For my dad’s birthday, my sister and I purchased tickets to NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” live tour at State Theatre Center for the Arts in Easton featuring the top five comedian finalists.

I admit I never followed the show. For one, I don’t have cable and two, the only comedians I’ve ever thought to watch were the ones featured late night on Comedy Central. The show, however, sounded like something my dad would be into. Who doesn’t need a good laugh every once and awhile? As third-place finalist Mike DeStefano put it, you don’t even have one funny friend; you have to pay to have someone make you laugh. (I paraphrased there, folks.)

The night began with host Roy Wood, Jr. and I honestly thought he was by far the funniest of the night. Sorry, Felipe Esparza. You may have won first place on the show but your Mexican jokes only got you so far.

Roy Wood cracked some of the stupidest yet funniest jokes (in my opinion) about Easton’s bar Drinky’s to DUI checkpoints to prank phone calls over the radio. His line about going to Drinky’s to get drunky was hilarious.

Overall, I thought the night was filled with lewd, crude humor. And there was a lot of cursing–I mean, a lot of cursing, especially from Mike DeStefano. I’ve never been to a comedy show before so I didn’t know what to expect. I guess a lot of cursing? I was slightly embarrassed by half of the jokes being made mainly because I was sitting beside my parents.

But then at intermission, I looked around the theatre and it was filled with people ranging in age from about 10 to 75. I found that quite amusing. The renovations State Theatre recently completed are beautiful. I hear the bathrooms were remodeled, but I didn’t check them out. Oh, and last night was the start of the new 2010-2011 season at State Theatre. Can’t wait to go to another show!

Were you at “Last Comic Standing” last night? Who was your favorite comedian? What did you laugh at the hardest?

I feel absolutely compelled to express my disgust with some of today’s television programming. Let me begin by stating that while growing up I was never allowed to have a TV in my bedroom. I still, to this day, don’t have a TV in my bedroom and most likely will not have one in the bedroom should I one-day marry.

That said, I reluctantly purchased my first TV the summer before my junior year of college from Target and only because I was living alone and thought it would be awfully quiet without one. When I moved into a house with two other girls during my last semester, I still kept the TV in the living room. Sadly–or not–it currently sits in the basement collecting dust.

Simply stated, I don’t watch TV. It’s not that I don’t watch it to be trendy or hip or clever. I just don’t watch it because there are so many other ways to keep myself occupied. And, well, I don’t watch it because the shows seem to kill a few brain cells anytime I happen to have it on.

Yesterday evening was one of those times. As I waited for my boyfriend to shower, I turned on his brand new 32” Vizio flat screen (the “idiot box” as he calls it) and flipped through the channels. I stopped at MTV (one of the stations I was not “allowed” to watch when I was younger) and was blown away by the short five minutes of “Dating Disasters” that I had viewed. It was utterly mind boggling that a show like that actually exists! I’m sure much of it is staged, but the dimwit brunette who chatted away like the stupidest and snobbiest girl I had ever heard just totally irked me in a way that I had to write this blog.

It reminded me exactly why I don’t watch TV anymore. To me, that girl portrayed the unfortunate young adult stereotype that I cannot stand. The fact that young girls (and guys) will watch these shows and attempt to emulate those personalities and appearances disgusts me even more.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know plenty of shows air that are interesting and educational, but it seems like the majority are rather pathetic. I’d take a good novel over a TV show any day. Excuse me for the rant, but I just had to get that off my chest!

I know it was a 3 p.m. ritual for me back in high school; race from the bus through the neighbors’ backyards to get home so I could plant myself in front of the TV in time for General Hospital. It was the height of the Luke and Laura saga and I couldn’t miss a minute. My mom watched with me. My friends watched with their moms. This was emotional, moving drama at its sappy best. We kept tissues at the ready.

Now I hear the tradition of the daytime drama may be fading away. Last week, the Guiding Light, the longest running soap (it actually started out on radio) announced that it will wrap production forever early next fall.

This turned out to be especially unfortunate for Northampton Community College’s TV and Radio Department whose students have traveled for the last several years to New York City to go behind the scenes at Guiding Light. This year I had the privilege of being invited to join them and I planned to tell you all about the experience in this blog. So, I was surprised to learn one day before our scheduled departure that there would be no tour of the set—the tour was just cancelled with no promise of re-scheduling. The official announcement had not been made yet, but that very night Brian Williams delivered the sobering news to America.

An insider relayed that this is just the tip of the iceberg—that the future of the entire genre of serial soaps is in jeopardy-perhaps literally, as it is reported that soon cheaper-to-produce game shows will take the place of the soaps. Shockwaves are rattling through the community of actors and production types.

It does make sense though. Who is home during the day anymore? And if you are home with children, there are just so many other things to do:

· Mommy and me classes

· Play dates

· Educational, and not-so-educational, computer games

· Facebook

What mom today cares about what’s happening between the cheating Mrs. Gotbucks and the gardener, when she could be Twittering while the baby’s napping?

