Rant #2,097: Nowhere To Run

Yes, the apocalyptic nor'easter we are supposed to have is supposedly coming.

I don't even have to look out the window to know this; all I have to do is turn on my TV.

Which is what I did, as I do every morning, to hear the news.

I turned on the TV in our living room, and today, I got nothing.

No picture, so sound, no nothing.

The message on the screen says "total signal loss," so we don't have TV on our living room TV, which is hooked up to the Dish Network satellite service.

OK, so I go on my trusty cellphone, and go into Fios Mobile, because we use Fios through the rest of the house (don't ask).

I get on the menu, click on our local Channel 2, and I get a message that I am not hooked up to the home router, and I cannot watch the channel without being hooked up.

So I try to hook myself up, and do, but then I get a message that I am still not "home," and thus, I cannot watch this particular channel on the phone.

Hmmm ... never had such a problem before, perhaps something is going on with Fios TV too?

I can't check, because my wife and son are sleeping and I don't want to disturb them, so I am just going to have to learn to live without TV, at least for one morning.

You don't know how you miss TV until you don't have it, and today, I don't have it, so I miss it greatly.

I am a real Baby Boomer, a child of the television age, and when I don't have my TV, I am not lost, but I feel that my best friend has left the building, so to speak.

I have always loved TV. My mother talks about when I was a baby in the crib, when she would have the TV on, I would get up and jump around, in particular when she had "American Bandstand" on.

I watched the aftermath of the JFK assassination on TV, and remember seeing Lee Harvey Oswald get shot, right on live TV.

I watched the first Apollo moon landing on TV, and when Neil Armstrong jumped on the moon surface, and said, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I was there.

I have seen all my favorite sports teams win their championships on TV, and the Knicks' first championship, won the night before my bar mitzvah, gave me the fortitude and strength to get to my bar mitzvah the next morning, in spite of the fact that I had just weathered a 105 degree temperature and was still sick as a dog.

I watched the Olympic massacre, when a team of Israelis were murdered by terrorists, unfold before my eyes.

And I watched what was going on as a result of 9-11, when terrorists tried to take away our standard way of life, but somehow, the human spirit prevailed.

All that being said, I miss not watching TV in the morning this morning.

I am not an addict, but I am a fan of something that one pundit once called "the vast wasteland."

Others call it "the boob tube," but I never bought into these negative monickers for my favorite electronic device.

To me, it is all good, and I enjoy TV and what it brings to your home.

I am sure that this is a temporary malady, and we will have our TV coming to us soon.

But by that time, I will be on the road, driving to my work for another exciting day at the salt mine (a term that I got off of the TV classic "Leave It To Beaver," of course).

So, if that is the way it is today, I will just have to learn to live with it.

TV or not TV, that is today's question, and the answer, at least right now, is "not."

My newspaper is being delivered soon. I guess I can dive into that ... but as I listen in the distance of this room where I am typing this Rant, the living room TV has just gone on!

Eureka!