The Kovats house has been busy lately. Apparently, parenting is a full time job. Now they tell me.
So it took us a while to realize the piece of crap TV we were accustomed to staring at (with our kids) for hours every evening. Say what you will about the boob tube – sitcoms are crap, programming generally lacks original thought and crams advertising into every possible nook and cranny, it’s why kids are obese, etc. I’m sure there’s a lot of happy vegan families out there without TVs who enjoy their down time sharing impromtu sonnets and making organic soy candles together (or whatever), but we Kovatsi (plural) like to drown the day out of our heads with comedy reruns.
We’ve always run about two years behind the latest and greatest, playing a VHS tape of a recent movie on our 27″ Zenith wasn’t archaeic to us, even in 2007. But, when the “bad spot” on our TV started to overcome Dr. House’s entire head, we broke down and set out to invest in a new one.
We had a 10% off coupon through work for Best Buy, so we stopped by with the intention of replacing a 27″ CRT TV with a possibly larger – say 32″ – CRT TV, because neither of us we’re particularly impressed with “HD”. I’m fine with seeing an actor’s face; I don’t need to see his skin pores.
Of COURSE, we get to the store and it’s wall-to-wall Plasma screen HD TV’s, ranging from a foot wide to the size of our kitchen table. Slicky McGee in the blue polo shirt and name tag informed us they apparently don’t really sell CRT TVs anymore. I’m assuming there isn’t enough money these days in TV’s the cost less than a mortgage payment, so we began to entertain the idea of being a loyal consumer and going with a larger than anticipated TV.
1 hour later…
We walked out with a behemoth 42″ Plasma TV. I’m not sure what happened to us in that store, but I’m certain it was good for the economy. After dropping almost $700 for this monstrosity, I started carting it out to my truck when I saw someone else’s 50″ TV waiting for pickup. For just a second, I felt almost slighted by this bigger TV. The American consumer in me felt a twinge of envy, before realizing 42″ is already too friggin’ big. As an employee helped me load the TV onto my truck, he warned me not to lay it down flat, or “the glass screen could break and the fluid would pour out.” That made me feel even better about my purchase – that I could make my $700 investment absolutely worthless by laying it down.
When I got home I was anxious to get it set up and witness the splendor of HD in 42 inches. Twenty minutes later, when this jet wing of a TV stood on top of its dwarfed TV stand, I felt almost embarrassed of it. We try to keep things modest around the house, but there was no way you could miss this TV in our living room. The way it’s caddy-cornered in the room, it almost looks like our entire top floor was built to focus on our lavish new TV screen.
The Supersize: it’s how we roll
I get it, we like big portions: the Hummer (because nothing says arrogant prick like a 4 ton, 400 horespower machine), all you can eat buffets (why choose from a menu when I can eat everything?), 80GB MP3 music players (I simply can’t survive my flight to Cleveland without 2,000 hours of music at my disposal), and apparently 42″ Plasma screen TVs, which beg the question, when is it big enough? I’d assume when you have to move your head to see actors talking from opposite sides of your television, you’ve goon too damn far.
Sure it’s nice to have a 42″ crisp picture experience for those action blockbuster movies or that richly-detailed XBox game, but when you’re not engrossed in a movie or not even wathcing TV at all, it’s almost an eyesore drawing your attention when you’re in the same room.
So no plans on getting an H2 or one of those “hip” iPods that hold more music than I can identify. I’d say we’ve learned from our TV purchase. It’s nice, but a bit excessive.
The new rims on our `09 Escalade, however, are a different story. Best investment I ever made.