The VCR, Wireless Headphones and the Magic of New Technology

I will never forget the incredible feeling of elation that I experienced when my father brought home a magical new contraption called the videocassette recorder, or VCR, when I was seven or eight years old. 

With an excited gleam in his eyes, my dad showed us the incredible features of this amazing new gizmo, which could show a movie–seemingly any movie–on a television with a press of a button. 

Any movie! Sort of. If you wanted to watch Ghostbusters in your home you could do so with this life-changing wonder. Then, when the credits ended, you could press the rewind button and mere minutes later you’d be ready to experience the ghost busting and gut busting action all over again. 

But its miracles did not end there. This fantastical contraption didn’t just allow you to watch all of your favorite movies at home on your television whenever you wanted, it could also tape anything on television. INCLUDING MOVIES WITH NAKED BOOBS IN THEM! ESPECIALLY movies with naked boobs in them. But your parents did not need to know about those movies. Those movies and those tapes were between you and God and possibly Shannon Tweed. 

Looking back, VCR was kind of a shitty format. Its capabilities were fairly limited. It broke all the time. From an aesthetic standpoint, it was functional and nothing more. Yet I was nevertheless blown away by it as a child. I knew that very first day that this was no mere toy: it was a tool and a treasure and a friend that would make my life better every single day, even the rare days it went unused. 

Just knowing that I could tape a James Bond movie and that week’s episode of ALF and then own them forever made school more bearable. The rise of the VCR and the video store opened up new worlds to me. 

Before I was a cinephile or a critic or someone Roger Ebert wrote nice things about I was a kid who loved movies the way many, if not most, kids love movies. 

As I got older, I retained this capacity for wonder and awe when it came to the latest technological development. The CD player, another shitty technology in retrospect, seemed like the technology of a distant science-fiction future when I encountered it for the first time as a tween. Instead of warm grooves on black vinyl, the CD player had shiny, gleaming discs. 

When I discovered a streaming site called Youtube that made seemingly the entirety of the world’s movies, TV shows and music available instantly, with the puzzling and extremely notable exception of Prince’s catalog, I had the same rapturous sense of wonder and awe as I felt when my dad opened up the box of the VCR in feverish anticipation of showing us its infinite powers, which, in hindsight, were pretty limited. 

I’m still amazed by what I can access on Youtube. For decades you needed to know a giant fucking dork or two who wasn’t averse to a little harmless video piracy if you wanted to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special but now you can watch it on Youtube every goddamn day of your life if so inclined. 

Most recently I found myself in a dilly of a pickle. I have one of those stupid new iPhones without a conventional earphone plug and could not find any earphones that would fit it. 

I’d thought about wireless earphones except that I was convinced that they were just too goddamn high tech for me. I was worried that I would try to get them to work and not succeed and instantly devolve into a caveman-like state as I screamed incoherently at my purchase before attempting to smash them with my fists, Incredible Hulk-style. 

That’s right: when I’m unable to figure out a technology, I instantly become a savage, uncomprehending brute and try to destroy what I do not understand. 

I was worried that I would not be able to get wireless headphones to work, ever, and then I would feel stupid and ashamed and it would lead to a whole ugly cycle. 

But I REALLY wanted to listen to Comedy Bang! Bang! so I bit the bullet and bought wireless headphones for the first time and while it did, in fact, take me two or three minutes to figure them out it wasn’t long before I heard a robot voice say “connected” and then it happened. 

Noises, magical noises began coming out of my headphones! 

And they were NOT connected through any manner of wires or chords. 

Verily, they were connected not through any visible technology but rather by fairy magic, the most powerful form. 

Before I knew it I was listening to Scott Aukerman’s voice in a whole new way that was also very similar to the old way, only cooler and more futuristic and also more practical. 

I felt a little silly getting so excited about technology seemingly everyone else knows about and/or has already adopted but I’m also happy that this deep into my neurotic, anxious adulthood I’ve held onto the child-like sense of wonder I first felt when my dad brought home the VCR.

I’m amazed by new technology. That’s true of stuff like Alexa and Disney+ and wireless headphones, but I also feel like that is a widespread enough feeling that I can make a blanket statement like that. 

Hopefully you feel the same way, because if there’s one thing we all need more of in this crazy-making world, it’s things that connect us with the sense of discovery and joy we felt as kids, even if it comes from something as silly and seemingly insignificant as a pair of wireless headphones. 

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