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trying to tap a satellite
Sunday, August 5 2001
I spent most of the day setting up additional little non-digital connections between my computer and the rest of the world. These included an audio line to Gretchen's stereo, a composite video line to Gretchen's television, a telephone line to the FAX functionality on my printer, and an attempted cable link to Ernie's satellite signal on the fourth floor. That last one had caused me to purchase 100 feet of coax cable, which I strung from Ernie's fourth floor window down to Gretchen's cable line on the first floor. But things weren't as simple as I'd imagined; the cable running from the satellite dish didn't carry a simple cable teevee signal, so I couldn't use it. And when I connected to the signal downstream from the satellite signal decoder, I only got one channel, which was whatever Ernie happened to be viewing. So I scrapped the whole idea, writing off the many trips up and down the flights of stairs as "exercise."
In the evening Gretchen and I walked Sally and Addy (Ernie's dog) in the more wooded northwest part of Prospect Park. There's a part of the woods featuring a series of round concrete ponds complete with fountains set in tidy little clearings in the trees. It would have looked like the Garden of Eden had the fountains been on and the ponds not been drained.
Gretchen observed at one point that she felt a little like an outsider on the toilet paper and condom-strewn paths among the trees. Almost all the other people we encountered were single men without dogs, walking hurriedly while constantly looking around, sometimes turning around to look at another gentleman as they passed. These were the forest cruisers of Park Slope, gay men who meet other anonymous men and then sneak off together to have sex in the more secluded thickets.
Back at Gretchen's brownstone I talked on the phone with my old housemate John. He was telling me all about the things he's been fixing on the Punch Buggy Rust. Some Mexicans at a "ghetto shop" in Hoboken installed a new carburetor and clutch for $280. He said they were very excited to work on an air cooled VW, something they hadn't seen in some time. Meanwhile John has been working on some things all by himself, fixing the door so it can lock and replacing the broken headlight (a legacy of the ordeal of Brooklyn parking). He says people turn their heads to look at him driving the Punch Buggy Rust every bit as much as they would someone driving a brand new Ferrari, and he likes it.
Gretchen and I went up to Ernie's apartment to watch Sex in the City and Six Feet Under on the satellite-equipped teevee I'd unsuccessfully attempted to tap earlier today. When we got there, we found one of the other residents of the brownstone (a young woman who is babysitting Ernie's cat) was already there. So we all sat around and watched, Gretchen often providing quick bits of backstory and outraged commentary (since she is both very familiar with Sex in the City and somewhat overinvolved with its characters).
It's interesting to me that the television programming renaissance being spearheaded by HBO is actually having a positive effect on community in America. Since only a fraction of the people in any area actually subscribe to HBO, their non-HBO-having friends tend to gather around the much scarcer HBO-equipped televisions to watch the good HBO shows, often hanging around and socializing afterwards. Look, Gretchen and I are not the only ones.
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