I wish you could be sitting here right now on my couch.  Sure, there’s only room for 2-3 of you, assuming we’re not putting some of the heavyweights from my boys in that group (trust me, there’s not a couch built that’d hold Boo, Dwin, Carlson and Rush).

Anyway, I feel like I’m in another world. After finishing my run, I came back out to the living room where, since I finished my “freelance” article that was due today, I have been watching my new best friend, DirecTV.

It’s freaking awesome.

Whoever thought throwing signals from one machine through the air to another machine and letting you see cool stuff in your house in the process was a genius. This may be the best invention in the past 25 years. I’ll have to think on that. Send me your thoughts, but I’ll put together my list of the top inventions in my lifetime for another blog.

Back to today.

I haven’t checked out all the channels, but I have watched a ton of NFL Network, Big Ten Network and Palladia, and that’s enough for me to be a completely happy camper. Ask sugar-mama. She’s been content the past 48 hours because it’s been that long since I’ve bitched about the cable. Which is probably the first 48 hours I haven’t bitched about it since I moved here.

It wasn’t that we had a terrible cable operator before. It was more that they were the biggest piece of shit outfit I’ve seen since the 2000 Cubs lost 97 games. Enough said.

But that’s behind us. Our DirecTV was installed Monday afternoon and it’s been incredible ever since.

The HD quality is a billion times or more better than we had and the little stuff like the way the remote works, how the DVR is actually set up in a sensible manner and the fact that you get so many more quality channels for the basic package makes me wish I would have made the change years ago.

So, now it’s on to watching good stuff. And like I said, that includes Palladia. I love that channel, which we didn’t have with this previous cable company. I’ve been watching it most of the day today, re-watching the 2010 Austin City Limits Festival and before I went for my run, an unplugged version of Matchbox Twenty.

I’ve always liked unplugged concerts since Bon Jovi–well, it was actually just Jon Bon Jovi, he of the former ownership of the AFL’s Philadelphia franchise, and Richie Sambora, not all of them–went acoustic at the 1989 MTV Music Awards.

Jump from 1989 to today, where, on my couch, I’m watching the 2010 version of Bon Jovi Unplugged on Palladia. Holy shit. If you are around my age and want to see your life flash before your eyes, watch this show.

In my mind, Bon Jovi still has long hair and five hot women standing on the side of the stage waiting for him to finish riding his steel horse. They’re wearing slinky clothes and have slinkier motives. And there’s a roadie who has been smoking a pack and half of Marlboros a day, drinking Jameson straight from the bottle and carrying blue bandanna in his back pocket since 1978.

It’s pretty much that way right now, but Bon Jovi doesn’t have as long of hair and instead has more wrinkles, not to mention a lot more money. He sings the same songs you’d want to hear but does them in a different tune and doesn’t care what the fans think. Like singing ‘You give love a bad name’ like a lounge singer at the MGM. Really? You thought that was the right way to do that?

While all those things have changed, making you know that you’re not in high school anymore, two things do remain–the chicks and the roadie. But there are problems.

The groupies are still 19, literally. They only know life with cell phones, no Berlin Wall and cars with airbags. iPods are about the newest invention in their life, and that doesn’t seem so new anymore. And there’s also the fact that they look 19, which means, well, we  know what that’ll get you because nowadays, if they look 19, they probably aren’t.

And the roadie? Well, he doesn’t want to just work for food and free trip around the world anymore. There’s tons of equipment and it’s all electronic and he needs an assistant to figure out how to run the control boards and this time away is keeping him from seeing his twin daughters play high school soccer in Saginaw, Mich. So, if he’s going to be on the road that much, he wants a bigger match for his 401(k).

Talk about disappointing.

Oh, and LeAnn Rimes is doing a duet with Bon Jovi as I type this. Yup, that’s a clincher. We’re no longer in 1989 because she actually looks legal now. That means she must be, what, at least 35, right? Fuck. Nope, I just looked it up. She’s actually 28. Which means my math back in the mid-90s was way the fuck off. Damn. Like I said, if they look 19 . . .

But whatever. I’ll deal with the fact that it’s not 1989 again because this stuff looks great on my TV and if I don’t like it I change just change the channel, where instead of watching aging rock bands, I’ll watch professional or college athletes who are not even half my age make millions of dollars.

Damn I need to get off this couch. Soon. Real soon. Stay tuned.