Turn my TV OFF!!!

[00:00:00] Go out to la. [00:00:04] Somebody need to do a song for la. Straight up. [00:00:13] Hello, my name is Elaine and I'll be your tour guide through South Central Los Angeles. Look, count my nose. Smoke up. I'm from California, where you from? So what? I'm from California. Cal. California. California. This is Los Angeles. Well, where we going? West again. I could go on and on and then we'd watch Soul Train. And by the time Soul Train went off, it was time to go outside. TV was a staple. And then something changed in 1982. That's when greatness arrived. [00:00:48] Y' all go listen to 12 cows episode. Watching TV ain't the same episode. [00:00:56] Great episode, Dope episode. And he pretty much tells you his journey, his experience with watching television and TV shows that he watched. [00:01:07] The origin story of, of. Of, you know, tv. [00:01:13] Like, you know, what, what basically what we witnessed and what we went through watching TV back then, just to share a bit of it, because I'm gonna mention it in my episode, that TV used to cut off at a certain time of that night. [00:01:32] And we didn't have that many selections, you know. [00:01:37] And if you go listen to his episode, he's gonna tell you about the time that TV went off and what was being done at that time. [00:01:49] And I remember, yeah, it would just go to snow. If y' all know what snow is, probably a lot of kids around this generation don't know what snow means when it pertains to the television. [00:02:03] And that was just, it was just nothing. [00:02:06] You know, television was off. [00:02:09] One of the major indicators for me was the show mash. [00:02:16] Mash for me was the last show to come on before TV went off. Now he mentioned there was like American sign off type of thing. I vaguely remember that, but that is a true thing. And when I mean that, like, I don't remember exactly how it went, but I do remember it and shout out to my grandparents when I used to stay the night at their house during a weekday. Cause my school was in walking distance from there. [00:02:55] But their room was connected to the bathroom. So the way the house is set up is you walk in, there's a living room, the living room and dining room is together, small living room and dining room. Then you have the kitchen and then you have the two rooms connected by one bathroom. Now this was before they added onto the house, because they did add onto the house and they added an extra with his own personal bathroom. [00:03:21] But prior to that it was just a two bedroom house with a backyard, a nice size backyard by the way, and a garage, nice size Garage with a driveway. [00:03:35] So there's only one bathroom in the house, and it's in between both rooms. [00:03:41] And one room is my aunt and my cousin, her son, young. [00:03:46] Right. [00:03:48] And then on the opposite side of the bathroom is my grandparents. [00:03:54] And they used to smoke cigarettes. Heavy. [00:03:57] I mean, it was a cloud of smoke walking through that motherfucker. And it was just heavy, heavy nicotine. [00:04:06] It was just crazy going to that bathroom in the middle of the night, which I thought was real late. I mean, you know, at that age, I'm in my single digits. [00:04:15] Yes. So, you know, it was. [00:04:19] Well, no, I was somewhere around. Anywhere between. [00:04:24] I would say the oldest. I probably was was probably like 10 or 11, somewhere around there. [00:04:30] I remember because I went to school, elementary school. I went to the fourth and fifth grade at that particular elementary school. So it was between fourth and fifth grade. [00:04:45] And TV used to be off sometimes. Like I said, I knew MASH was on because there were some times that. Where I kind of stayed up late when I was able to a little bit, wasn't that long, or when I went to go use the restroom and they would be watching mash. Then I also know that was the end of it. Because when I would go use the bathroom after MASH went off, they would be sleep and the TV would be. It would be the snow shit. [00:05:13] And then 12 calories. Right? Things did take a change. [00:05:17] See, I too, was, you know, eating cereal, getting that big ass bowl of cereal kicks. Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, raising Bran, like the basic shit. We even had Corn Flakes and used to douse that shit with sugar. [00:05:39] Cheerios, Honey Nut, Cheerios. [00:05:41] And we used to watch Saturday morning cartoons. [00:05:44] Saturday morning cartoons was a specialty. That was everything to us. [00:05:50] Because not only did you get Saturday morning cartoons, but you got whatever. The latest toy advertisement on television, it was all kind of shit. Soccer boppers, the WWF pillow, wrestler joints. Those were classic. It's hard. Like, those are collector's items, you know, I remember the Ultimate Warrior. They had the Ultimate Warrior, Big Boss, Big Boss Man, Hulk Hogan. [00:06:22] Who else? Was it Andre the Giant? Was it Andre? No, I'm not. I don't think it was Andre the Giant. I could be wrong, though, but I remember those three for sure. Oh, Macho Man, Macho Man. I remember Macho Man, Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan, Big Boss Man. [00:06:38] And