When we were still in Queens, we shared a bedroom in my aunt and uncle's home. We each had our own twin beds, and sometimes we would watch TV before going to sleep. I usually had the remote because it was still kind of a fairly new thing for me, and I really liked it. One Sunday night before going to sleep, instead of pressing the power button, I may have mistakenly changed the channel instead. It went from Channel 7 to Channel 5, onto an episode of "Married... with Children". I think it was the one where Al and Peggy were in some motel or something. I can't remember the exact scene, but I remember thinking it was interesting, and the audience was laughing really hard. I can't remember the joke, and I don't think my mom made a comment or anything. I just kind of watched for a minute and then turned it off.
When we moved to Jersey City, we had a TV in the living room, and another one in the bedroom. One Sunday night, we were watching "Funniest Home Videos" in the living room, and for some reason, I decided to go into the bedroom. Either the TV was already on, or I turned it on. It was tuned in to Fox, and "In Living Color" was on. I thought it was pretty funny. I didn't watch the whole show, only a few minutes. I then returned to the living room.
That was kind of the moment when I decided to see if I can record shows. I had been able to record on our VCR. I remember my mom had asked me to record this documentary on Christoper Columbus's ships on PBS, so I had already figured out how to do it. Other than that, I remember recording "G.I. Joe" in the mornings and then pausing it here and there. I thought it was cool seeing the freeze frames and looking at all the characters in stillness for those moments.
I became curious to see if it was possible to record one channel on the VCR while the TV was tuned into a different one. I was excited when I figured it out. Of course, the next week, I then recorded "In Living Color" while we were watching ABC. And then I recorded "Cheers" reruns at 11pm. I recorded "WWF Wresting Channel" at noon on Sundays when we would go to church. I also recorded "Dennis the Menace" and "Heathcliff", which came on at 2 and 2:30pm when I would still be in school. I thought it was cool being able to watch these shows when I couldn't actually be around while they were airing.
Sometimes, my mom and I would go to C.H. Martin, and I would always grab a blank tape and put it in the basket. I remember looking at them and choosing them based on the running times. At first, I used to just record on standard mode, but then I played around with the other settings and learned that LP or EP gave me more hours on the tape. I don't actually know which one our deck had, whether it was LP or EP, but I'm fairly sure we also had ELP, or extremely long play.
On weeknights and weekend afternoons, Channel 11 would air movies, and I would record the ones I liked. I think one of the first ones I recorded was "Roxanne". I remember holding the remote the whole time, ready to hit pause when a commercial aired. I turned out to be pretty good at it. Most of my recordings, I was able to have the broadcast movie with no commercials just by timing it right. I figured out on my own the commercial breaks would be two minutes at a time, usually with 4 thirty-second ads. Actually, sometimes the same movie would air on a weeknight and then get re-aired on a weekend afternoon. Sometimes I did make a mistake, like pausing too late and having a snippet of a commercial, or mistakenly not unpausing and missing some of the movie. When this did happen on a weeknight, I sometimes got to do a do-over and try again on the weekend.
One of the movies I recorded and watched over and over was "Problem Child 2". There were some edits that would have been cool to see again because I remember watching them then that the scene kind of seemed odd at the time. Like when Junior farts in the principal's office, I'm pretty sure they edited either a line or the sound of the flatulence. But I remember just kind of seeing this and feeling like the scene seemed odd.
Another thing I used to watch over and over were "Seinfeld" episodes. I had whole tapes of one episode after another. It was the season where they had crazy Joe Davola.
I wish I got to save those tapes, but unfortunately I don't have any of them anymore. I can't remember exactly what I did with them. Some of them, I taped over in desperation because I didn't have any more blanks. Some of them just went bad and sticky and got eaten by the deck. Some I just unemotionally got rid of once DVDs came around. I think actually once I really got into sports and football, I taped over the movies with Chicago Bulls and New York Jets games. But I'm not really sure actually.
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