Coonridge Digest: Just numbers

Greetings from the Ridge.

Ed Leviathan was the fattest man in Coonridge. He never had a scale that could measure his magnitude so about once a year he’d weigh his truck empty down at the grain elevator, then climb in to the cab and weigh it again. The act of subtraction marked Ed’s annual addition.

Oh, I don’t fault the man for holding the town record for belt size. It’s what he did about the problem. The father of three overweight kids and a wife who carried her share of the family load, Ed skipped trading trucks one year and bought himself a freezer to put on the back porch. This assured him that his already beefy brood would never run out of steaks, chops, and ice cream.

Instead of giving himself some slight chance of overcoming the onslaught of an early death, he purposely stockpiled enough groceries to guarantee his early demise, which he eventually accomplished in his mid-forties.

We buried him on a cold March morning as the Coonridge choir sang "How Great Thou Art."

Of the 250 million television sets in the US, 15 million are of the "giant" variety and the market researcher iSuppli predicts that we’ll sell another 7 million this year alone. We’re like a fat man who compounds his problem by buying a bigger fridge.

Super Bowl Sunday is the Christmas of big-screen TV manufacturers and more than a couple local households spent last week trying to clear out a spot in the family room big enough to the clan’s new …and very large…arrival.

Think with me a minute…is there a single thing that the average American family needs less than a larger TV set? Does the typical household need yet one more reason to give up exercise, abandon meaningful conversation, give their kids a sense of belonging, and flatten their bottoms to an even broader perspective?

And what in God’s name can you see on a big screen that you can’t see on a small one?

The truth: Herb and I visited the Pauley’s last weekend and we arrived at the tail end of an Illini basketball game. Jim Pauley is a do-or-die Illinois fan and he was polite enough to ask if we minded his finishing the game. Herb leaped at the chance to avoid intelligent conversation for another 30 minutes, and I didn’t mind at all. After all, Jim asked politely and the spaghetti wasn’t done yet. It was my first experience with big screen TV.

I soon discovered that you need a small auditorium to actually watch these giant screens comfortably. In the normal living room you have to actually twist your head from one side to the other to catch the flight of a full court pass. A Kodak commercial came on featuring whales. The creature’s nose was sticking out the west wall while its tale was in the kitchen. I’m not kidding. Then if you move your chair back far enough for comfortable viewing, you’re left with the same perspective as if you had a regular-sized TV. What have we gained here?

The least expensive giants start at around $650 and some really spiffy models easily top $10,000. For another $4,000 you can amaze your friends with the "wow" factor and have the screen drop out of the ceiling. Wow.

And again, what have we gained?

Is there a soul among us who wakes up in the morning, stretches his legs out onto the floor and thinks, "You know, my life was better yesterday because the Super Bowl was six foot wide"? Or perhaps, "I can’t believe the time I wasted simply talking to my family when we could have been watching a four-foot-tall version of American Idol." Other than weight, what have we gained?

Numbers are so boring 42 inch screen, 50 inch, 60 inch…not nearly as interesting as the NBA playoffs on a Dell 42 inch Plasma TV on sale for just $2549. Numbers. Just boring numbers: To keep one child in India alive for one day: 22 cents. Ten children for one day: $ 2.22. Ten children for one year: $80. The number of children fed for one day for the cost of the Dell Plasma TV: 11,586.

But I guess those are just numbers. Besides, a manufacturer recently announced a prototype plasma set that you can pick up for a measly $60,000. It’s big enough you could show cartoons to an entire third-world village while they await the arrival of the burial squads.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.