Pluggers by Rick McKee for August 27, 2023

For me, it depends on how EARLY I woke up.

I only watch movies that I really, really wanna watch. So make sure I don’t fall asleep.

Only movie I watch clear though without sleeping is “Sons of the Desert”

So Strange …. One Turns On a TV … Then falls asleep ;-)

Was that the Bugs Bunny cartoon????

Yeah, and nothing worse than falling asleep during one movie and waking up during an other one. Didn’t know John Wayne and Clint Eastwood were ever in the same movie.

No worries today. Movies repeat around the clock and every other week on television channels and with streaming one can replay a movie at will. When the kids were little, and VHS tapes were in, they loved rewatching movies. Over and over and over again and I got used to doing something at the same time — homework, office work, knitting, dishes, etc. I would look up and watch periodically and every time I would notice something “new.” After about 50 viewings, I would finally have “seen” the entire movie.

It happens. I wasn’t feeling well all last week and kept on falling asleep in front of the TV.

Tells you a lot about the quality of today’s movies….

Netflix has definitely become my go to ‘get bored enough to fall asleep soon’ tactic. Well that and audio books.

I sometimes turn on a movie that makes me fall asleep when I can’t sleep.

So much for “limiting screen time before bed.”

I’m getting so old, it takes me two nights to watch a Godzilla movie.

Land of the Lost..Will Ferrell.

My son fell asleep a few times while watching movies on a visit a couple of weeks ago. He apologised saying with disappointment that he was ‘just like dad’. I assured him he was nothing like his (abusive) dad. He was exhausted.

I did that often enough before I got old.

My parents got their first TV in 1951 and sat down to watch it. Suddenly Mum said, “Wake up! The set is broken!” They’d both fallen asleep and slept through the late news and the National Anthem. There was nothing on the set but raster.

Until Covid we went to the movies every Saturday (except if snowing or one of us was too sick to go) even if traveling, as the common thread which drew us together was a shared love of movies – old and new. (On paper we do not go together, but we do.) Our first date was a Friday night Midnight movie after our retail jobs at the local art cinema. The most movies we have seen in a week is something like a 8 of them when a local theater had a Robert Altman festival one week.

Since Covid we kept up with movies watching a movie every Saturday night in the kitchen. For his birthday last year he bought a smallish “big TV” to use for this. Our living room is decorated (by him) in Colonial Revival (it “looks colonial”) and our prior TV had to be hidden in an appropriate looking cabinet. But that is all gone with the wind now. We have a large parson’s work table over another piece of furniture in our living room for the darn TV to sit on.

So now we have this TV on for our “Saturday date night TV substitute” and for our “Friday night midnight movie TV substitute” (“Rocky Horror Picture Show” first week and “Alice’s Restaurant” for night after Thanksgiving) I hate the TV. It hurts my eyes to watch – so I have to wear glare blocking glasses to watch. He has trouble hearing and it is worse with this TV – so I have to put the ear plugs I use at the gun range (or when firing our reenactment unit’s repro cannon) while we watch TV. He does not make me join him for “Sunday afternoon 1960s/70s James Bond and related movies” showing.

Sorry to run on – but I have to ask – has anyone see “Stereo TV”?

In the 1960s or very early 1970s two local NYC non-network TV stations got together with Bob and Ray to do this. One needed 2 TVs about the same size in the same room, set up at fixed distance next to each other. One tuned the right one to a specified channel and the other one to the other channel.

A ball would be thrown on one channel and then caught on the other one and so on. It was rather interesting and fun to watch. It certainly was something as I remember it all these decades later.

It was done by the comedy duo of Bob and Ray. (Bob is the father of comedian Chris Elliot.)