And there are also many more dads home these days with their kids. I can’t see any of them wanting to pop the top off a cold Michelob Ultra to the sounds of the theme of the Young & the Restless.

Not to mention that people seem to be creating and living enough of their own daytime drama, as life just gets crazier and crazier.

This, for lack of a better word, episode, in our media history will probably play out as just a nostalgic commentary about how media has changed over the years. It seems inevitable that parts of that history will be sad.

Pass that box of Kleenex, please.

**Stay tuned for details about what we did do and see with NCC that day in NYC.

First it was my radio, boom box, and then my Walkman. I have, over the course of the last several years, shed all my audio toys for iTunes downloads and a device I clip to my shirt that is so small I just know I am going to loose it. Now it looks like my precious TV is the next to go. Oh no!

I am trying to get used to watching TV, or not watching TV as it were, in a different way. My home has been infiltrated with technology—some that I am familiar with and want, and some I admit I am not quite ready for. I don’t understand what was wrong with watching TV like I used to. By this I mean at 7:30 p.m. I would turn on FOX 29 and watch Seinfeld. The first 10 minutes were my relax-and-unwind minutes, followed by the commercial break, which I always found well suited for making a cup of tea. The next commercial break provided a little time to surf CNN and then it was back to channel 29 for Jerry’s out-tro. I was fine with this. There was a certain routine in this I found comforting.

This changed late last year when my brother re-located back to the Valley from California and I offered him a room in my house. With him came a rather nice and large flat screen TV-something I had not yet upgraded to. That was all well and good, but then the DVR arrived and now my life has changed irrevocably and forever. There’s no telling when I may see Brian Williams on any given night now. There’s no system, no order. It’s cable chaos at my house. We need to start watching the Eagles game at 2 p.m. instead of 1 so we can zip through the commercials, but while we are waiting that extra hour we can watch Thursday night’s episode of 30 Rock. I am having a hard time getting used to the randomness of this. I have shows piling up in my queue and if I don’t watch them in time I could run out of memory and they can end up getting dropped off without my consent. This is actually stressing me out.

And then there was the day it all just stopped.

My brother had chosen to record two college football games simultaneously and went out. I turned on the TV but could not even change the channel. Apparently, this thing, this beast of a DVR doesn’t allow you to change the channel while two recordings are being made. Unless I stopped one of the recordings I was stuck watching CNBC. They televise infomercials on Saturday afternoons. Oh, the horror!

(Note to self: Prepare the “Why Siblings Should Not Live Together After Age 21,” blog.)

I managed to maneuver my way around the menu to stop one of my brother’s recordings and eventually moved on with my life, but that episode stuck with me. Part of the problem is that I have just one cable hook up in the house right now.
Yes, I know that sounds unbelievable, but my home was built in 1940 and the last homeowners opted for one cable connection in the family room and a dish on the roof.

Now I have heard from lots of people that they no longer even have cable-that many TV shows are just a click and a download away. I do have a wireless, high-speed connection in my house, but quite frankly after spending all day staring into this screen and punching this keyboard, I don’t feel like looking at this laptop anymore. It does not provide enough of a mental break from the workday for me. I prefer the cozy way I used to watch TV—curled up on the recliner with my trusty remote at the ready. (Now don’t even get me going on the instrument panels that these cable companies are passing off as remote controls. I mean excuse me while I clear the television for take off, engage the mighty converter, navigate through the guide, and hopefully land on a channel of my liking.)

Some say with all the programming available on the Internet, cable seems to a wanton, wasteful luxury. And the prices for the services are just ridiculous. The providers think if they slap on a wrestling channel and a monotonous all-day soap opera network they’re justified with raising the prices overall when most of their customers wouldn’t even watch that drivel.

Like the channels on the dial, cable knows its days are numbered. (Remember when there were just 2 through 13 and we were happy to have those?) I guess they are scrambling to develop new revenue streams.

I realize, though, I will need to make peace with the blasted DVR and embrace the modern mechanized convenience for what it is. This may mean going through the dreaded instruction manual. I must admit it was kind of nice last Saturday morning when I realized I could catch Friday’s NBC Nightly News broadcast while eating my Frosted Mini-Wheats.

For now I will call the cable company and have another hook-up installed so I at least have two TVs in the house and one that is free of a DVR. I am not ready to have two of those in my house yet.

At the end of the day, I presently can’t see the Internet as a viable viewing option for me.  I like to watch too many first-run shows. Thank God there are still pockets of premium programming like many of the great HBO series, like Entourage, AMC’s Mad Men, and FX’s Rescue Me. After all, it’s great writing and stories that will keep me watching TV.

And to me “TV” will always be that other glowy box that makes a little hum when you turn it on.

Stay tuned…