Fun and Games Dept

It hasn’t been quite 20 years since TVs started appearing en masse in restaurants. Prior to 9/11 it seemed rare to see a television in a diner or family restaurant. Televisions were usually relegated to pubs and sports bars and the like, but after 9/11, everyone was glued to the news and televisions started appearing everywhere. Moving from old CRT televisions to cheap flat panels certainly helped the cause.

Nowadays there’s a television seemingly everywhere you look.

Living in the third largest city in nation affords us plenty of occasion for adventure, and while we are out and about I enjoy reading up on restaurants, checking in, and leaving my impressions of the experience on Yelp. In fact, I’m an EliteYelp Reviewer for the 3rd year in a row. I don’t know what that means other than I get invited to nifty parties, but it’s kind of cool having that badge next to my name.

The content of programming on these ubiquitous televisions in restaurants and eateries weigh into my rating. I’m thinking if you insist on showing the news on the monitor hanging from the ceiling, you should probably be showing something fairly neutral, that is, if there is such a thing in the United States these days. MSNBC? Too biased. Fox News? Not even close. Local news coverage? I can handle it.

When I see all these televisions invading our gastronomic adventures I can’t help but think of George Orwell’s “1984”, where there television everywhere so Big Brother could command the masses.

It’s a little startling to think that some apparently thought “1984” was some sort of handbook or user’s manual.

I’m struggling to keep my phone in my pocket when we’re out and about, so I have a little extra time to notice all this news being beamed into our meal space.

Big or small, a tether is a tether.

I’ve decided to try taking a break from social media for a while. In a way this is a little ironic, because this post will appear on my Twitter timeline when I hit “Publish”, but I won’t actually have to get onto Twitter to post it, so technically I’m still taking a break from social media, because after all, are blog entries like this really considered social media?

Before the days of 140 characters, and the recent yet faux-verbosity of 280 characters, people used technology to extend their reach to others through things like these self-hosted personal blogs, LiveJournal, Blogger, and the like. You didn’t need to have a brand, though some folks tried to brand you based on what they read in your blog, you just did your thing in an attempt to reach out to likeminded individuals. Today folks bark. People use their allotted, finite number of characters to bark out their opinions. I’m certainly very guilty of this. I’ve said things online that I would never say to someone’s face.

This does not make me great. This makes me stupid.

I have to ask myself this: would I really flip off Trump in public? Well, the answer is probably yes, but I wouldn’t say the things I’ve said to members of his administration if I was face to face and looking them in the eye while saying it. I’d be a chicken shit, just like the other 95% of folks that do the same exact barking online, and then I’d go the other way. Because being an ass to someone to their face is not a part of greatness.

It’s an example of stupidity.

I’ve tacked a photo of former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer screeching at President Obama, finger waggling in her face, to my wall because I remember the outrage I felt when I saw her behave that way.

There was nothing great about that moment. Governor Brewer was grandstanding. She was making a big show of standing up to the president to rile up her base. We don’t need big shows. We need people trying to be their authentic self. We need to keep it real and we don’t need an audience to do it. So much puffing and chest pounding these days. It gets so nauseating.

Honestly, I just want to aspire to be me. That should be my focus. All of this grandstanding, and barking, and carrying on through social media accomplishes nothing. It helps gain notoriety and little else.

I don’t want to be notorious. I want to be great. I want to be great at being me.

Taking a look my weather app du jour, it is currently 0ºF with a wind chill of -11ºF. Not the coldest it’s been (by any means) this year, but we are less than three weeks from the meteorological beginning of spring and quite frankly I’m ready for some warmer weather.

On the bright side, the forecast warms up for the foreseeable future. It looks like by the end of this week it’ll start showing signs of spring and it’ll be in the mid 40s by next week.

That made my shorter-than-usual walk this morning a little more bearable.

I grew up on the Shazam/Isis Hour. It’s a shame that the lesson shared by Isis, way back in 1975, is as relevant and important today as it was back then. You’d think we’d know better by now.

Ps. Actress Joanna Cameron has one the best voices ever!