Cracked Screens & Character Witnesses: A Morning at the Best Buy
This morning, because my YouTube was set to “Auto Play”, I saw a video of Tucker Carlson. Yes, THE Tucker Carlson. In the video, he was pontificating on many things, one of which is how he doesn’t pay attention to the internet because he thinks it’s bad for people and then he gets confused when people hate him when he is in public. I understand why people hate him in public. He is a loathsome figure. The most punchable face in America. But that one idea, how the internet is actually bad for us, stuck in my craw. So I decided, for one morning, to not really look at my phone.
Now, as the three loyal readers of this blog know, I have recently moved back to Brooklyn, New York. I am currently furnishing an apartment and I decided that I would get a TV. Yes. Buy a TV. Purchase a TV. Become a “TV person”. Use my economic stimulus money to stimulate the TV economy.
“What are you doing tonight?” people will say. “Well, I guess I’m going to watch some shows on the TV.” I’ll respond. Then they will pat me on the back and say, “Ah yes, the good ol’ TV.”
“Oh, have you seen this popular show?” other people will ask. “No, I haven’t seen that one,” I’ll say back. “But I’ll make sure to watch it soon on the TV and then later we can talk about it and other shows that are also on the TV.”
This thought is scary to me, really. I have visions of dying alone, withering away in front of the dim flickering lights of the Sunday Night Special (does that exist?). The purchase of a TV the first step toward a miserable and lonely demise. Nevertheless, I went to Best Buy and purchased a TV.
When I got it unboxed and pressed power, this was the result.
The screen was cracked! I can’t watch TV on a cracked screen!
So I called the Best Buy and arranged to take it back to the store this morning- the same morning I was listening to THE Tucker Carlson and not looking at my phone- to exchange it for a non-cracked one.
As I sat in the back of the Uber car, TV box pressed against my knees, I put my phone face down.
Let me tell you, it was a BE-autiful morning in Brooklyn, New York. The window was down and the autumn colors were saturating my vision- much as the Best Buy Guy had told me the colors on my new television would saturate my vision when I looked at it. “It’s really good for sports,” the Best Buy Guy said.
On this Brooklyn morning, I saw people coming out of front doors, dogs on leash, taking their first outside breath of the day. A cleansing of the lung. I saw movers lugging, children running and adults vaping. I saw the faded green tree sculptures at the Southern end of Prospect Park, which remind me of post Cold War Germany for some reason. I saw it all in such vivid color.
When I arrived at the Best Buy, a store that is exclusively devoted to the buying, selling and upgrading of screens, I thought to myself, “How ironic that I would find myself here, in this Screen Palace, on the morning I was not going to stare at screens.”
After dragging the semi-heavy box across the length of the store to the Customer Service desk, the employee behind the counter was processing my request. Suddenly, I heard a commotion to my left.
“Um, excuse me?!!” someone exclaimed. “I have a technical emergency here! Is anyone here to help me with my technical emergency?! Where’s the Geek Squad?! I need the Geek Squad!”
This person presented as an older, Caucasian woman (I could be wrong but this is what seemed). If I didn’t know any better, I might describe her as what is commonly known as a “Karen” type. Underneath her designer glasses, her face was scrunched with distress, disdain and displeasure and, I don’t mean to diss her (or maybe I do), but if the Geek Squad were a real team of superheroes, she would have been their damsel.
A young employee emerged from behind a wall to help, shoulders slumped over and bracing for impact. As these things go, their exchange was tedious and I, pacing back and forth near the counter and NOT checking out by checking out the internet, was witness to it all.
“What is taking so long here?!” she barked at the employee. “I ordered a television yesterday that isn’t going to arrive until THE SECOND and that’s unacceptable. I’ve simply GOT to return it and I have a grand baby waiting for me at home right now. I don’t have all day.”
“Um, ma’am, we’re working on it.”
“Well work on it harder. At what store can you not just cancel an order?”
At the Best Buy, apparently, ma’am.
I was astounded at both the tone of her comments and the fact that ANYONE in their right mind with the personality traits that were being displayed in front of me was allowed to reproduce and that their children, who I presume carry some of those same personality traits, were ALSO allowed to reproduce (she had a grand baby!). What a world.
