when I was a kid I lived in California ... out there we didn't have telephone polls ... all the telephone lines were underground ... so when I was in junior high I totally remember when crews started moving into the neighborhood and began digging up the street ... a 3 inch wide section of blacktop right next to the gutters ... we were getting cable ... and it was so damn exciting none of us could wait ... I had told my friends the wonder of MTV ... I had been in North Carolina that summer and believe it or not they had cable before us ... I remember turning on the TV at my grandmothers house ... flipping it to MTV ... and seeing my first music video ... "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar Mellencamp [as he was known then] ... it seemed like it took forever for them to install the cable lines ... but once they were in I think everyone on my block got it ... back then you got this brown box ... with light brown buttons on it ... each button was for 3 stations and there was a dial on the side that had 3 positions ... so in position one you got channels 1-15 ... position 2 was for 16-30 and position 3 was 31-45 ... but there wasn't a station for every channel ... and there wasn't wireless remote control yet either ... so the box had this super long cord so you could bring it to the couch ... man back then MTV only showed videos ... all day long ... no freaky TV shows ... you could leave it on like it was the radio and hear music [good music I might add] ... all day ... it really was the greatest invention ... now I don't even know when they show videos ... and it seems the time I catch videos on MTV it isn't the whole thing ... and there is always some writing going across the bottom of the screen and it is being interrupted by "Tiffany from Manasset who wants to say hi to her peeps" ... it is just weird ... I miss the MTV from back in the day ...