SIGNALS

Here are the facts, which are not in dispute. Furthermore, I am not making this up. In a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, a man wearing a television on his head was leaving televisions on front porches.

Let me repeat: I am not making this up. We have video documentation courtesy of homeowners' security cameras. You can view a video of the strangeness on YouTube. Several episodes are shown; the reporter narrating the video claims that some 60 TVs were thus delivered.

Some observations: The weirdness apparently only occurs around midnight which, in all fairness, is the best time for weirdness. Also, the TVs appear to be old-timey cathode-ray televisions. Is this because TV Man is on a tight budget and cathode-ray TVs can be had for free? Or is there some deeper meaning in cathode-rayness? Electron beams and all that.

Another observation: TV man knows that his deed is being recorded; in one episode, he turns and waves at the camera. So, does he wear a TV on his head merely to disguise himself, or is there some deeper meaning to that? If the former, a simple Covid mask would suffice; however, that would be much less telegenic.

Another observation: He is wearing a TV on his head, and offering up TVs. For whatever reason, TV Man has thing for TVs. Many of the readers of this magazine also have a thing for TVs. Could TV Man be a reader of Sound & Vision? I am not pointing fingers here, just following where the logic takes me.

Another observation: I automatically assumed that TV Man was a man. I could be wrong. Don't judge me.

Yet another observation: Having items stolen from front porches is a big problem in some neighborhoods. This has led to the development of glitter bombs and other deterrents. Is TV Man coming to the rescue? Maybe he hopes that bad guys will steal the old TVs and leave other packages alone? I don't know. I am grasping at straws here.

Final observation: To my knowledge, the craziness is essentially harmless. The victim is left to dispose of (hopefully recycle) an old TV, but that is the only injury. Compared to many other things that could happen to a front porch, this is relatively acceptable. Not that I am condoning the depositing of appliances on front porches.

The question, of course, is: why? Is TV Man a genuinely crazy person? No, I think not. There is just too much craziness packed into this. Most actually crazy people (approximately 50% of the population) are pretty boring. Maybe he is just a guy who has a warehouse of old TVs and now is seeking to dispose of them? No, that seems too pedestrian and in any case not particularly efficient. An annual April Fool's prank? No, there is no discernible calendar correlation. Staged drama just to get YouTube hits? Incisive social commentary? A fetish we'd rather not know about? As with all good mysteries, we will probably never know the true motives of TV Man.

As one of the YouTube commenters noted regarding TV Man: "A hero, not the one we deserve but the one we need right now."

Or perhaps this YouTube commenter has it figured out: "The hero we deserve, but not the one we need."

TV Man: Another waypoint in the eternal mystery of life.