Only an old coot would have a complaint as irrelevant to everyday life as this. But, that\u2019s what us old coots do. Some people call it nitpicking; we call it enlightened thinking. We are of the same school of thought as the mayor and police commissioner in New York City when they launched their \u201cnitpicking\u201d plan to reduce crime. They went after the little stuff on the premise that then the big stuff would fall in line. I\u2019m not sure what the little stuff was, maybe jaywalking, littering, loitering, public intoxication and the like. But, somehow it worked and eventually the crime rate came down. Dramatically. Might just have been a coincidence. We\u2019ll never know. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s a long justification for launching yet another petty attack on something most people don\u2019t notice or care about. It\u2019s the TV schedule published in the newspaper. The morning paper. The schedule covers the hours from 6 p.m. to midnight. What about the rest of the day? What\u2019s on at noon, 2 p.m., 4 o\u2019clock or in the middle of the night when we wake up and can\u2019t get back to sleep? Inquiring (old coot) minds want to know. <\/p>\n
All daily papers are like this. If they were evening papers I could see it, having been an evening press delivery \u201cboy\u201d some 60 years ago. We got our bundle of papers dropped off by the circulation \u201cguy\u201d around 3:30, a little after we got out of school. Our orders were to get them delivered by five o\u2019clock so when \u201cMr.\u201d breadwinner came home from work he could sit in his easy chair, maybe with a cocktail or a bottle of beer (no cans in those days) while the \u201clittle woman\u201d (sometimes referred to as the \u201cold lady\u201d by some unenlightened husbands) fixed dinner. What can I say, ours was a \u201cFather knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet world? Men had their role; women had theirs. And, the twain shall never meet. <\/p>\n
Anyhow, I\u2019ve got to get this gasbag (me) back on the topic at hand, \u201cLess than useful TV listings in the daily papers,\u201d for the sake of my old coot brethren who want to know what might be watchable at odd moments in the day. We know a full week\u2019s worth of schedules, 24 hours a day, is included in the Sunday paper, which if we thought to save would still be of no use since we\u2019d never remember where we put it. At one time, there was a channel that scrolled through a list of what was on or coming on, but that\u2019s gone and it wasn\u2019t much good anyway. It took ten minutes to scroll the channels, well beyond the attention span an old coot. And, cheapskates that we are, most of us turned in our control boxes, that afford access to a schedule, to save the $8.50 monthly rental rate. So, we\u2019re in the dark, literally, wondering what\u2019s on TV this afternoon. Now, I feel better, getting that off my chest. I bet you don\u2019t. <\/p>\n