Tuesday, October 19, 2004

I can’t verify this claim too easily, gentle reader, but there are some of us who argue that televisions didn’t always exist. There was a time when families gathered around big, hulking devices that bore a slight resemblance to TV’s, except these gizmos didn’t have screens. And instead of calling them “TV’s,” people insisted on calling them “radios.”

I wasn’t one of those people. The complication of not being alive back then will have to serve as my lame excuse, and that’s just a damn shame. You see, I’d wager we still have an inborn desire to listen and, more to the point, to eavesdrop on people. I sat spellbound yesterday as I enjoyed these clips, such was their appeal.

If you click on the link, you’ll likely accuse me of recycling material. It’s true I’ve mentioned this site before, but recent developments warrant your attention. The site is the storefront, as it were, for an elaborate marketing scheme by Microsoft, a reality game that involves answering real phones and piecing together a story. Since I’m plenty occupied with playing the “pay your rent” game and its fantastic sequel, “clothe yourself and don’t starve as well,” I’m not inclined to embrace any other amusements. That doesn’t mean we can’t reap the fruits of these reality gamers, though, so by all means check out the audio drama. Listen to any one of them or, hell, listen to them all. They intertwine as only stubborn shoelaces could, which is a compliment.

This is narrative in its aural glory: no colors, no flashes, no computer-generated graphics, just some good old fashioned inflection and imagination. Those things we call pictures? Mercy be, we’re going to have to invent those suckers.