Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 14, 1994                   TAG: 9411260012
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VCRS HAVE A TENDENCY TO MAKE YOURS TRULY A LITTLE BIT PUNCHY BEN BEAGLE

I'm now offering free advice to those of you who may be having trouble with your VCRs.

All I ask in return is your help in paying our latest water/sewer bill from Roanoke County. I won't give the amount, but it is enough to have kept Ray Milland drunk for 10 years, based on booze prices at the time he made "The Lost Weekend."

Old Ray wouldn't have had to hock his typewriter for a touch or two of the grape with dough like that laying around.

With a price philosophy like that, I just hope the county never goes into the liquor business.

Some people say there probably is a big leak somewhere.

If I had a leak that big, it would sound like we were living beside Victoria Falls.

With a leak like that, the house would have gone down Happy Highfields Road years ago in one helluva mudslide.

(Actually, it would be unethical for me to accept any money from you to help with the water/sewer bill. It's all right to pray for me, though.)

But, let us return to your VCR and the troubles it has - or the troubles you have, depending on the way you look at it.

I had trouble the other day with these squiggly lines and snow all over "Sleepless in Seattle."

I punched every button in sight and threw all the levers I could find, and it settled down.

I now call this the Beagle punch-throw procedure for discovery and suppression of certain anomalies in audio-visual functions on your average VCR.

But you have to do this every time you change tapes. The same anomalies occurred when I popped in "A Streetcar Named Desire," although Marlon Brando's acting may have been a factor here.

The thing to do is buy a cleaning tape for about 10 bucks and plug it right in there. When you can get it to play, this sexy female voice tells you when the audio has been checked and the heads cleaned.

I warn you that it's kind of scary, though. It reminds me of one of those statements at the start of video movies that suggest the FBI is watching every move you make.

But it takes guts to fix VCRs, so just put it in there and let that woman clean your heads. It also takes guts to realize that all this cleaning hasn't done much, and you still get squiggles and snow on each tape.

I've thought about it a lot, and I think our troubles may have something to do with our remote controls - which I'll discuss as soon as the water/sewer bill is paid.