Wednesday/Thursday Morning Compare/Contrast Miracle

Yesterday morning I was angry and frustrated: I hooked up my $14.50 Amazon Warehouse deal digital antenna to our very expensive flat screen TV and got bupkis . . . I couldn't pull in any free channels, not a one, and so after some cursing and yelling, I packaged the antenna back up and printed out the return label so I could send it back to Amazon-- I wasn't sure if the antenna didn't work (it was a Warehouse Deal) or if I needed a better antenna and/or better antenna placement to pull in the digital stations, and I was getting nervous because football season is about to start and I want to be able to watch the Giants, and so last night, when I crashed lady's night at Pino's, my friend Ann said that digital broadcast TV is a total hoax and there's no way to pull in any stations and I was very sad-- I just wanted to watch the Giants, not become beholden to cable again-- we cut the cord a few months ago and are saving a lot of money and I wondered about the various cheap streaming TV services and Johanna said that Sling TV has trouble streaming major sports events and I was totally confounded and depressed, afraid I was headed back into the monopolistic maw of Verizon or Optimum, but this morning, after Googling things like "Are digital TV antennas a stupid fucking hoax?" I learned that any antenna can pull in digital signals, and the site recommended plugging your old-fashioned rooftop antenna into the TV, and so I found the old rooftop coaxial cable, screwed it into our fancy digital TV and-- miracle beyond miracles-- the tuner started pulling in all kinds of channels and now we've got all the basic channels and a bunch of really weird stuff (like an audio channel of people talking in Mandarin) and so I can watch the Giants and my wife can watch The Bachelor and we'll survive without cable for the time being (although I'm going to need to do something creative once the World Cup starts . . . Ann suggested bringing my big TV over to her cabled house).