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My biggest entertainment successes

I was the first one on my block to watch an episode of The Office. Beat that.

By Bert Ehrmann

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Fort Wayne Reader

2004-06-28

Last issue, I introduced the world to my biggest entertainment blunders. Some of these bad choices included watching bad television instead of good, not watching Seinfeld on NBC, and being seduced by the power of special effects.

If you've read that column in its entirety (and by this point who hasn't) you might think of me a little less than before. I'm sure that when you describe previous Dangerous Universe columns to your friends it's in glowing terms - recognition of the genius of Bert. But I felt that I had to open myself up a little bit even if it meant showing people that I am all but human.

Well, you can start thinking of me as your better again because this time around I present my biggest entertainment successes.


My Biggest Entertainment Successes:

I saw the movie Ronin in the theater. Apparently, after looking at the business Ronin pulled in at the box office, not a lot of people went to the theaters to watch this movie. But I did. And I am a better person for it.

I can also proudly announce that I've never seen an entire episode of Friends. Though I may have inadvertently watched a minute or two of this cancer on television (damn Tivo), I can honestly say that I've never ever watched an episode in its entirety. And since I'm a television guy (I'm up to seven hours a day) it is a bit odd that I don't watch Friends just so I can tell people I do and to fill out my sitcom scorecard. After all, who wants to be left out at the water cooler conversations at work?

It's more than luck missing Friends; it's a lifestyle choice. Some people follow the crowd and watch what everyone else is watching. I, on the other hand, take the high road and let my television remote do the walking across the great television landscape.

One day I'll be able to tell my unborn children (or at this rate my brother's unborn children since I am currently "lady friend"-less) that I've never killed a man with a bow and stiffened snake as arrow (ala Conan the Barbarian), that I've never used drugs (the choice for me is Tylenol free), and that I am unfamiliar with Monica, Joey, and Chandler. "Smelly Cat" is a mystery and that's the way I like it.

Since I don't necessarily fall in with the television crowd I've been able to find other television shows that do strike my interest and are later found out to be good choices.

Another of my successes is that I was one of the very early people to have watched future multiple Golden Globe winning The Office on BBC America. I remember that I had just gotten my satellite dish (which helps with the seven hour a day habit) and was flipping around the dial when I stopped on the episode of The Office where the main character David Brent is interrupting a workplace trainer sent to teach the staff of The Office on the ways of teamwork. As I watched, I couldn't decide whether the show was real (it’s shot faux documentary style) or if I was watching something created out of pure genius.

It turns out that I had found the latter.

I was able to introduce The Office, one of the best comedies EVER to grace television screens, to many of my friends. Just about every person I have shown The Office to has come to love it - like a man loves a woman or a good bottle of Faygo.

But all the above failures and successes pale in comparison to the biggest entertainment success in my life. Something I like to call my "Super-Stupendous-Success."

Being a child of the 1970's who grew up in the 1980's and came of age in the 1990's, Star Wars was a big part of youth. I can't tell you how many of the toys I owned, how many records I collected from McDonalds with R2D2 adventures within, or the amount of puffy Star Wars stickers that graced my elementary sticker book. (Apparently, collecting stickers was "cool" in the early 1980's because I had two books full of them. I can't tell you how badly I miss my sticker of Lee Majors as The Fall Guy.)

My biggest success is that I actually got to see the first Star Wars in a theater.

To truly appreciate this we have to travel from the tattoo clad twenty-first century, to the foggy times of after-prom and then to a time even before Hands Across America.

I remember that night as a two year old going to see Star Wars with my dad. I have to be honest that I remember little then other than we drove to the theater in my dad's truck, a Scout, and that the space ships and robots within the movie were cool. In fact, seeing Star Wars is my very first memory. And you have to admit that for a first memory, seeing Star Wars as an impressionable punk kid is a pretty good one.

When I think of people whose first memories are of the birth of a sibling, the loss of a tooth, or that first kiss I really have to feel sorry for them. Because having a first memory of Luke and Han doing blaster battle with a bunch of armor-plated Storm Troopers is so much cooler. (Yes, that is the geekiest thing I have ever written.)