“Let me talk to the manager!” she finally said as if she were auditioning to star in a viral YouTube video. “This is unsatisfactory service! I have a technical emergency!”
All of it made me want to ignore it and escape the utter pointless cruelty of the present moment, unfolding right here in front of me, the dialogues of a dying empire. I wanted to scroll to avoid the doom. But, following Tucker’s advice, I refrained.
“I should say something,” the still small voice inside of me uttered, and the situation ALMOST got to a boiling over point where I would have been forced. But it didn’t quite. And I didn’t quite. I merely let it unfold. I feel like sort of a coward, really, between you and I, reader. But that’s what happened. I simply witnessed. I by-stood.
Eventually, the manager came, the commotion died down and I got my brand spanking new replacement TV.
I packed the new TV into the back of another Uber car, this one larger, this one driven by a man named Uche, who dutifully helped me get it into the back of his handicapped-accessible (handicap strapped?) van. He wore black, velvety, laceless Vans slip ons with buckles and he spoke at loud volume on a pair of wireless headphones. When I first sat down, I thought he was talkin’ to me:
ME: You talkin’ to me?
UCHE: (motions to wireless headphones in ears) No.
ME: (goes back to staring out window with hand on TV) Cool.
Uche was on the phone. And boy was he ever. As it went, he was having an impassioned conversation about none other than gender roles! Here is a paraphrase of what he said. Content warning: RIGID gender roles and misogyny ahead. His monologue was accompanied with more wild hand gestures.
UCHE: No no no man! No! See women, man, women not as strong as men man! No No. Not in a physical sense! No no. Women were taken from the rib of man! Out of the rib of man. So men, man? Men are strong. And it’s true! It’s true! Add a man to a situation? That situation has changed!
ME: ( in the backseat, thinking of all the ways men have made situations worse followed by the consciousness that I went to a liberal arts college lol)
UCHE: (continuing) Adam and Eve! Think of Adam and Eve! Think of King Solomon! Oh Solomon! Think of him! Think of that king. That king is the wisest man in the whole Holy Bible. Wisest man. He was a wise man, man. Smart. People come to Solomon near and far to ask his wisdom. That’s men. Wise and smart like Solomon.
ME: (thinking “religion really is the opium of the masses” followed by the consciousness that I went to liberal arts college lol)
UCHE: So men are strong. Period.
Just then, Uche got another phone call from who I presume to be his wife. He took it and his voice changed.
UCHE: Hi honey!
UCHE’S WIFE: (to a child) Put your socks on! (To Uche) Hi. Will you be home soon?
UCHE: Soon. Yes. Soon. Good bye.
Uche hung up the phone. We sat in silence for a few minutes. I was chewing on my cheeks, considering whether I wanted to “get into it” here in the Uber. We both said nothing. He helped me unload the TV from his van.
As I was leaving, I said to him “You are such a strong man helping me unload this TV!”
He looked at me with a look where I think he was wondering whether I was gay.
“Have a good day, man,” he said.
I once again noticed his velvety, black laceless Vans with buckles.
When I got to my apartment, I plugged in this brand new replacement television. My non-screen time was over, I decided. I had seen enough.
When I turned it on, however, almost immediately, the news that Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges appeared crisply on the new screen, each color of the news graphic shimmering from the hi-def screen, just as the Best Buy Guy had told me it would. This screen was not cracked. The message was loud and clear.
I am an active participant in my reality, I have to remind myself today. Or, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers say, “This life is more than just a read through.” There is no fourth wall, no imaginary boundary between actor and audience. We are all actors and we are all audience but most of all we are all players in this Squid game (I’ve seen that!) What I am saying is that we have absolutely no choice but to look away from our screens and feel one another and try to impact the game. As fucked up as all of us are. As fucked up as our society is. We are in it and it’s bloody and we’re all we’ve got.
What I’m saying is that I’m going to go to this protest in the public square in about an hour because it seems like the only logical thing to do at a time like this.
Maybe I’ll see you there and we can talk about a show.
Or how Tucker Carlson is the most full of shit.
Or maybe we can not talk at all and just hold each other in the darkness.
