What to Watch?

    

Times change. 

Technology changes.

People adapt at varying degrees.  When an increase in convenience is involved, we tend to adapt to change quickly and rarely look back.  Sometimes, technology provides more options and actually complicates things.

I remember when we got our first television.  I loved it immediately.  Black and white on a ridiculously small screen as it was, it brought stories to life. Be it drama, comedy, or documentaries, I was enthralled.  I loved the children’s shows of the era, Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, Tom Terrific, and the local shows featuring Soupy Sales, Jingles, Captain Jolly, and Johnny Ginger.  I liked a show called Sky King.  I thought The Three Stooges were awesome and I still do ‘til this day.

Back in the day, there were three channels to choose from:  the ABC, CBS, and NBC local affiliates.  In Detroit where I grew up, we also had access to CKLW the Windsor affiliate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  It was a simpler time.  Choosing what to watch was simple.  At any given time, there was a choice of four things to watch.  The schedule was generally fixed and varied only in the event of a monumental breaking news story in which case the three American channels aired the same thing.

Choosing what to watch was easy.  You could consult the handy weekly publication, TV Guide, and tune-in.  If you misplaced the TV Guide and hadn’t memorized the schedule which rarely changed, you surf in that pre-remote way.  You walked over to the TV set, and cycled through the channels and picked whatever caught your fancy.

Into the 1960s, the number of stations began to multiply.  Originally TVs operated in what they called Very High Frequency (VHF).  Some of the expansion was on VHF but the bulk was on Ultra High Frequency (UHF) which all TVs did not receive.  To get UHF, we had to get an add-on box, a precursor of things to come.

The number of channels available exploded with the advent of cable.  Cable had been around since almost the beginning of television.   In 1949, due to poor reception issues rural areas of Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Arkansas, the first cable transmission of television was pioneered to solve the problem.  I never would have guessed cable television began that long ago.

Cable exploded in the 1970s and 1980s.  It was triggered by HBO which began in 1972 and accelerated by ESPN in 1979, and then CNN in 1980.  By 1990, there were hundreds of channels.  Channel surfing became a male couch potato sport.  As Seinfeld said in his eponymic TV show, “Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is on TV.”

Video on Demand began in the 1990s but really took off in when Netflix began their online streamline service in 2007.  These days, we are able to watch almost anything we want at any given time.  I certainly get the concept and actually thought I would take great advantage of it.  That has not been the case.  The long and short of it is that I can almost never decide what to watch when virtually everything is available.  There are simply too many choices.   When I feel like watching a movie, it is very rare that I have a particular movie in mind; less than 1% of the time.  When I then try to think of one, my mind is a blank. 

I have several streaming services available to me such as Netflix, Peacock, Tubi, Pluto, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Xfinity.  I can certainly browse the libraries of each for movies, series, and documentaries.  I have indeed tried to do that.  Again, it is overwhelming.  It shouldn’t be but for some reason it is.  This is exactly what happened when I used to go to video rental stores (remember those?).  Unless I had an actual movie in mind, it took me forever to make a selection. 

So, I resort to seeing what is actually “on.”  I flip through the channels until I see something of interest.  The only choice then is do I watch the movie in progress or restart it?  This seems to work for me, as low tech and old school as that sounds.

In recent years, there are series produced by these and other streaming networks or services.  They are very popular folks tend to binge watch them (though the buzz on binge watching seems way down from my perspective).  We tried that and watched a few of these.  Frankly, they were too long.  None of the episodes came to any real closure but more so left things unresolved enough so people would watch the next episode.  This is the motivation for binge watching. 

Luckily, E! is showing all the Harry Potter movies over and over again.  As I am a huge fan, there is always something “on” this weekend.

Our Tolegian Corner

    We have artwork in our house.  We like what we have but our small collection is much greater in sentimental value than appraisal value by at least ten thousand-fold.   Not surprisingly, most of our artwork is Armenian themed.

One of the first pieces I ever bought was Ladies Baking Lavash by Manuel Tolegian.  It is only a print, but it was perhaps the first times a work of art spoke to me.  I first saw it in my in-laws house and liked it very much as did my wife. 

It is a beautiful painting of nine women on a screened-in porch baking lavash.  The women are all seated on the floor and have quite a production line going.  They are baking the bread in a tonir oven, the most traditional way.  The setting is on a farm.  Perhaps in Armenia?  Perhaps in Fresno?  The woman drinking water in the foreground always captures my attention.  The colors Tolegian used are from the same earth tone pallet as Mardiros Saryan.

We were living in our first house.  There must have been an article in either The Armenian Weekly or Ararat Magazine about Manuel Tolegian’s passing.  Upon reading about him, I thought to send a sympathy note to his wife.  I do believe I wrote the editor of the publication to get an address.

Araks Tolegian wrote me back and we exchanged a few letters.  I expressed my admiration for the Ladies Baking Lavash and she told me that there were prints still for sale.  I immediately bought one.  We had it framed at a local gallery and frame shop owned by the Zennedjian family.  The painting has been on our walls our homes ever since.

Manuel Jirair Tolegian was born on October 18, 1911 in Fresno, CA.  He passed away in Sherman Oaks, CA on August 4, 1983.  He was a childhood friend of William Saroyan and wrote some of the music for Saroyan’s play “Time of Your

Tolegian with Jackson and Charles Pollack
in 1930 Tumblr

Life.”  He moved to Los Angeles to study art at the Manual Arts High School where he met and became friends with Jackson Pollack.  Tolegian and Pollack went to New York to continue their education at The Art Students League.  They traveled back and forth from NYC to LA several times together. 

