Preface

Hello, Blogosphere! Or, should I say, “Howdy!” Okay, no one has actually used that phrase to me yet, other than at the western apparel where I stopped to ask directions my first weekend in town.

Yes, I’ve moved to Dallas, with little warning: I’d applied for the job last July, interviewed in October, and just got the job offer in mid-January. HR even admitted on the phone that the acceptance papers had “been sitting on out desk for a few weeks, with the holidays and all.” “By the way,” they added, “can you start on February 2^nd?”

All that aside, it was too good of a job to turn down, especially considering the lame quality of the part-time jobs I had been stringing together. It was tough leaving Portland for Dallas (quite literally, too: stay tuned for an entry on my Uhaul misadventures!), but getting any full-time job in environmental law is damn near impossible right now, much less one with this kind of potential for advancement/relocation down the road.

(Sidenote: employees at my job technically aren’t supposed to post things electronically about the specific goings-on in the position, so just to be on the safe side I plan to be vague about what I'm working on. I'll still drop the occasional anecdote, but just so you know. If you don't know where I'm working, please email or call me and I’ll give you the skinny).

Matt Ryan has inspired me to start a blog chronicling my adjustment to, and misadventures in, the Dallas-Forth Worth "metroplex." I really don’t know how interesting it will be, but I’ll try to post at least a couple times a week. I might also go on unrelated tangents from time to time if something is really grinding my gears.

Today’s topic: Dallas TV stations.

Since I’ve survived without cable for the past few years (and since my first months' paychecks have been pretty much exclusively going towards rent and moving expenses), I’ve been using my federally-subsidized digital cable box to pick up local channels. And man, do I get a lot of them. There’s dozens of Jesus-channels, Spanish-channels, and at least three Spanish-language Jesus-channels (including a music-video-only channel). There’s not only PBS, but specialty PBS’s showing nothing but cooking shows, nature shows, travel shows, and kids shows. There’s a station that shows nothing but the 2006 Winter Olympics.

My favorite is channel 68, which doesn’t appear show anything past about 1977. So far I’ve watched the original Mission: Impossible, The Twilight Zone, Hogan’s Heroes, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Local TV, and its commercials, are also a great way to get a real sense of “local flavor.” There are Buddy Garrity-types selling cars, and other commercials with down-home flavor. There's also a great commercial with a fake Obama "bailing out" customers with a great deal at the local Hyundai dealer. It's also comforting to know that, whereever I move, there is always a mattress dealer that, if they can't beat a competitor's price on a mattress model "then the mattress is FREEEEEEEEEE!!!" If you stop and think about it, this is the dumbest guarentee ever.

Also, you know how in the “northern states,” it seems like “Friends” and “Scrubs” reruns are on all the time? Replace those with “George Lopez” and “King of the Hill.” Seriously.

So, while Dallas free TV is great when you just want something on the background, I'm just glad that my internet is now hooked up so I can catch up with “The Office,” “30 Rock,” “24,” and “BSG.”

(Sidenote: Time Warner Cable are assholes. I may have to do a separate post on this.)

(Also: I really need a better term than “northern states” to describe everywhere else where I have lived. Who lived in the north, Mason or Dixon?)