Blue Dot Special

Horatio writes: To thank to the discerning people at New York Magazine for Approving of us in their Matrix (bottom right corner, baby: brilliant, perhaps, but lowbrow, really?) we have a New York question. This was triggered by the astute Mark L. of Brooklyn (but born and bred, Upper East Side) who reminded us that when Time Warner took over the world of cable in the city, they tried and failed to shut down our heroine and role model Robin Byrd, the equivalent of forcing an entire generation of city boys to wear chastity belts. Their fall-back plan to stunt our adolescent development was ripped right from the Cinema Paradiso playbook. They went to the remarkable lengths of superimposing a blue dot on any sexual organ that lived or breathed on the show with the exception of breasts. If a penis or beaver showed its head, a blue dot would swoop down and smother it. Our question is... Just whose job was it to sit in an editing suite and insert the dot? Our imaginations say it was a beautiful, nubile woman in a bikini, but from what we know of the television industry it was more likely to have been a sixty-year-old pot-bellied chain-smoker with plumber's crack. We NEED TO KNOW! Both for the purposes of adding to the storehouse of knowledge and to try and understand why our careers advisor never mentioned this kind of occupation to us in high school. If anybody knows the answer, kindly be in touch.

Ghosts in the Machine

Horatio writes: New Jersey, it appears, was a pioneering state in the 1980's. Scott Bracey we thank you for this testimony.

Unlike some of the other losers on this site, I was no stranger to a pair of breasts by the time I was thirteen. Indeed, I had seen lots of couples actually doing it. This is my story. The story of early cable.

The cable boxes we received in New Jersey featured thirty-five buttons on the front panel, set out in neat rows of fifteen which you had to push in combinations while manipulating a switch on the right hand side to dial up your channel of choice. Push the 30 button and the 6, and up would pop Channel 36 showing Bosom Buddies over and over. 20 and 2 bought you the news. For most families, the design was simple enough to serve up hours of mediated fun. But for many of the amateur John Forbes Nash types across the state, the box was a platform for mathematical experimentation . How else can you explain the fact that someone, somewhere, discovered that if you pushed the buttons 3, 5 and 7 with one hand whilst positioning the switch to the down position with the other, you could crack the code to the local porn channel and watch Electric Blue. Before you become overcome with excitement dear reader, know that reception was not too good. Actually it was completely fuzzy -- like watching two people fucking in a snow globe. Forget about developing a penchant for blondes or brunettes, you could not actually tell who was a man and who was a woman. You could just see vague shapes pumping away in rhythm, backwards and forwards, over and over. There was no sound apart from the white noise crackle of bad reception. I would sit there watching mesmerized, with the television on mute, aware that my parents would find it odd that I was watching television without the volume and could come to find out why at any second. And this is how I spent my youth. Beating off to the idea of porn.

The Blue Blanket of Sin

When I was fourteen my dad installed a satellite dish on the roof of our garage. This new NASA-sized antennae brought in exotic shows and channels from all over the globe. From Australian Rules Football to fiery sessions of Russian Parliament, our basement, where the receiver was housed, instantly became the de facto after-school bunker for every teenage boy in the neighborhood. At first, we gorged ourselves on unlimited viewings of "Hawk the Slayer," and "My Bodyguard." But it wasn't long before we discovered the stations in the 8000 range. Porn. Hard-core, butt-thumping, ball-banging porn. We were disgusted, revolted, and utterly hooked. If a time-lapse film of my adolescence was covertly shot, no one watching it would believe I ever left this room. My friends and I instantly traded in football scores for dirty whores. We spent what felt like weeks on end in that basement, with pillows and blankets draped nonchalantly across our laps to cover our dignity and soak up our discharge.

Late at night, sooner or later, everyone would have to leave, and I would be alone, blue blanket on my lap. Threadbare, this piling and faded powder-blue relic had been in our household as long as I could remember (had mother once swaddled me in it?). Left to my own devices, and making sure the coast was clear, I pleasured myself to no end, always leaving the traces of my love directly into this decaying heirloom. Day after day, I pummeled my blue buddy with the imaginary love of a thousand women. If the super sleuths from CSI ever descended upon my basement with their blue lights, the evidence would have been insurmountable. I would have been arrested for loving too much. Fortunately, thanks to the thoughtful installation of a dehumidifier, the basement was never overly humid and the blanket would always be dry by the next day. On occasion, I would not get to its familar folds first. Some days I would wander into the basement and find one of my friends hiding his bulge in it until it was time to leave. Chad, blissfully unaware he was covering himself with the crusty remnants of my desire, or Brian, falling asleep with his head nestled on top of my glazed and dried boy glue. "Male Bonding" at its best...