I'm completely obsessed with TV. No, really. No. Really. I watch it, I write about it, I talk endlessly about it, and when people tell me they don't own a television set, I have a Joey Tribbiani urge to ask, "You don't? Then what is all your furniture aimed at?" I usually manage to squelch that urge because I don't want to come off as a complete bitch. I let people get to know me before I invite them to that side of my personality.
One of my most prized possessions is a version of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. It was recorded off of the ABC Monday Night Movie back around nineteen-eighty-something. Now, I do love that movie for what it is, but the reason I keep it in a fireproof box is not because of Angela Lansbury's sloshily wonderful performance as a drunk novelist, it's because of the commercials that are forever preserved on that magnetic strip. There's the "We! Build! Excite! Ment! Pon-ti-ac!" and the Snicker's "Packed with peanuts, Snickers really satisfies" where -- in a precious bit of CGI -- the Snickers magically appears from a fist of peanuts and the "Time flies, and you are there! Time cries, and makes you care! We understand the world we sha-a-a-are! Time brings you closer to living!"
There's now a site where I can spend hours -- HOURS! -- watching old commercials that remind me of my callow youth. The San Mateo-based YouTube was founded in early 2005 and as "a place for people to engage in new ways with video by sharing, commenting on, and viewing videos. YouTube originally started as a personal video sharing service, and has grown into an entertainment destination with people watching more than 40 million videos on the site daily."
I first became aware of YouTube when someone sent me a disturbingly hypnotic link to a SIMian Jean-Luc Picard rave dancing. At first, I thought YouTube was just for homemade, original videos -- the Mentos-Pepsi experiments are in there, as are fantastically edited episodes of Star Trek that pit Kirk against Picard -- but then I discovered a dangerous place where I spent no less than five hours in complete retro-ecstasy. Food commericals.