I'm not sure who else it was, but those were classic. Cause you could actually sleep with those. You know what I'm saying? They were pillows, but you were also. They were miniature, but they was Big enough and you was young, so them niggas wasn't that much smaller than you, but you were wrestling the motherfucker. We grew up off of wrestling, nigga. We grew up off of the era where we didn't know that shit was fake, nigga. Wwf, by the way. Wrestling. [00:07:05] But, yeah, I grew up off of Saturday morning cartoons. For sure. I grew up off of cartoons. I am a cartoon and a video game, baby. A lot of that shit started off, maybe not cartoons, because Looney Tunes was there before I was. I think Looney Tunes was there before I was born. Right? But we also had, like. [00:07:24] I grew up in Atari, to Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Super Nintendo. Like, remember? I think I had a Dreamcast. I bought my own Dreamcast. That shit was like $100 or something. Like, that Dreamcast was fire. [00:07:43] But anyhow, it did change. And we did have the wooden box tv. We had the big TV that went out and then you put a smaller TV on top. [00:07:56] He mentioned watching programs with family. [00:08:00] Yeah. Even though I came up in a broken home, one thing my mom made a cool thing to do with us was on Fridays, not every Friday. I would say two to three. Friday. Maybe two to three Fridays out of the month. Where she pick us up from school. We heading home. Crazy traffic on that 10 freeway. This one, we stayed on the west side, but it was a tradition, now that I think about it. But she used to go to the same Chinese food spot over there by the original Roscoe's down the street. [00:08:39] Lucy's is across the diagonal of it. Is it Lucy's or Lucille's? It's Lucy's Mexican spot, baby boy, I forgot what other movies. [00:08:51] It's a part of that establishment. But then you had Roscoe's Chicken Waffles down. Down the street. Like a block down. But on this side, it's off of Pico and. [00:09:05] What's that? Why, that's not Washington. Pico and Washington. Pico and La Brea. Pico and La Brea. [00:09:13] Right hand side. It was the Chinese food store there. [00:09:16] And we used to always get the. [00:09:19] We used to get the house fried rice. We used to get the house fried rice. Orange chicken, beef and broccoli. Sometimes we got the pork. The bar, not the barbecue pork, but it was sweet and sour pork. [00:09:33] And she would. And that's where I learned it from. She would cut it up and put it inside the house fryer. Rice be fire, my nigga. Egg rolls, of course, the. [00:09:44] The cookies. [00:09:48] And she used to get that. And we used to go To Blockbuster or Hollywood Videos? Either one. Either one. We used to go to blog versus Hollywood videos. [00:09:57] That's where I would go. I would go get. [00:10:01] See, I watched scary movies. [00:10:03] But whatever popular movie came out, you know, 30 days prior to, you know, whenever movies, Whenever movies went to vhs, it was a big thing, right? [00:10:16] And you had to hurry up and get there, man. Cause it was a thing people used to. Blockbuster used to be the shit, man. Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, that used to be the shit right there. So, you know, a lot of people, I mean, we were going to the movies, but a lot of us didn't go to the movies like that all the time. [00:10:38] You know what I'm saying? And for the people that didn't go to the movies, they waited until it came out on vhs, you know, and you know, they already know it. We when they invented the double VCR joint, that's when niggas used to dub movies. [00:10:56] So we used to go to Blockbuster and we used to dub it and so we didn't have to go back and go get it. But one thing that I used to do is when I went to Blockbuster in Hollywood Video is I would go always to go see what scary movies came out and what wrestling, major wrestling event. So I watched all my. [00:11:19] I've probably seen less than five WrestleManias. [00:11:24] Probably less than. [00:11:26] I would say five, five to seven somewhere around there. [00:11:31] Five or seven WrestleManias and then. And. Or not, I guess I can't say andor. Cause I've seen a lot of, you know, I was fortunate enough to get a couple of. Not personally, but I've been over people houses where they had the pay per view joint going. Cause that shit was like 60 bucks. [00:11:51] But you know, I would get all my, you know, whatever huge wrestling event that came out, I would go get that. You know what I'm saying? I would go get that and watch the matches. [00:12:04] Yeah, and I used to get the greatest matches. [00:12:08] I used to be really into wrestling. I fell off like a little bit after the Attitude era. When was it? [00:12:17] CM Punk, when it started getting to that era. [00:12:22] Yeah, I wasn't fucking with it after that, but yeah, and then we used to get. [00:12:29] Put it like this. It was just me, my younger brother and my mom. [00:12:35] And so we will always pick a movie that we gonna like. A popular movie that come out, you know, that came out that we will all watch together. [00:12:44] Then, you know, it'd be shit like. Then life between love and hate. [00:12:49] Movies