Foodnetwork, you broke my heart

It was 11:30 pm on Friday night. I had just spent the evening with Best Friend on an unexpected bar hop and was starving. I decided that it was ok to indulge in my secret guilty "I have no cash at the moment" pleasure and order pizza online- yes from Dominos. Yes, I eat Domino's pizza and damn it when you are drunk, haven't eaten dinner, don't feel like cooking and you live alone so no one can witness the carnage, it's allowed. I placed my order and left the tracker up so I could see when I could expect my processed pizza to arrive at my apartment. Next I saddled up to the TV in my favorite chair and blasted on the radiation tube for my usual late night surfing.

Channel 18- TBS... freaking bridget jones AGAIN
Channel 15- Fox- Seinfeld and I just can't take that it is on all the f'n time
Channel 21- CW 11 Stupid in the City
Channel 78- Foodnetwork...static ( I try again)
Channel 78- Foodnetwork again... blank screen

I turn the tv off then on

Channel 78- Foodnetwork... absolutely nothing

I unplug the cable from the back of my tv and plug it back in again

Channel 78- Foodnetwork... still gone

I stare at the blank screen in disappointment. My eyes begin to get misty. I let out a giant sigh of "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!". I was devastated. No "Ace of Cakes" , no "Iron Chef", no crappy "Throwdown", no "Foodnetwork in the Kitchen" Saturday mornings, not even freaking Mark Summers with his stupid ass "Unwrapped"! Just a blank screen where I can see myself reflected in the black tube with a dumbfounded look. It's gone. My favorite channel, my late night friend, my cooking instructor, my weekend morning companion, my confidant- essentially my boyfriend- up and left in the middle of the night with no explanation.

Typical.

I stared, hoping it was a figment of my drunk imagination.

30 minutes passed in silence and I was startled by my buzzer- the pizza came. I proceeded to eat the entire box of buffalo kickers and a large mushroom pizza with misty eyes lamenting my loss... in 20 minutes. See what happens when TV is not pacing me!

The thing is- I don't have real cable and I live alone. Deadly combo- television and a person who likes to be visually stimulated. I have what I call "apartment cable". This essentially means I moved into my apartment, there was a cable on the ground, and I thought "What would happen if I just plugged this little cable into the antenna input" and tah dah- clear reception on select channels. This also means that I am subject to cable whims. There was one point when I thought all was well with my TV relationship. I had figured out which channel was Bravo and I also managed to get The Cartoon Network. I thought I had tricked the system and this would last forever. I was wrong.

Channels started to dissapear. First went HGTV. I found it odd as it had been there since the beginning with the Foodnetwork. No love lost though as I was tired of watching House Hunters (with ever stale Suzan Wong). Candace Olsen's dorky Canadian antics on "Divine Design" with Chico were annoying the crap out of me and if I had to watch one more stupid prospective buyer talk about how the colors in the house were a problem I was going to shoot my TV. I thought good ridden to bad rubbish because I learned all I can learn from that channel.

A few weeks later I turned on my man and switched to the Cartoon Network. Blank. It too was gone. I was just getting into shows like "Foster's home for Imaginary Friends" and "My Gym Partner's a Monkey". I liked knowing what my niece and nephew would watch... sober... after school... if they were 6. I knew I would be ok as long as the Foodnetwork and Bravo were still around.

A week after the Project Runway finale, Bravo went missing.

Finally the cord was cut- the Foodnetwork was gone.

It's odd to be so attached to television and in particular a network dedicated to food. I find food shows soothing and comforting in ways that sit-coms or movies aren't. I feel like I am learning something pratical while being kept in a vegetative state. The foodnetwork taught me about deglazing pans, braising meats, reposing steaks, how to properly prepare an artichoke, making rues, making stocks, why fish and cheese don't go together and so much more. It brought out the cook inside me and made me feel confident in the kitchen the way no one else could. I began to cook circles around my family members and soon was getting the approval of best friend with her "restaurant quality" seal of approval on dishes I had made. No one taught me more about loving food than this channel, no one.

To see it gone, even as I write this, chokes me up.

The channel has come back intermittently and given me a glimmer of hope that maybe this will work out. Maybe if I just paid a little bit more attention to the channel, loved the new chefs I hated, tried more of their recipes, turned it on more, something- it would stay with me. No, it just kept telling me " you can't afford me no matter how much you love me". Now I am left with a bad habit of surfing from 62 (former Bravo) 67 (former Cartoon) 78(former foodnetwork) only to find blank screens or scrambled pictures that turn into blank screens.

Yesterday TBS was shut off.

Television? I HAVE no television.