for no apparent reason. Eventually, someone will wake up and the snarl will untangle.
Driving in Houston gives me a headache, even though I usually know how to get from one point to another — unlike Dallas, where I stay lost nearly all the time.
Anyway, I was recovering from the drive with a glass of red wine and a nutrition bar from the gift shop downstairs (dinner of champions), flipping channels in vain hopes a Red Sox game might be televised. It is well-nigh September, the month in which my team either fades or fights for glory and a playoff spot. A Sox fade used to be a foregone conclusion, but after two World Series championships in the past five years I can no longer wallow in the role of a pitiable loser. Now my team is expected to win.
But, no surprise, I can't find a Sox game on the tube tonight. Instead, what I find is ... dreck. The Bruce Springsteen song, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" kept looping through my skull. Talking heads shout at each other. Animated cartoons with characters chatter about sexual acts, using language that makes me — no prude — cringe. Secret cameras are set up to catch cheating spouses or partners. Poor miscreants are taped getting arrested for being drunk and stupid.
Invariably, they are not wearing a shirt. If I were engaged in activity that was likely to get me arrested and videotaped — with the result broadcast on cable television — I would plan to wear a shirt. No sense scaring small children, not that they ought to be watching this garbage anyway.
Then there are infomercials for useless gadgets that likely don't work for as long as it takes to watch an entire show. But wait, there's more!
If American civilization ultimately is judged by an alien force that only has access to footage from cable television shows for its cultural anthropology, the other-worldly people would conclude we were:
— A society obsessed with drunk criminals who sometimes trade spouses for a few weeks;
— Enjoyed voting people off islands for remote reasons;
— Fond of buying bizarre gadgets such as a robotic vacuum cleaner that doubles as a food processor; and
— Enamored of cartoon characters who could put a sailor to shame when it comes to crudity. And that's not even considering the commercials.
Thank goodness for sports, PBS and a few news shows, though besides newspapers and their Web sites, I get my news from NPR. I rarely watch television, save for the above. Sometimes a week or two goes by without me once turning on the television.
If the cable company charged by the hour, my bill likely would be about half what it is now.
I realize there is a wide selection of interesting programs on television. Finding them when one rarely watches is like finding that proverbial pony at the bottom of the dung heap. It is just more trouble than I'm willing to go to, so the times I actually channel-surf are largely fruitless and frustrating.
That night in Houston, I went back to the book I was reading, a dual biography of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Soon I was transported back to the Civil War and the lives of these two outsized personalities. That's my way of escaping the world.
Sure wouldn't have minded catching a Red Sox game on the tube with the sound off at the same time, though.
Gary Borders is publisher of the Longview News-Journal. E-mail: gborders(at)longview-news.com.