like that, anything boomerang, anything that came out on VHS and Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. We was on it. And then like I said, I would get my scary movie or wrestling. My mom wasn't fucking with neither one, you know what I'm saying? And the one thing that we always had to do was rewind that, motherfuckers. So we did watch certain movies together, but we also watch movies separately. [00:13:16] I used to watch game shows because when I got to chickenpox in the fifth grade, I was sent home early. And that's when I first got introduced to. [00:13:28] What's his name? I want to say he's called Ben. [00:13:33] I always think of his name after and I'm probably not going to think of his name this episode, but y' all remember. [00:13:41] Damn, I can't think of his name. [00:13:45] Oh man, his show was crazy. I want to say his name started with Ben. [00:13:50] I could be wrong, but you know, I can't think of it right now. Anyhow, that introduced me to Jenny Jones, which introduced me to Ricky Lake, Montel Williams, Gerardo Garage, whatever the nigga name was. [00:14:07] Oprah. Yeah, definitely Oprah. I used to watch all these shows, man, and, and I, and I got, you know, I got addicted to this shit. And I remember on a Saturday night, it was either a Friday or a Saturday night. [00:14:23] I can't really recall. I want to say it was a Saturday night. And see, the thing was, I wasn't much of a Saturday Night Live person, but I used to watch it like just falling asleep because it would come on late. [00:14:35] But one thing, you know, one of those nights where I'm just up late, I'm not sleepy at all. I remember used to come on at 11 o' clock and that was the Jerry Springer Show. I remember one of the first episodes that I watched was these. I think they were women. [00:14:49] They were women and they were fighting with these big ass boxing gloves, like these oversized life size boxing gloves. [00:14:57] And that shit was just hilarious. It was just so captivating and entertaining and it was crazy. And then I didn't find out until I was an adult that this shit was a script, you know, like all this shit is fake. [00:15:16] Yeah. So, you know, and then I used again. I'm still watching cartoons. I still watch cartoons, you know, Like, I don't think I'll ever. [00:15:28] I don't think I ever get away from that at all. You know, that's the shit that I just grew up off of, man. It was. [00:15:42] You know, cartoons is just special to me, man. It's just. And I'm a creative person and I think that's what it is. [00:15:48] But I Used to love. I used to love coming home from school and watching. [00:15:56] What was this shit? Tiny Toons, Animaniacs shit like that. Pinky in the Brain, SNCC at Night. Erie, Indiana. [00:16:08] Dare. [00:16:10] Like, it was so much. Doug. [00:16:14] It was a lot. [00:16:16] It was. It was. It was a lot of. [00:16:19] It was a lot of classics back then. A lot of classics back then. You know what I mean? [00:16:28] So when. [00:16:32] When 12 cows said things started to change. [00:16:35] No lie, it did. Because he mentioned cnn, right? [00:16:43] And that's one thing. [00:16:47] But one thing that you gotta mention on this one, and that is this was the ultimate game changer. For real. [00:17:00] And the ultimate game changer was Cartoon Network, which was the first network to have 247 cartoons. [00:17:15] Nigga, what? [00:17:20] 24 7? [00:17:23] That's unheard of. It was just new, you know what I'm saying? Like, Changed the game. [00:17:35] It changed. It changed the game. And we never recover from it. We get. I get to watch my favorite. [00:17:44] I get to watch my favorite cartoons of all time. [00:17:50] Like, not. Not all day. Because they had a schedule. [00:17:54] And that was. That was the thing. So cable TV took over. Cable TV was the new thing, you know? Cause now you're dealing more with more raunchier entertainment. At first, we just had the regular networks. Channel 2, 3. Cause 3 was the channel that you had to play the video game on. You had to change the channel to three and hook up your equipment and play the game like that. Yeah, 2, 3, 4, I think 5 was NBC. No, 6. No, 7, I think was there 9, 11 and. And. And 13, I think. But I don't think 13 came until later. I think it went up to 11. [00:18:35] And then after that, when you got cable, Channel 8 for us was the USA Network. And that's where wrestling used to come on. And Murder She Wrote and shit like that. They put some old shows on. Well, they wouldn't. They were still. They were still vintage shows. Yo, my granny used to watch Murder She Roll in the Heat of the Night. All that old shit. [00:18:58] All that old shit. [00:19:02] I'm still thinking about that damn talk show that I can't think of that came on during the daytime. That. The first one that put me on. I'm gonna try to get that shit before the episode is over. [00:19:13] But, yeah, that changed the game, dog. Cartoons. 