He pushed the remote-control button, turning off the video, and ejected the tape, which he slid into his jacket pocket.

By pressing the remote-control button, I hoped to escape to East Germany's Channel 2, where I had often taken refuge from Alois Moig by watching Italian and French detective films from the 1960's.

We've all sat before our television sets, admiring the clear reception on one channel, the lovely color on another, exulting in our power to hop through the cable network with the push of a remote-control button.

One remote-control button will enable a viewer to call up an instant replay, another button will summon an isolated view of a star player and another will retrieve up-to-the-minute statistics and graphics.

The point, said Ted Harbert, president of ABC Entertainment, "is to try to keep the viewer's thumb off that remote-control button."

Early on, this observer's fingers began to twitch uncontrollably, as if in search of the remote-control button.

And the stakes rise when it comes to a remote-control button for ordering the goods advertised in commercials, because the owner of the button could receive a fee for every sale.

Can you guess, for example, which remote-control button to push if you want to end a slide show?

Ace pressed the remote-control button and the room became alive to the sound of highly tuned engines revving up.

Kosuth's show was not called the play of the unmentionable for nothing: for Establishment Man, the whole censorship scam must seem like a glorified game-show that can be viewed with Olympian detachment, fingers poised on the remote-control button.