Cable Paralysis

After Sky Cable (or whatever cable company) did an audit of the entire condo block and found out "glitches" in subscription (read: a helluva lot of illegal connections in our building), they decided to cut everyone's lines...and reconnect each and every one after "investigations" and "confirmations". As our subscription's just about done, with another month's worth forthcoming, me being broke, and my roommates on some extended hiatus from the house, I realized I wouldn't need another renewed cable TV subscription--considering I myself don't watch much TV; and I found it distasteful that I'm paying so much on cable subscriptions while the others aren't, yet still enjoys the same (or hell, more of!) channels that I paid for. So, I just ignored the notice for reconnection/renewal, spliced an old antenna wire, plugged one end of it into the back of the TV, thrusted an old fork at the other end of the wire, and hung the dratted thing on top of the blinds' tension rod. Voila, a makeshift TV antenna that receives local channels...and clear, too!

With this cable paralysis, it dawned on me: what about the Special Features, Movies of the Night, Feature Presentations, etc. etc. etc. of HBO, Cinemax, Starworld and AXN? Well, we have a trusty DVD player (THREE players, to be exact...including my notebook). That should quench our thirst for a motion picture. And with Makati Cinema Square being barely 20 minutes away, and 8-in-1 DVDs costing under a hundred, I'd say fuck the HBO specials and pop in a new, DVD- (or cinema-, whatever) copy disc, and we're in business.

Bless these movie pirates for coming up with these 8-in-1's (which come in boxes and boxes of 'em!), I wouldn't have to shell out lotsa bucks just to watch a new movie, nor would I need to pay lotsa moolah via Pay-Per-View for some classics of other box office hits that I missed in the big screen. (Oh, c'mon. Stop giving me that self-righteous, judgmental stare as if you yourself haven't purchased a contraband DVD!)

Got the Charlie's Angels collection. Loved the remake of the classic, but found the Matrix-y treatment rather over the top. Also bought the Miss Congeniality anthology. Snorted like Sandra in both parts. Played the Mission Impossible series. Tell me again, why I fell asleep watching the movie? Ooohhh...Tom Cruise. And, there was the Harry Potter collection: from the Sorcerer's Stone down to the Goblet of Fire. JK Rowling had me hooked and in anticipation of the next installment. Also watched the non-anthologies, i.e. the "solo" movies, mostly new, others ancient. And here's a "mini-review":

The Sound of Music. Oh yeah. THAT The Sound of Music (wait...I don't think there was ever a remake). I just figured, I've watched it one million years ago, it's time to kill some more hours doing nothing in the condo, with cable paralysis. Funny, Floyd and Jun-jun (er, Ronald) have NEVER EVER watched the film, and thus made me and Arvin feel ancient. Whatever. So-do-la-fa-mi-do-reeeee.....

The Lake House. WTF? Inconsistencies, sappiness, loopholes, predictability. And did I mention implausible? Geesh. Talk about The Twilight Zone (which I'm still searching to date).

Closer. WTF x2. I felt like I watched Pride and Prejudice AGAIN...which is SO unlikely. Sorry, Maits, but I just don't dig stories about women preparing themselves to be wives. I guess I've broken bread with way too many feminists.

Mga Pusang Gala. More than anything, it's the quotable quotes: "Even a goldfish has a heart...blahblahblah...because a body without a heart is just a carcasssssss". Yeah. Bring it on. So reminiscent of Temptation Island, with killer quotes like: "Rub-a-dub-dub, two bitches in a tub" or "That's a lot of shit (pronounced SHEEEET)". Note to self: gotta stock up on more of those kitschy movies...

Yours, Mine, Ours. Cheaper By the Dozen 1 and 2. Oh god. I failed to check who the script writer was for each movie. Wait a minute. Maybe it's one and the same. Go figure.

And as the single title CDs came pouring in, I found myself lurking by my suki DVD stall and looking at boxed sets of seasons-by-seasons of TV series. Could I handle the marathon? Would I have the will power to cut a season/series four-, five episodes short of the ending when sheer exhaustion would creep in? Should I choose X over Y or over Z? Decisions, decisions...