24 7. You had HBO, you had Cinemax. [00:19:21] And then that's when. [00:19:24] Shout out to one of my episodes, called one of my latest episodes. Whether this is coming out before or after with the, you know, the. The Goody Bag stash. [00:19:34] They had porn on there, but you had to have a code or you had to have what they called a chip. [00:19:42] So a chip is a device that you put in the cable to where you get all the channels. And that was major. Like, if you had all the channels back in the 90s, nigga, you was damn near popular. Cause now you get free Tyson fights, you get the free WrestleMania events, you get to watch all the movies that's on these Cinemax, hbo. Because they had different packages for that, you know, espn. But I don't even think ESPN was like cracking like that back then. They has. I think they had Sports center, but it wasn't like. It's definitely not how it is now. You have more interviews and stuff like that, but it wasn't cracking like that. [00:20:31] Yeah, and those channels in the channels kept getting much bigger and more and more and more and more. Pause if I needed to say. It went around and bigger. But now it's got to the point where people no longer have cable. [00:20:47] Some people do. And it's not even cable anymore, technically, is streaming. You know what I mean? And a reason why is because you have to pay for. They have like four or five different packages. And these four or five different packages give you access to different channels. [00:21:04] And the problem is, this is how you. If you ever get a call from these streaming companies and cable companies and they pressure you and say, hey, we're gonna offer you $300 to come back with us and try our Internet out and all this other bullshit, just be like, look, the day I come back is the day I get to choose my channels. And they never really can answer that. They'll come close and they'll be like, well, we do have a package where you get to select. No, I need to pick every single channel that I wanna watch. Because while I'm getting charged for Korean Barbecue Channel, it didn't really be like that. It'd be some foreign channel that they put on your. In your cable package that you paying for. And you don't even watch the goddamn channel. [00:21:48] Me, I'm only going between less than a. Less than. I ain't gonna say less than. But it's only certain channels I'm a go to. Yeah, I'm a movie guy. So I'm watching, you know, whatever movie that might come on on a Saturday and ain't got shit to do. And usually Cinemax, hbo, whatever other channels is called. I can't think of them right now. [00:22:12] And you will watch them there. [00:22:16] But for the most part. Give me. Give me like espn, give me the sport. You want the sports channels. You do want the movie channels. You know, I'm saying no, lie to that. You want the movie channels for sure. [00:22:29] But you only weren't. You only want certain amount. You don't need access to 600 channels. Cause you go, that's too many damn channels. You're not gonna watch everything. It's impossible. You know, we used to record a lot of shit too on our vcr. We used to record our stories, shows, movies, award shows, for sure. Basketball games was always a thing. [00:22:54] That was another TV experience that my cousin, myself, my brother, we used to record Laker games, Chicago Bulls games. Cause we had the WGN network. [00:23:04] We used to record basketball commercials, classic ones. [00:23:08] We used to record highlight. We used to make our own highlight tapes. You know, that's the highlight of me watching TV between, you know, cartoons. I think I had an era where I think one of the best eras of watching TV for me was definitely in the 90s. And now with Yoantv raps the Basement, you know. [00:23:26] You know, when we would have trl, when we would have the world premiere, World War premiere premiere, like that shit right there. Like certain artists would shut it down. You already know the Goat mj that come out with a video. It was like. [00:23:43] It'd be like Friday Night Lights in the South. Everybody's shutting shit down. We got it. We need the wife. Because he made many movies, you know what I'm saying? When I used to do the countdowns and stuff like that, that was major. I grew up watching hip hop and R B videos because these videos painted the picture to the lyrics. You know, they. These used to be many. They used to have actors and actresses in these motherfucking videos. They had a budget back then, you know what I mean? [00:24:11] But he's right, it did change. [00:24:13] Now you fast forward. We just got. Marcy's been wanting this picture frame TV for ever since they invented it. We finally got one, you know, and I love it too, because I get to. You get to change the art on it. [00:24:27] But we've only watched. [00:24:30] I mean, I watch my sports on there, but I probably play my video game on that TV more than anything. [00:24:36] I watch my Laker games on there. I watch some football on there. We watch the TV show. I watch welcome to Derry. [00:24:45] It's random. Marcy is. Has watched TV on there. My daughter has watched TV on there. [00:24:52] Something on Netflix. My son. [00:24:55] Hold on. [00:24:57] My headset came out. [00:24:59] My son. My son has played his video game and watched TV on there. So it's getting utilized, you know what I'm saying? [00:25:09] But we don't watch our tv, like, especially our bedroom tv. Our bedroom TV is like an afterthought now. Ever since we got the TV downstairs in the living room, it's