For F**k's Sake!

(At the end of the entry I explain why I have a photo, which has nothing to do with the content of this post!)

Swearing is not a good habit to get into especially if it is front of children or when there is no reason to say these profane words. But everything exists for a reason including profanities. There are certainly times when the F-word is completely appropriate. It was time to break it out on Sunday night when the cable and Wifi suddenly stopped working. Keep in mind that Sunday was the evening of the Oscars. I will be perfectly honest with you. I did not know anything about the movies being nominated nor was there any emotional investment in the actors who were nominees. But watching the Academy Awards is something I do every single year.

Perhaps it became important to me the night I returned from Monday Night School as a teenager to watch the Oscars. (Monday Night School is the place the Jewish kids attended after they graduated the sixth grade in Sunday School. It always made me miserable, but it was just something I had to do back in those days as I went through the motions hoping the two hours would fade quicker than last time. My mother and father insisted I turn off the television and go to sleep. I begged and pleaded with them to let me continue watching the Academy Awards. But they were resolute in their decision considering in those days I was chained to a routine of waking up at six o'clock in the morning to catch the bus throughout middle and high school. They tried to compromise and offered to tape it, but it was just not the same. In those says, even small changes in my routine were unbearable and often resulted in tears such as the time I was not allowed to eat corn on the cob with my braces. Things seemed like a really big deal during those days of youth. But the Oscars were still important to me just as Halloween and annual trip to the beach meant the entire world. Sadly...some of my dreams were at the mercy of whether the adults in my life were willing to consent. One of the things I cherish as an adult is being able to determine my own schedule and being able to stay up until eleven p.m. if something is that important or comes only once a year. If I could do something to prevent that night from happening with such profound anguish, I would have surely let my family know in advance that this was something I desperately wanted. I would have not asked for many things up until that point to make the case of, "I never ask you for anything." Furthermore, I also would have done a plethora of chores and acted responsible like one of those supernaturally, well-behaved children from the 1990s movie, "Village of the Damned." Maybe I would have found a way to get my homework completed the night before or my family would have realized it would not be the end of the world to "screw Monday Night School" for just one night. I would have slept for the first part of the day if possible. We could have worked something out. But instead I missed the Academy Awards that night during a time when movies were so important to me. Sometimes there are flashbacks to that night and perhaps that is why the Academy Awards are still important to me even though they are not really THAT important. I just feel like I am missing out on something if I dare miss them.

It was especially important for me to watch the Oscars this year due to wanting to see how they did it during a pandemic. The show must go on, after all. Many people thought it was boring and it was the lowest television audience in history, I believe. I chose to give them a break, however. They were doing the best they could with the lack of resources available, and we probably could not have done much better. I agree with Michael Bowers from "Salute your Shorts" that his fellow actor, Dustin Diamond should have been on the tribute section. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on the controversy of Chadwick Boseman not winning as posthumous Academy Award due to not having seen either his movie or the one from Anthony Hopkins. But it would have been the right thing to do considering that Anthony Hopkins has already won an Oscar. Sometimes it is not about who is the better performer in the best movie, but who is most deserving. If an actor, for example, have been nominated eleven times without winning they should just be allowed to win an Oscar due to their unrelenting determination. But it is what it is and Chadwick Boseman's family was extremely gracious with no hard feelings toward the "snub."

Now...let me get to the point of why I chose this title. My cable has given me trouble on and off for the past year. But I had always rebooted everything and things were hunky dory for a long time afterwards until it suddenly flaked out again. I would just keep rebooting and did not want to bother the Spectrum Cable Company for something that only took a few minutes to resolve itself. But this time the stupid box hit the big time and would not respond to the rebooting! I tried in vain about three times. Furthermore, the Wifi was failing, too. In six years of living in Albany nothing like this has ever happened before and it magically decided to happen on Oscar night. It is true the worst things will happen at the most inconvenient times. For example, the college student who stays up all night long polishing a mid-term essay will suddenly find the printer will stall in the morning. They will always ask the hollow question, "Why now?!"

I called up my family to vent to ask if I had missed that much in hopes that I could still get it working to catch at least some of the ceremony. They taped it for me, but I was still quite upset and said to my mother, "This show is only one or two things I watch a year that are really important to me for f**k's sake!" Then I let out a primal scream in my apartment without caring whether the neighbors would hear.

There are a number of people who would lecture me on how this is not a big deal and others have much worse problems than missing the Oscars. While they may be right, they are still jerks and hypocrites. I highly doubt they would feel the same if suddenly there was a power outage during the last few minutes in the season finale of one of those binge-worthy shows they have invested years of their life into passionately following while their real emotions became intertwined in the fictional lives of these characters. They would not say, "Others have it much worse than me right now." Instead they would say, "You chose right NOW to crash your car into the telephone pole...you bastard?! You could have done this to me any other time but you chose the season finale."

In the end, the television magically started to work again toward the end of the ceremony. I was able to see the first Korean actress win during a time when there is so much irrational hatred toward those have had nothing to do with the 500,000-plus deaths of Americans from the Coronavirus. It was a perfect win at the best possible time! And her speech was probably the best one I have heard in a long time. I was able to see a lot of the night's beauty despite being late through no control on my part. The night could have been worse, and deep down I know that if missing much of the Oscars was the worst thing that could have happened to me this week then I am ahead of the game, for sure.

The debacle with the television has also forced me to realize this was the final straw. It was time to call Spectrum News and explain the equipment has been faltering with it most likely going to get worse before it ever gets better. I usually avoid making such phone calls like the plague due to the stress of having to talk to automated voices. There is also the annoyance of having to fiddle with the equipment and figuring out what they are talking about while worrying they are going to get impatient or accuse me of "not listening to them." But the conversation went quite well with the technician and someone from Spectrum News is coming tomorrow to put an end to my equipment troubles. If it were not for missing the Oscars I would not have made that phone call. Whenever something bad happens...sometime good may happen in its place! And I am not talking about finally getting on the phone to arrange some help. That same night, my neighbors upstairs dropped off this gift that made me feel much better and took away much of the rage over missing some of my favorite TV program that only comes once a year!