I ended up with my pioneer TV series: WB's Smallville. For 500 bucks, I got all five seasons...in five DVD-9 discs. I remember watching the first episode of Smallville on a legit dvd of Season 1 while I was staying with my friend Willard in Vegas, by Sahara and Nellis. I started watching, and before I knew it, I was already on episode five. I was hooked. But sadly, 'twas time for me to get going back home, so I never got to watching it. So, with this boxed set, I was able to catch up and make up. And boy, did it get me, Floyd, Ron, and Daniel hooked. Thanks to Smallville, we all got insomniac and would blabber about characters and storylines for hours. Superpowers? Damn. I'd patiently lay on cornfields waiting for falling asteroids if I could get just one of 'em powers. But seriously, Lana Lang's just overstaying. I think the network should just axe her. Now that hottie Lois is in the picture, I say get her and Clark doing some REAL HOT action (OK, OK, sorry, I got carried away). With Zod finally getting released and Clark being banished into the Phantom Zone as the season finale of Season 5, I find myself these last couple of days downloading episodes one to five of Season 6. Thank God for DivX, a nifty filesharing forum, and high-speed cable.

After getting Kryptonized with Smallville, we called for a two-, three-day marathon hiatus. And then me and the girls from the office footloosed to my suki DVD stall again. Maits got Supernatural, Sex and the City (ALL SIX seasons) and Bones, Ella got Friends (ALL TEN seasons) and I think The OC, Grace got some Koreanovela boxed set, and I ended up with Dora the Explorer pack (well, that one's for Jasmine!) and 24.

The same night, Jack Bauer was introduced to us in my condo and the first 4 of the 24 hours unfolded so fast our dirty dishes already crusted in the sink as we sat watching. 24's all four seasons (that's 96 hours or episodes!) came in five discs and cost me 450 bucks. Night after night, Jack Bauer and the whole of CTU would be with us in our living room. I realized at some point that it was bad for my health--not just because I couldn't seem to press Stop/Eject on the remote because I'd get too giddy to get on to the next episode despite the ungodly hour of 2 or 3 in the morning, but because I find myself vicariously watching how the story unfolds. And I'd feel very much involved in the story--the deceptions, the treachery, the greed, the pure evil. I'd catch myself cussing and yelling at a character, or worse, hyperventilating and getting REALLY angry at a character. How's that for empathetic?! We followed Jack from an abduction, to a virus, to an assassination plot, to a sacrificial plane crash, to a terrorist bombing, to a nuclear bomb, and to a consequential arrest-and-shipment to China. And now, yes, I am awaiting its season premiere on January. In the mean time, I'm contenting myself with watching the previews for Season 5. So now, I'm holding my breath...as I use the CTU telephone ring as my mobile phone's message alert tone.

In an interim from one boxed set series to another, I came across the trailer of a now defunct, "one-hit wonder" pilot episode of Aquaman from the WB/CW network merger. I struggled to download the DivX rip of the one and only episode via my trusty Limewire Pro, and managed to complete the whole AVI file after nights on end of downloading and/or staying on queue to get the download ticket running. I wondered...why did the network axe the life and the subsequent episodes of Aquaman (who, incidentally, plays The Green Arrow on Season 6 of Smallville, and is a love interest of Lois Lane. Two hot people on to each other. Yum) to make way for Veronica Mars? Like, duh?

While going through the DVD marathon break, Alet swapped dvds with me--my Smallville for her 2 seasons of Desperate Housewives. Maits, likewise, loaned me her Supernatural DVD. So I guess that should break the hiatus.

Floyd and Arvin started with their Desperate Housewives marathon. But since DH is actually considered a rerun to me (I've watched some episodes back in the US already, then watched both seasons on my computer via DivX downloads courtesy of Yayie-gurl), I started watching Charmed. I got all eight seasons for just about 600 bucks. And while I'm at it, I'm also downloading seasons 3 episodes of DH, which have already started showing in the US. So far, I've downloaded and watched episodes 1 to 4. I've also finished downloading all episodes of season 3 of the 4400, which we've already started watching, too. And as soon as I'm done with Charmed and 4400, I'm heading back to Makati Cinema Square to get The Dead Zone, CSI: NY/Miami, House, and Grey's Anatomy. Unless someone's already got 'em and would loan 'em to me for a couple of days.

God. What the hell am I going to do with all these boxed sets that I've watched already? Hmmm....ebay USA? Yeah, right...and see me go to prison for infringement of the copyright laws. Yaiks. So I guess it'll be my own personal mini-library then. Reruns ain't too bad, are they?

Now if you'd excuse me, I'm queueing downloads of The Last Temptation of Christ, and Como Agua Para Chocolate...and Phoebe's starting to show skin in Charmed. So, THE END.