Hard to Believe

Today on MTVU an old video came on and Theresa said, "Wow, I've never seen the video for this song before." Her statement pretty much blew me away because it was for the song Jump by Van Halen. It amazed me that someone in my peer group hadn't ever seen the video for this song. It's like saying I you've never heard of Nintendo. Okay, maybe not, but it's up there. Then I realized that there are probably many people around my age who didn't have cable as a kid, and that blew me away even further. It's hard to believe that someone missed out on a huge piece of popular culture like cable television in the 80s.

I can still remember the day when coaxial magic entered my life. A mysterious box with blinking lights and wires coming into the house from the wall brought me unspeakable delights. All of sudden there were more than 4 channels. All of sudden you could see movies without commercials or better still without censorship. Finally, actors weren't calling each other "mother-lovers" they were saying what they really meant and it was beautiful.

TV instantly became my new best friend. It might sound sad even a little pathetic, but I carry no shame in saying that TV has always been there for me. I spent a lot of time on my own as a kid. When I came home from school I was usually the only one there for about 3 hours and on weekends with no where to go and nothing to do I turned on the TV. I wasn't really a risk taker or trouble seeker, so I pretty much resorted to making myself a snack and turning on the TV. I didn't have that many friends until late into high school so my bond to the TV grew pretty strong. It was like a surrogate, soothing me and comforting me during many stretches of aloneness.

By the time I was in middle school, I had about 500 uncensored channels at my finger tips from a giant satellite dish on our roof. It wasn't the scaled down, grey discs you get now from Direct TV. It was about 10 feet in diameter and it picked up stations from network satellites in space transmitting pure, un-cut feeds. It was freaking great! We went from having maybe two movie channels to having like 10. All showing different things at different times. There was an HBO West which meant that if you missed something on HBO East you could see it 4 hours later on HBO West. I saw thousands of movies including PPV events for no extra charge and Spurs games that were blacked out in San Antonio. It was pure magic.

Needless to say, if there was something on TV between 1985 and 1995 chances are I saw it--maybe even more than once. So it does raise my ears a little when I hear of someone who has never seen a music video of a song as well known as Van Halen's Jump. I saw it because it was on MTV every day for like 5 years in the 80s. I probably even saw it debut as a bran-spanking new video--a "World Premiere" as they called it back then on MTV. I probably even pulled a groin to the video as I got a little too carried away lip-syncing the words and dancing around the living room. You're damn right I saw it. And I loved it. And I wish I could take a trip back in time to see it all over again for the first time.