Remote Controlled

Hello, I’m Bruce and I’m a media junkie.

It probably started when I was a kid, sitting in front of the big black and white console television that was the focal point of our den, watching repeats of shows that were new to me and building a pop culture catalog in my head that provided a wealth of useless trivia and future party tricks. I was friends with Theodore Cleaver, Opie Taylor and Gilligan. I had a crush on Marcia Brady and the Bionic Woman. In the one vital question that faced American males in the last half of the twentieth century, my choice was unequivocal: Mary Ann, not Ginger.

I loved television. The Rockford Files, Starsky and Hutch, Cannon and McCloud. Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Happy Days and Emergency. In my backyard, I pretended to run in slow motion (which for me was called “normal”) and called myself Steve Austin, a man who had been barely alive; rebuilt and better than he was. Better…stronger…faster. I jumped off of picnic tables and over short shrubbery, making a strange clicking noise in my throat and imaging that I was leaping over cars and saving the world. I was the Six Million Dollar Boy.

It’s amazing what you can learn when you don’t have sports and social activities to waste your time. I learned about the Korean War from M.A.S.H., and the inner workings of a television newsroom from Mary Tyler Moore. I learned about life in the ghetto from Jimmy Walker in Good Times, and frontier life from Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie. I learned to appreciate sarcasm from the twisted mind of young Danny Partridge. The education broadcast from the flickering tube was as complete as that which I received in the classroom.

I could turn off the television too, finding escape in books and magazines. I read the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators growing up, imagining myself a young detective, solving murders and robberies that confounded the ordinary mind. As I grew older, I enjoyed the classics, particularly the gruff prose of Hemingway. I found a special place in my heart for Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved the book long before I saw the movie…and after I saw the movie, I loved them both even more.

I was haunted by A Death in the Family, by James Agee, and had no idea, as I lay reading in my bed that I would one day move to the Knoxville area where the novel takes place. It was that novel that made me fall in love with the written word, and the power that it can have in transporting you to other places and into other people’s feelings.

In high school I started working at the Public Library, which did wonders for my social life. No girl can resist a guy who works at the library.

I was put in charge of the Periodical Room, and soon became enthralled by the depth of articles in Time, Newsweek, Life and U.S. News and World Report magazines. I realized that there was a lot more to the news than the brief clips and sound bites allotted during the 30 minutes Walter Cronkite delivered each evening. Once again the written word broadened my mind and gave me a deeper appreciation for research and investigative journalism.

I read more than the news, quickly browsing through People magazine to see how the stars lived and Reader’s Digest for the jokes and Drama in Real Life stories. When no one was looking, I read articles in Glamour and Cosmopolitan that talked about what women wanted (and didn’t want) in a man. This was quite and education for my seventeen year old mind. I didn’t understand everything they wrote about, but since I was in a library, I could look it up (and I did).

At the suggestion of our head librarian, I read my first Stephen King novel, Salem’s Lot, finishing it in less than twenty-four hours and feeling a bit like a vampire myself by the time I was done. That night, as I read by the dim lamplight beside my bed, I literally could not put the book down. When I finally fell asleep, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I continued the story in my dreams. When I went back to work that afternoon, I scooped up another King novel, eventually working my way through all of his books. My favorite King novel was and still is The Stand, with scenes that are still fresh in my mind almost 30 years after I first read it.

With the job at the Library and my own disposable income, I was able to expand my media addiction to movies. My buddy Rodney and I would drive to the Louisville Showcase Cinema’s and often sat through two movies in a night; as if we were trying to catch up on all the movies we never saw when we were kids. I remember one magical night in late December 1982, when I saw a double feature of 48 Hours and Tootsie. Both are still among my all time favorite movies.

**Let me digress for a moment and speak of 1982. The year I graduated High School may be one of the greatest years for movies since 1939. Here’s just a partial list of movies released that amazing year:

E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, Ghandi, Tootsie, 48 hours, Poltergeist, John Carpenter’s The Thing, An Officer and a Gentleman, Porky’s, Star Trek ll: the Wrath of Khan, Sophie’s Choice, Blade Runner, Conan the Barbarian, Missing, Diner, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, My Favorite Year, Tron, and The World According to Garp.

There are more films on that list that I love than almost any other year in cinema history (and no, Porky’s is not one of them).

My love for movies, TV and books continued even after I married, and my wonderful wife indulged and continues to indulge me in my obsessive media interests as long as I occasionally take her to the mountains for some fresh air and walk in the woods. Our first year together, we experienced the joy of Top Gun on the big screen (actually seeing it three times before it was officially released…which I am sure is some kind of record), as well as Stand By Me, Aliens and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It was a very good year.

We cuddled on the couch, watching all eight hours of Lonesome Dove, crying together at the death of Gus McCrae and realizing even then that we would probably never see a better mini-series on television. We were right.

Like a lot of us, our dates were often sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn. We loved Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Cheers, and The Cosby Show. More alternative entertainment took some work, so like a drug dealer whispering through the fence at a schoolyard, I eventually got Connie hooked on Quantum Leap, Star Trek: the Next Generation and The X-Files. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that hard. She won’t admit it, but she’s a junkie like me.

My wife and kids get aggravated at me when I stay too long on a news channel or choose a History Channel documentary over a repeat episode of Full House, but I enjoy learning new things. The kids are junkies too, but their addiction is mainly television and the movie/book universe of the Harry Potter and Twilight series. Ashlyn is reading the Harry Potter books for a second time right now, and although I would prefer she broaden her mind with other literature, I’m simply glad that she is reading. Too many young people let others visualize the world for them, when only the written word puts their own mind to work making it real.

The Internet opened new doors for my pop culture fanaticism. Now I had a massive library of useless information at my fingertips, and if I could only find the right query word, the answers would be mine. Everything seemed to be on the World Wide Web; good, bad, disturbing…inspiring, educational, and conflicting. Time wastes at a rapid pace in the blue glow of the computer screen. One click leads to ten which leads to a thousand, and soon a few years have passed.

With the click of my mouse and a few pecks on the keyboard I have learned things I never knew, viewed things I might have never seen (including a few things I wish I had never looked at). It is an incredible tool; an encyclopedia of humanity that lives and breathes, growing with each passing moment as new information on our very existence is added. Like most things, it can be used for both good and evil, capable of helping or hurting; informing with an expanse of knowledge never available before. Like most things that we are addicted to (whether we know we are or not), the ability to turn it off is there, but often not the will.

As I travel, my laptop has become my outlet and my friend. In my hotel room late last night, I sat on my bed and read news stories and blogs, checked my email and clicked on Facebook to see what my “friends” were doing. Meanwhile, the television whispered to me from across the room and the book about depression era gangsters lay next to me, waiting its turn to take me back in time and eventually into slumber.

I am a media junkie. I just don’t know if it’s a problem, or who I was always meant to be.