like the TV upstairs is just, what about me? What happened to me? [00:25:24] You know, it's not. We're not cutting on as much, but even prior to that, we wasn't really watching. There was shows that me and my wife watched together, you know, but we don't watch a lot of shows together. We'll find a show here and there to watch together from time to time. But, you know, other than that, then the TV would be utilized by me, and that was like, again, sports and video games she would watch. When her shows would come back after being off for a season or something like that, then she will go to Netflix or she'll watch Hallmark, those Hallmark specials around Christmas time in December and November, you know, so it's like we don't watch TV as much. I don't think a lot of people watch TV as much anymore. And a lot of people don't even do cable. Like, all this shit is just turned into streaming. And what streaming has turned into is just. [00:26:15] It gives you the opportunity to watch tv. Now you get to watch TV if you got an iPad, if you got a cell phone, you got a laptop. [00:26:23] It's so many different other devices, you. Hell, even the. [00:26:27] The VR headsets, niggas is watching TV on there. The meta glasses. Like, there's so many different options of watching your entertainment. I probably watch majority of, like, interviews, movies, TV shows, shit like that. I'm watching a tubi series by some cats from out here. Y' all pretty much seen them. [00:26:52] Y' all seen them on, you know, online before. [00:26:59] I can't think of his name right now, but his brand name is to the Max. [00:27:05] But they got a to be series. [00:27:10] I don't know if it's called. I don't know if it's a series anthropology or something like that, but they dropped one not too long ago and they drop every week. They got three episodes out now. It's called Laugh and they got, you know, three episodes is entertaining, you know what I'm saying? But I've watched all three episodes on my phone. You know, a lot of shit that I watch on Netflix or whatever streaming service I got, I watch it on my phone. Have I watched shit on my tv? Yes. But for the most part, like, Stranger Things has been between my. My bedroom tv, my dining room TV and my phone, but I share, you know, most of the time I'm watching shit is on my phone. I don't have an iPad, I got a VR headset, but I have yet to like really use it. But no. And then there's times where I don't watch TV all day. [00:28:08] I'm watching YouTube or something like that on my phone. [00:28:12] So like TV, yeah, it has changed. And that's because it went from being regulated, excuse me, being regulated and to just over consumption of just too much shit. It's just too many different things. Even if you get a streaming, you sign up for one of these streaming services or whatever, like you still have access to everything, even to movies that's still in the theaters. [00:28:44] So it's like we are, it's just, you know, the movie theaters, they hurting, the cable companies is hurting. They gonna get you some way somehow. They gonna, you know, hike up the price of the Internet and it's just. They gonna get you some way somehow. But yeah, TV is not like how it used to be. It's not, it's not. I think the last time we had an event has been related to sports. [00:29:17] Kdot, super bowl, we watched that on the tv. We all surrounded around that. That was the moment. The Dodgers, World Series, majority of that I watched on the tv. Some of it I watched on my phone. [00:29:31] Yeah, when it came to that college football championship, I watched that on the phone. [00:29:37] You know, some of the NFL playoff matchups was between my phone and television. When in the 90s everything was strictly television. You had to have a TV to watch it. You had to, you know. So yeah, things have changed when they space goes coast to coast. When that first came out, that changed the game. That was a fucking game changer right there. But also Cartoon Network was a fucking game changer, man. I think Cartoon Network gotta be in the top three all time of game changer of television. Gotta be and shout out to ridiculousness one of the long lasting reruns of all time. That's standing next to the Waynes brothers, Jamie Foxx and the Martin show. [00:30:23] Also the Office. [00:30:27] Absolutely. We got some shit that was, that's been on the Cosby show for a minute was doing reruns until they shut that down. [00:30:39] Yeah, times just changed man. And TV ain't like how it used to be. It's just not. It's just not. [00:30:46] But you know, this was good. This was good. Again, I will go check out 12 Kyle's episode so he can, you know, let you know about, you know, his journey with television, but that was definitely my journey with television. You know, it involved VHS tapes. You know, it involved pay per view. [00:31:10] You know, that's classic right there within itself. It involved having another TV on top of a TV just to watch. [00:31:18] Involved what you call it, Def Comedy Jam In Living Color. Staples in my house. [00:31:28] Seriously, those two shows alone were like staples in my house, so. [00:31:36] But now I consume most of my content on my iPhone. That's just what it is. Times has changed.