Whatever happened to three thumbs down?

I used to love one facet of my old directv system: you could rate what you watched. With the old remote, you had the ability to press the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons to let shows know exactly how you felt about them. I was very happy with this set-up.

I used to give every show three thumbs down, with extremely rare exceptions. It was so satisfying to stab that thumbs-down button for shows about Jeebus or fat people or "reality stars". It felt wonderful -- and productive.

But on the new directv remotes, the rating buttons have disappeared. I wonder if it's because of people like me. I actually used this feedback mechanism to tell the TV powers-that-be that I hated just about everything they offered. TV is a wasteland -- and it doesn't have to be. That's the sad thing.

Maybe we thumbs-downers collapsed the system. After all, companies were interested in seeing how their shows were faring with viewers. Maybe they didn't like the information this rating system sent their way. I suspect I wasn't alone in my mission to alert them to the horrid quality of their shows. So what did they do in response to all those thumbs-down? They didn't fix the shows. That would have been too sensible. No, they just canceled the ability to rate the shows. Problem gone, sorta.

Way to go, TV producers. And the cascade of TV poop marches on. This is quite a country we've got here.

So much for baseball?

Horrors! The satellite box for my TV system died today, or at least it seemed to.

The instant I realized this, I got tunnel vision. The room lengthened and odd angles appeared, as if reality was being stretched and distorted. Was it Einstein's cosmological constant in action? Had I accidentally taken some acid? And then in the distance, I saw it -- the baseball season being sucked far, far away by a . . . sea of static. No TV? No baseball? Sob.

So I did what any red-blooded American man would do: I called my sister. Because of the heart-stopping urgency of the situation, she came right over and jiggled things and (ta da) the totally dead piece of hardware roared back to life! It's a miracle! Somebody go wake Jeebus up and tell him!

Anyway, phew. It's like when the electricity goes out: sheer hell. But the season is saved!

Thinking about Superman

Remember the old Superman TV show with George Reeves? Well, of course you don't because none of you were born then. Well, I remember it.

And today I was thinking about the show's opening theme, where a booming voice said Superman stood for "truth, justice and the American way." Sounded great. Still does, actually.

But we've lost all three of those things in the intervening years. No one speaks truth anymore; truth is anti-profit. And justice only means that rich people don't face legal scrutiny while every hammer is dropped on the little guy. And as for the "American way" -- it's seen better days. We torture people, imprison anyone without charges, and conduct illicit wars. We invade the wrong country and don't even care. There is no American way anymore unless it's the way of greed, ignorance and cruelty. Actually, I guess it is.

Question for longtime baseball fans

How did you watch baseball before TiVo came along? I mean, how could you? Baseball is wall-to-wall commercials. It's literally infested with them.

Every pitching change brings a commercial. And if they change pitchers after every single batter: too bad. You get commercials after every change. And not short ones, either.

While the game is on, the announcers inject commercials right into their commentary -- as if it's an old Burns & Allen show, fer god's sake. Even the damn graphics have commercials built into them. And I won't even mention the physical stadium, which is literally tattooed with product names.

Strangest of all is that the commercials themselves come with commercials. I'm always dumbfounded when they got to break, saying "This pitching change brought to you by Toyota." What exactly is the benefit here that I should be thankful Toyota is providing for me? Since the commercial is the only thing "brought to" me during the pitching change, and it's a Taco Bell commercial, I'm not sure what it means to say "this pitching change brought to you by Toyota." It's insane. There are layers upon layers of commercials. Aaaaaargh!

The only way I can watch a game is with one finger hovering over the fast-forward button. And I would never watch a game in real-time. Never.

So, tell me. How did you survive this commercial onslaught in the days before TiVo? I only came to baseball full-time about five years ago. In other words, TiVo was always available to me as a fan. But you didn't have that. So tell me: how the hell did you survive baseball without TiVo?

Gimme some visuals

Speaking of the vast wasteland that is TV, I've been thinking about something. Since there's nothing on, I wish they would add a hundred stations that showed atmospheric scenes -- no talk, no music, just real-life scenes.

One channel could show a snowy country street in late afternoon. On another channel you'd find a drizzly rain falling on a city street at night, neon colors smearing the wet street surfaces. There should be streams of these channels to choose from. They'd be like attractive screensavers but much more detailed because they would be actual recordings of reality. HD, of course.

Flip the channel and you see a waterfall and hear the sound as it crashes to the water below. Flip again and there's an underwater cam of tropical fish at a reef. Or a night view of a froggy pond, complete with those wonderful, nighttime pond sounds. The possibilities are endless.

Wouldn't this make sense? I mean, they're not showing us anything we want to see. We have zip interest in 99% of what's on TV, and there are no signs that the situation will ever improve. So why not show us some interesting scenery? They could offer the stations for a fee so they wouldn't have to burden us with commercials. For instance, fifty or so visual channels could be offered within a certain tier of satellite or cable pricing.  Me, I'd watch the snowy and rainy scenes. It would be like getting a new window with a great view.

I want this. Do you hear me, TV people? Gimme some visuals. And god forbid you don't already understand this: do not add cheesy music!