Refreshing. Enlightening. Particularly awesome, not having to listen to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for three hours.

Seriously…you have no idea.

My girlfriend and I just moved. Like two days ago. We don’t have much set up, other than couches and coffee tables. With our lack of so much as a 13-inch Zenith, our apartment has all the technological amenities of a 1930s apartment.

Well, besides this computer, of course, and the nearby, unprotected wireless we are currently sniping.

Score.

But the lady loves TV, and so is lamenting its absence while scouring hulu for anything worth watching. Me, on the other hand? I’m enjoying the silence. The peace. The quiet. The lack of commercials, ones making me feel bad for not having a nicer TV or better skin. The absence of the cathode-ray hum, that hypnotizes while tantalizing and entertains while pushing products every five to ten minutes.

On the radio, it’s just two guys talking. No green screen commercials behind home plate. No Fox TV promos creeping across the screen during the fucking game. No graphics. No monotone readings or completely unrelated ads by Buck.

Just John Miller and Joe Morgan, talking baseball, describing the action, and me picturing that action in my head, on my own, imagining the nastiness of Andy Petite’s slider, the sadness of Pedro lacking whatever “it” is that made him so unstoppable, how that meant the Phils had no shot, and how they must have looked in response.

TV, while an entertaining machine, makes our imaginations lazy, shows us everything we need to know, never challenges, expects nothing from the viewer but minimal attention. But the sound emanating from my boombox (yeah, that’s right, an RCA, bitch) doesn’t give away anything except details. And freedom.

Freedom to paint my own picture. Paint my masterpiece. Imagine baseball as a magical American game, forget that everyone mentioned on the Yankees makes more money than anyone I will ever know personally.

Sure, the two of us are getting a phat-ass bad motherfucker of a television sometime soon, either when we get jobs or for Christmas or whenever. It’s coming.

But for now…

This is nice. Old school. Pleasant. The lady’s got her hulu, and I have my RCA.