There was an article in the March 4, 1941 New York Times announcing a one man show of Tolegian’s work at the Associated American Artists Galleries on Fifth Avenue.  In the short article, William Saroyan was quoted: 

A number of things distinguish Tolegian’s work.  For one thing, he has natural strength which is all over the canvas.  It isn’t the consequence of subject matter or style; it is inevitable, out of the identity of Tolegian himself.  As I see it, it is a human strength.  That is, a strength notable and exceptional for its expansiveness and gentility.

The article stated, “Mr. Saroyan adds with whimsical appreciation:

He could paint a fly on a table and make it look sad and related to the matter of human life.  You would suspect the fly knew about things, and of course  in the painting the fly would.

Per Wikipedia, “painting Armenian Ladies Baking Lavash by Armenian American artist Manuel Tolegian was selected by U.S. President Gerald Ford to hang in the White House Bicentennial.”

When Araks Tolegian sent us the print of Ladies Baking Lavash, she also sent us two postcards of Tolegian’s still lifes.  We framed and hung those as well.  One of them was Peaches and Demitasse.  Recently, my wife found a much larger framed version of the Peaches and Demitasse on a local Facebook Marketplace.  She immediately bought it and have hung it on the same wall as Ladies Baking Lavash.

Someday, I would love to see the originals.

Farm Scene americangallery.wordpress.com

 

 

Much Ado About T-Shirts

 

     For many years, I have been musing on this topic or that and meandering about searching for topics esoteric, obscure, and plain old banal.  You would think in all those years I would have already written about something as lame as t-shirts, perhaps even several times. 

While I have referenced undershorts in a few letters, the favorite of mine being Changes and Armenians Invented Clothes, I have not broached the subject of t-shirts.  Well that ends here, today.

Why t-shirts and why now?

The answer is simple:  Facebook.

Huh?

Yes, Facebook. 

I have been inundated with a flurry of ads in the past few weeks for t-shirts. 

It seems that there are some remarkable breakthroughs made regarding this humble yet important and, sometimes, fashionable part of our wardrobes.  Through the use of better sewing technology, new varieties cotton, better designs, and, certainly, the crazy advances in both polys and esters which we all know are multiplied tenfold when melded into the miracle of polyesterization.  It is mind-boggling.

Actually, I am not sure if any of this is remotely true.  Nevertheless, it has to be from what I am reading in all these t-shirt advertisements from companies I have never heard of.  They are all claiming that their revolutionary t-shirts are softer, fit better, last longer, shrink less if even at all, and give the wearer an amazing look and feel. 

They all claim their t-shirts are less boxy and, golly, aren’t we all tired of boxy old-fashioned t-shirts.  Silly me, I always thought form fitting was not flattering to my one-pack ab.  They go on to say that the design makes bigger guys look slimmer and slimmer guys more… bigger.  (Some of you no doubt are wondering if these shirts have the same kind of effect on the female.. um… pectorals.  There was no mention of this though I am certain their scientists are hard at work on this as I write these words.)

I am certain that some kind of magic technology is happening here.  This is like the thermos bottle, one of the great inventions of mankind, which keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.  Both the thermos bottles and this new breed of t-shirts do this with no microchips or wires of any kind.  This is crazy science.  In medieval times, scientists working on things like this would have been labelled witches or wizards and burned at the stake.

Other than making bigger guys look trimmer, and scrawny guys look more buff, the ads all imply that everyone buying and wearing them will feel better about themselves.  I imagine the t-shirts will grow hair on bald heads, make grey hair darker, and make your children do better in school. 

How much are these t-shirts running for?  The firm that seems to advertise the most offers a variety of multi-packs.  Their 3-pack has a list price of $62.97 but has been marked down to $43.99 ($14.66 a shirt) and even offers an option to buy with four interest free installments of $11.  Never thought about buying t-shirts on installment. 

Of course, I looked on Amazon.  Oh my, there are countless offers from names you have heard of like Hanes, Jockey, Gildan, Carhartt, and Champion to names you have never heard of like Uni Clau, Goodthreads, and Pegeno.  There is also the Amazon Essentials Brand that is shaking up the clothing business.  The prices range from $3.80 for a basic Hanes to $20+.  The materials range from 100% cotton to cotton/poly blends to all synthetic materials.  There is a dizzying array that is hard to choose if you are just browsing. 

These ads that I have seen on Facebook makes it easy to buy t-shirts, that are probably good shirts, while avoiding the dizzying array on Amazon.  One of the companies True Classics has adopted the charitable donation model pioneered by Tom’s Shoes and then Bombas Stockings. 

Until this barrage of t-shirt ads, t-shirts were pretty much a commodity, practically a throwaway item, in my view.  I classified them in two categories.  There are t-shirts that are, basically, undergarments.  Unlike the 1950s, this class of t-shirts are only worn under other shirts, sweaters, or sweatshirts these days.  They used to come in any color and material you wanted as long as it was white and cotton.  Then there is the class of t-shirt that is the only shirt worn.  The primary top t-shirts are varied in both color and color.  They could be cotton, polyester, or a cotton/polyester mix and come in henna color you might imagine.

This is much ado about t-shirts.  Other than perhaps buying some Amazon Essentials tees when I am next in need, I probably will not alter my t-shirt buying habits.  For t-shirts that are the only shirt worn, I seem to be biased to those with University of Michigan logos.