immediacy lost
Not the same, watching the Yankees playoff games on my DVR the evening after. I used to be able to stay up late for things like the Canadian Olympic hockey team playing on the other end of the world, but that period is long gone now and for reasons age and child and work-related. Sports sometimes seem to be the only source of contingency left, certainly the only form left on television. Knowing that I can fastforward, and actually fastforwarding so as to turn the 4 hour plus contests into something I can watch in an hour-and-a-half, takes about 70 percent of the fun out of it. But letting in play out long form, with commercial breaks, seems a bit insane.
Following from and sadder than that, what a development it is to make a decision between downloaded Mad Men and DVR’d Yankees-in-the-playoffs. Obviously I went with the latter, and will save the former for another night. But how unimaginable twenty months ago. Ah BST! Ah five hours earlier!
Yeah, for me, sports is always contingent. I’ve always refused to watch re-runs (though of course I love replays). Meanwhile, living in Baltimore, working in DC, but being a Philly fan, I’m stuck following the Phillies via 30-second refreshes of the box score on ESPN (since even the lame game cast doesn’t work right).
(Meanwhile, have you actually read The Aesthetics of Resistance? I’ve had that book for a few years now, its massive block of text both attracting and repelling me. I liked Weiss’s Leavetaking.)
Richard
October 9, 2009 at 1:08 am
When I lived on the west coast, I loved the advantage of watching the opening pitch/tip-off/puck drop of EST games in the late afternoon (the imagined luxury of living 3 hours in the future). Now I’m in Europe—1 hour west of GMT, 6 ahead of EST and 9 away from PST—and the ephemeral morning sensation of scanning the previous evening’s boxscores is hardly a sensation at all.
The motto: time travel works better forward, not counter-clockwise.
TJ
October 9, 2009 at 2:03 am
Richard,
mlb.tv will set you back less than the price of attending single game to watch the entire season of the Phils. Or is it a backout issue too? Proxies are lovely for getting around that sort of thing.
I’ve started the A of R. Only just started it. Seems utterly brilliant, I must say. But, yes, that massive block of text prohibits reading most of the places / times when I get to read nowadays (transport / late at night / etc)
TJ,
Exactly – the time travel bit is exactly what you discover. The few times I was in California, it did seem wonderful – sitting in a hotel bar at a conference watching the night games basically in the middle of the afternoon.
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October 9, 2009 at 7:13 am