I 100 percent for sure believe that," Zimmer said. Also, MTV can't keep repeating "Top Model" marathons forever."They’ll make it, they won’t cancel any games. It was just because of the television writer's strike. Where there is rationalization there is hope, and we lately have begun to rationalize. I can name seven past winners of "America's Next Top Model." Can you imagine how creepy that feels? Picture having your brain surgically removed and replaced with three pounds of wet sand. She is as much a victim as I am, both of us sitting haunted and hollow-eyed on the couch, powerless to turn off the tube or even to switch over to "live" TV. The time has long passed when I could pretend I was humoring my wife, who (naturally) is to blame for putting this monkey on my back. My DVR faithfully captures every episode. An entire cycle of the show will run from, say, 6 a.m. Ever since I got the recorder, MTV has been padding its nonprime air time with "Top Model" rerun marathons. Don't you think I know that? In a rational universe, one without DVRs, a person would watch no more than five minutes of this show, just long enough to register the thought: So, "Zoolander" was not parody at all but a straight documentary of the fashion-modeling world?īut here is the horror. The last girl standing wins a modeling contract. These mostly involve walking ("fiercely"), having your picture taken ("fiercely"), and kissing Tyra's backside, though some challenges are trickier: walking in high heels that are a size too small reading. It is standard reality-TV fare, a hybrid of "The Real World" and "American Idol." Ex-supermodel Tyra Banks gathers young wannabe fashion models and makes them live together in a big apartment (cat fights!) while they compete at various tasks. As a gadget that would slow the destruction of my brain cells, my DVR ran up against "America's Next Top Model."Ī casual observer would see no insidious menace in this program. Twice.Īs an intellectual proposition, the Internet devolved into YouTube.
Viking games tivo full#
Thus, technology actually would make me smarter - for real this time, not like when the Internet was going to make us all smarter by bringing libraries full of knowledge to our fingertips. Since the DVR made it possible to watch only programs I liked, when I liked, and since I could fast-forward through commercials, I would spend fewer hours in front of the idiot box.
Viking games tivo tv#
And I would capture the handful of TV shows I don't like to miss. When I got a DVR in February, I imagined, in my innocence, that I would set it to grab great old films from Turner Classic Movies at 2 a.m., then watch them at my leisure. Not you? You have too much taste? Too much self-discipline? Yeah. But here is what you will not do: You will not spend more time with Bogart and Bacall, or Alfred Hitchcock, or even Arnold Schwarzenegger, and less time with "Deal or No Deal." As if guided by its own demonic intelligence, your DVR will seek out the lowest common denominator in the vast, fetid swamp of "reality" television. True, your personal destruction might take a different form. Like heroin is a species within the genus "opiate." And like opiates, these infernal machines will rot your soul.īefore you quite understand what's happening, you will find yourself on a weekend watching seven straight hours of "America's Next Top Model." This TiVo thing you keep hearing about? TiVo is just one brand name among a larger category of devices called digital video recorders, or DVRs. As God is my witness, I thought I would record movies.