Friday night at the gym while exercising my triceps on a machine, I found myself looking at a colorized episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. “Looking at it” because I wasn’t precisely watching it — instead, I was admiring how much better colorization had gotten over the years (it looked quite natural) and wondering how I felt about this and whether or not it would be somehow better if it were still in black and white. Had this colorization damaged the original, or had it opened up its possibilities for younger generations?

Just then, a voice next to me said, “Excuse me, sir, are you watching this?” It was the fit young black woman from the front desk. 

“Oh, no,” I said truthfully, determined not to show my awkward delight at her nearness.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s the Dick Van Dyke Show,” I said. “Colorized.” 

She looked at me blankly.

“It used to be in black and white. From the 1960s. That’s Dick Van Dyke,” I pointed. “And that’s Mary Tyler Moore.”

No recognition.

“And that’s Carl Reiner. I met him a couple of times. He died recently.”

“Oh.”

“He was a major comic actor. And movie director.”

No recognition.

“Rob Reiner is his son.”

Nothing. Now I understood how my father felt when he would point out old timey actors from the 1800s or something in old movies.

“Rob Reiner. He was a major sitcom star, does a lot of character acting on TV still. Pretty significant film director….” I was fishing, then landed on it! “He directed The Princess Bride.”

“Oh! Cool!”

Finally, even though separated by 35 years, we had a shared cultural understanding. She asked if she could change the channel.

“Sure.”

While I resumed my workout, she flicked around every single one of five thousand and six channels, not finding anything. 

“See, this is why I canceled cable,” I volunteered. “Five thousand and six channels, and still nothing you want to watch.”

Finally she landed on something. It was a cooking show with a celebrity chef — probably the celebrity chef.

“My company is doing a project that involves him,” I said.

“REALLY?!?!?” she asked in a hushed but exclamatory tone. “Are you going to get to meet him?” 

“Maybe,” I offered honestly. I mean, there were no such plans, and he wasn’t flying in for his bit, but one never knows, right?

“I love him!” she said. 

Catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror, I increased my weights. Now I had somehow assumed my father’s role in pointlessly naming faded stars from distant ages. Meanwhile, I regularly use the Shazam app on my phone to identify every song that gets played at this gym.

This encounter also cleared up for me a mystery:  why every single TV in the damned place is always tuned to the Cooking Channel. Until now, I’d thought it was intended as perverse motivation:  that we should look at all these fattening foodstuffs and work out harder! 

Now I realized it was the reflection of a young woman’s ardor.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2021 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.