Tumbling Like Alice

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
adamgoldberg

Z Channel. 

For my 44th birthday yesterday my father returned my youth to me.  Or me to it at least. Or the box that contained it. Or that enriched it anyway. The Theta Cable box we owned throughout the ‘70s and early '80s. Theta Cable, which Angelenos will remember, provided not only what I now realize is the greatest looking remote control ever, but the greatest movie station of all time – certainly of its time, when the alternative was  the decidedly more mainstream ON TV – geared more towards live sports and concert events – and less towards me. 

Z Channel had film festivals; you’d find them in your monthly guide, adorned also with articles by film critic and Z Channel regular Charles Champln. This is how I managed to see every James Bond  and Woody Allen film of the day. I’m fairly convinced this box is more than partly responsible for my movie obsession – and perhaps more importantly my first exposure to a bare tit to which I bore no relation. It revealed itself to me in Dustin Hoffman’s really pretty gritty Straight Time. I don’t know what the hell my father was thinking exactly, except I’m assuming all bets were off after the divorce, “fuck it, I have him 2 days a week, we’re watching Straight Time smoking Sherman cigarettes, I don’t care if he’s  7.”

That box also recalls my first brush with OCD. The box had to be absolutely razor sharp parallel to my lap or it made me a little fucking nuts. And in trying to recreate that perfect symmetry last night in order to document it, nostalgia was swiftly eclipsed by relapse. (44, incidentally, is the major OCD number in my pantheon of numerological superstitions.) 

But punching those buttons yesterday for the first time in so many years, hearing them pop, clicking it’s single switch, and running my finger along the tuning knob (I also dabble in erotic pulp fiction), I was returned to my tiny frame and my dad’s small but cool '70s-modern Brentwood condo, and to the thrill of discovering the thing which would continue to elicit so much joy (and frustration) in my life: movies. How responsible was this box for transforming my need  for approval to the live recreation of scenes from the Robby Benson basketball film, One on One– performed for my father, mother, and her boyfriend, when my dad picked me up for the weekend – and  was allowed entry only after he purchased a ticket?  How responsible is this box for the fact that I’ve been eye deep in the production and arduous completion of another independent directorial effort for the last year, which no matter how trying, no matter how nebulous their futures, have become an existential necessity, for better or worse, in my life? 

If life were just a goddamn Twilight Zone once and for all, the box, with its frayed and  disconnected cord, could complete the time warp and change the station on my plasma TV to images of my sleeping self, age 9, curled up on the floor with a blanket, using any excuse I could to stay up past 9, even if it meant watching public television (channel 6 on the box), my father on the couch behind me, Masterpiece Theater in front of me…and not really sleeping, pretending to sleep, and getting accidentally educated. 

pentax 67 polaroid 108 theta cable z channel adam goldberg ripvanperiwinkle ocd ob-la-da life goes on