I'm telling you this so you won't repeat my mistake.
(Spoiler alert! This article chronicles the outcome of the Johns Hopkins vs. Duke lacrosse national championship game -- which actually has been in the books for a few weeks now.)
Let's rewind my real-life DVR to Memorial Day afternoon. I had parked myself in front of my TV to catch the final quarter of the Johns Hopkins vs. Duke lacrosse national championship game.
I'm not a huge lacrosse fan -- my brother is. He's a graduate of Johns Hopkins, a school that takes lacrosse more seriously than Walter Sobchak takes a 7-10 split in the league semifinals.
So, in the interest of sibling sympathy, I grabbed my Johns Hopkins ballcap and started cheering on the Blue Jays.
Or, as the Red Stripe Beer spokesman might say: "Boo! Duke lacrosse program that has become forever linked to our notions of a failed U.S. justice system."
I came aboard in the third quarter with JHU up 10-5. When Duke pulled to within 10-9, I was worried that, by paying attention to the game, I had jinxed the Johnny boys.
But what a pulse-pounding finale. The score was tied at 11 with 4:37 left. A little more than a minute later, Hopkins went ahead, then got tight on defense and ran out the clock until Duke's final shot went wide of the net at the buzzer. Huzzah!
I grabbed my cell phone, and punched up my brother. As soon as he picked up, I began the celebratory chanting.
"J-H-U! J-H-U!"
"What are you talking about?" he said in an even voice. I wondered what made him seem distracted.
"Champs, baby! ... J-H-U! J-H-U!"
"You're watching the lacrosse game?" he asked.
"Aw yeah! Great job! Way to go!"
"What do you mean? It's not over."
Now, I'm no lacrosse expert. It entered my mind that maybe the teams had cleared the field in order to gear up for some sudden death or penalty-phase shootout format I was unaware of.
"You sure?" I asked. "I'm looking at my TV screen and it says right there ... National Champs!"
"No, there's two or three minutes left."
"Really?"
"What are -- aww, damn it," my brother growled. "I forgot. I went to the kitchen a long time ago, and I hit pause on the DVR. I just realized I've been watching it like that ever since."
Yikes. Even though we were both in the Eastern time zone, we were separated by that new temporal phenomenon -- the DVR delay.
I tried to backtrack, but I was pretty much painted into a corner. "Maybe I was calling to warn you that Hopkins loses, but I was trying to ease your feelings."
"Yeah, nice try. Hold on, they're in the final minute. Yup. ... Three, two, one, shot goes wide. Yippee."
Cue awkward silence. My last resort was to try Eric Stoltz's trick from Pulp Fiction.
"Who is this? Prank call! Prank call!"
So while I admit I made a mistake, I must point out that the entire incident is my brother's fault. If he had told me right away he was watching a sporting event on DVR delay and that I was not to divulge the score, I would have honored that, told him to call me back, and hung up.
Let that be Rule No. 1 among the ins and outs of using a digital video recorder.
If you are watching a sporting event while a DVR is in use, do not answer your phone! If you have an answering machine where you can hear the message someone is leaving, pick up the phone and immediately tell the caller that you ware watching a sporting event on time delay, and please do not say anything about any sporting event currently in progress.
Then threaten that you'll retain Mike Nifong to sue their ass back to the stone age. (That would have to be your threat, because the stone age is probably the only place he's allowed to practice law now.)
The TV ratings people call the practice "time shifting." Since I'll never get to drive Doc Brown's DeLorean, I'm all for taking full advantage of something that will give me the illusion of manipulating the space-time continuum.
Like any technology, DVRs can be used for good or for evil.
Fast forwarding through commercials and using the rewind to create your own instant replays are examples of using the DVR for good.
Pausing and rewinding through late-night Cinemax would be using it for evil.
Here are some other guidelines. Or as Ludacris might say: "Take that; rewind it back. Hardy Vision's DVR make the booty go smack."
For some of you, DVR technology is already old hat, a tried and true friend. But I'm amazed at how many people I run into who are still among the unconverted.
I enjoy acting as a pied piper for this stuff, because the way that I first encountered DVRs qualifies me to act as a conduit for DVR enlightenment.
I had been working in a newsroom for about nine months before I realized that the huge cable box next to the TV looked exactly like the cable box in the commercials featuring the nice lady who extolled the virtues of DVR technology. So I called up the cable company's website and found a tutorial on DVR use. After a few clicks of the remote control, I was up and running.
I told my boss, "Uh, did you know we've had a DVR for months and months, and no one has taken advantage of its miracle technology?"
He said, "What's a DVR?"
A few weeks later Ron Artest starred in Malice at the Palace, and I was expertly able to fast forward, reverse course, everything, to the amazement of my co-workers.
I felt like I had brought fire from Olympus. Or Cher when she sang, "If I could turn back time ..."
Instead of being some stern authority figure who issues commandments about how thou shalt and shalt not use DVR technology, let me lay out the groundwork with some simple questions that I condescendingly figure you might ask.
Question: How long should you be able to keep sporting events stored on your DVR hard drive?
That's definitely a sliding scale:
• Games featuring your favorite teams always take precedence. These can be stored on your DVR hard drive for up to two weeks.
• If you've had a random game of the week in your queue but haven't watched it, you're obliged to erase it in favor for the next game of the week.
• Compelling playoff games can be kept for your reviewing pleasure for a maximum of two months. Extra grace period can be allowed if you're expecting a visit from a friend or relative who's a fan of the team that lost.
• If your team has won a championship, you should be allowed to retire that DVR machine to a safety deposit box and request a new DVR from your cable or satellite provider free of charge.
Question: What if others in your household complain that your sporting events are taking up too much space on the hard drive?
Tell that member of your household that he or she has been watching too much TV lately, and should take up other outdoor activities.
Question: Is it unfair to advertisers that I can fast forward through their commercials?
Not if their commercials suck. Take that American Express Members Project spot. Yeah, the first time you saw it, the celebrities Alicia Keys, Andre Agassi, Shaun White, Ellen DeGeneres and Martin Scorsese had a point to make about giving back to the community, making a difference, blah blah blah. Every time after that it's been brutally embarrassing to watch. I'm sick of hearing that college kid talk about his favorite lake. Does the term "Take a long walk off a short pier" ring a bell?
Other ways DVRs rock: If you're lucky, your DVR provider hooks you up with Fantasy baseball and football stats services. You program your players, and you can get live scoring updates at the bottom of your screen, even if you're not watching the game.
This is a great use of Fantasy technology that's just beginning to take off. But can this technology eventually go too far? The biggest danger: What if your TV gains artificial intelligence to the point that it can join your Fantasy leagues -- and start beating you? TV, you should be my ally, not my enemy.
Best kept secret in on-demand programming: The Oxygen OnDemand channel has a karaoke feature. That's right -- no more late nights at the karaoke bar, waiting four hours for your requested song to come up. Now at the punch of a button, you can be singing along to Baby, One More Time or Funky Cold Medina. Or my specialty, which is rapping Humpty Dance over The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to punch up Don't Stop Believin' and dedicate it to the Johns Hopkins lacrosse team.
Because -- spoiler alert! -- those guys are national champions.
