On my first or second day in Nashville, TN, I remember having breakfast on the ground floor of a Days Inn — virtually in a corner of the lobby. Four tables and a large-screen TV set. A televangelist has just begun his morning performance. People peek at best indifferently, but no one dares to switch to another channel. More likely, no one knows how to.
Almost every weekday now, I have lunch in our office canteen if I may call it so. There’s a TV set there, too, although far less impressive than the Nashville one. Our cook shows various movies from his own collection (very likely violating copyright laws at these public showings). They’re as a rule better than that televangelist (with all respect to this subcaste of performance artists), and the canteen TV is my Window into the World of Big Cinema.