Life goes on without 'Life Goes On'

Much has been made of Comcast's recent annexation of free cable, taking away half the cable channels available to Yale students. Suddenly, everyone has found it difficult to live without ESPN, The Game Show Network, Animal Planet, and scrambled PlayboyTV (with perfectly clear audio after 9 p.m., thank the Lord).

Big deal. Some students can remember the death-defying days when one had to hang out of a pre-renovated Bingham Hall window with an antenna aerial just to get a halfway decent picture on Channel 30. (We would have gone to any length to watch Friends.) That was back in the good old days when the only television channel one could pick up was Channel 8, and the only radio station that came in was KC101.

Yale students must learn to look on the bright side of things. We still live in a verdant pasture of clearly transmitted, high-quality programming. The cable channels in the 1-39 range offer plenty of programs, clearly enough to replace Comedy Central's reruns of the semi-hit sitcom Anything But Love.

Tune in to Univision on Channel 18 and catch everyone's favorite Spanish-language game show, Super Bla Blazo, featuring puppet-emcee Pepe. Pepe's fondness for his celebrity female contestants rivals that of former Family Feud host Richard Dawson, especially when the director cuts to the chest-level "Pepe-cam."

And of course, there's news, and lots of it. The Yale cable viewer has a myriad of news channels from which to gain an iota of knowledge about what is actually going on in the outside world. (Impeachment? Really?) One can always rely on the "hard-hitting" news of MSNBC, the "up-to-the-second, ultra-reliable" CNN, or the "hard-core, we-kick-ass, all-the-other-news-networks-suck" Fox News Channel.

Most exciting of all, however, will be the day when you can sit underwear-clad on your couch, eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and taunting Vincent Scully, JE '40, GRD '49, as he delivers a closed circuit lecture on Myron's "Discobolos." Is there a better way to learn about the Venus of Willendorf than in your BVDs? And, if the University has the foresight, think of shopping period on television! You could be saved the embarrassment of ducking out of class 10 minutes into the lecture simply because the syllabus required more than two books. Instead, you could just change the channel. Suddenly, professors would have to devote a whole new level of showmanship to their courses by including special effects, tidy one-liner-filled scripts, and the occasional bikini-clad lifeguard or angst-ridden teenager, all in order to attract students' attention. It gets hard when Felicity is only a click away from your detailed lecture about the economics of 16th century Belgian wheat production.

There are so many possibilities. And when it comes down to it, how much television does the average Yale student watch anyway? A lack of cable TV significantly decreases a person's desire to watch MotoCross on the Nashville Network, but when you've got Classic Sports and the treasures of Diamonique on QVC, the world ain't that bad.

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