David Cassidy in the News
SOAPBOX; Cable Gal
August 20, 2000
By Andrea Higbie
New York Times
OUR family was definitely the only one in town and probably in the nation not to have cable television, our boys informed us on a regular basis. Maybe so, but we thought we were doing them a favor. They already watched more than enough television, and cable didn't offer significantly more worthwhile programming than the networks. Cable has Animal Planet, the History Channel and ''The Sopranos,'' true, but it also has ''The Man Show.''
And, by golly, it costs $65 a month for more of what we don't want in the first place. And that's along with commercials, which we already get free with our network shows.
Finally, cable installation, I knew from suburban legend, is always a nightmare, as are movies about it (think ''Cable Guy'').
But despite my best intentions to avoid having my children's minds marinated in Nickelodeon and worse and despite my plan to keep our home a place of high culture and wide discussion, their pleas worked.
So we crumbled, and in came the chaos, all of which falls under the category of I Told You So.
First, Comcast, our local provider, would not set a date for installation until a month from our phone call, it was so overbooked. (I knew we weren't the only family without cable.)
Then, of course, on the assigned day the cable guy was late.
When he finally arrived, he told my husband that he'd lost his knife for cutting cable wire. My husband offered him a Swiss Army knife and promptly left for work.
The cable guy told me the Swiss Army knife wasn't sharp enough, so I gave him my favorite steel knife. Which he has to this day.
Things have devolved from there, and there's only myself to blame. Because I love, really love, cable.
I love staying up too late watching ''I Love Lucy'' on Nick at Nite and the Friars' roasts on Comedy Central (Jerry Stiller -- oy!) and waking up too early to watch ''Simon and Simon.'' I love all the cheesy shows on E!, especially ''Mysteries and Scandals,'' with the unctuous A. J. Benza. I particularly enjoyed a re-enactment of Lana Turner's final scene with her gangster lover, Johnny Stompanato, during which her daughter, Cheryl, stabbed him to death. Or so the story goes.
And how else besides indulging in 100-odd-channel surfing, and ignoring the symptoms of repetitive stress injuries from clicking the remote, could I hear Robert Young announce, ''I gave her a sedative,'' in a horror movie about a woman frightened by a monster, and then a mere moment later for me but decades later for him, hear him say, ''We'll give her a sedative'' on ''Marcus Welby, M.D.'' to a woman frightened by a monstrous disease.
At long last, I have now committed to memory all of the words to the theme song of ''The Jeffersons'' (hint: grits don't burn in the kitchen; beans don't burn on the grill). Took a whole lot of trying, just to get up that hill.
If you are interested, I can tell you why Tina Louise was miserable all through her three-year stint on ''Gilligan's Island.'' (She thought the show would revolve around her, a misunderstanding that prompted one producer to ask her, ''Didn't you get a hint when you heard the show's title?'') This E! special, itself two hours, seemed at times even longer than the castaways' three-hour tour, yet I happily watched it twice.
I have also figured out that David Cassidy, of Partridge Family fame, has had an eyelift. I watched the show about him and his television family three times just to make sure that his bags were truly packed away sometime between the 1998 interview clips on the show and those from 1999. I already knew that Susan Dey was anorexic, but I did not know until I watched this special that she refuses to attend Partridge Family reunions, feeling -- imagine this! -- that they are beneath her.
And VH-1's ''Behind the Music'' has improved my world, too, making me privy to the facts and foibles in the lives of Meat Loaf, Weird Al Yankovich and the members of Quiet Riot.
Because of all this I've been ignoring my children, who got me into this in the first place, as well as my PTA duties and my friends on the networks. Regis who?
I should have listened to my own case against cable, but instead I have fallen prey to this mesmerizing beast. So I'm the one with the TV-marinated brains, and my boys are the ones begging to play Stratego with me. But I'm afraid I must decline. It's time for a rerun of ''Maude.''
