TV is evil!!

There are many things for which I could be accused of being a hypocrit: I often denounce dieters as making excuses not to exercise while I have not had an increased heart rate since the 90's; I am the first to point out typographical errors to others yet I always type "withe" instead of "with the"; and I chastize others for their bad musical taste even when I own multiple CD's by Sevendust, Soulfly, and Fiona Apple (shudder). But perhaps my greatest hypocrocy has to do with television.

I grew up in an imaginative household. And while that used to mean that one had creative mind, it eventually implies that you read lots of Fantasy/Sci-Fi books and watch similarly spirited TV shows/movies. Those children who acted out Lord of the Rings in their backyard quickly become the Star Trek couch potatoes. I was personally raised on Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: DS9, Farscape, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, VR5, and Babylon 5. All of these shows are an hour long and I'm fairly certain...no, completely certain I've seen every episode of the aformentioned at least once. This is a dangerous habit because once you convince yourself that these serials are geniune outlets for your imagination, you open the door to other shows just because they are on. Before Babylon 5 would be Lois and Clark...and then Due South. Add The West Wing, Scrubs, Simpsons, and Friends to the mix and you have a great big list of shows for which I have personally seen %100 of their product.

When I was at college, I did not have television. Oh we had a television, it was just not used to receive a broadcast signal. Rather than let a network decide what we watched, Sean and I would choose movies. College is, after all, a giant collective library of movies. There were no commercials, no news updates, and most "to be continued" movies could be continued at that very moment. I was also in college before the TV-to-DVD craze really hit so I wasn't sticking in every episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast or Sex in the City (double shudder). I learned to live without a daily dose of Buffy and turned rather to the giant stash of VHS tapes in my dormatory.

After many great movie discoveries (Boondock Saints comes to mind) I came to the conclusion that TV is not worth watching. And I still strongly believe this. Here are my reasons:

1. Commercials. I don't trust commercials. While the shouting at me and condecending cajolement are reason enough, I'm genuinely scared that I am becoming subconsciously affected as a consumer.

2. Attention span. Because of channel flipping and twenty second commercials, I can literally feel my attention span becoming shorter and shorter. While this may be useful in a world as sensory overloaded as ours, I can't hold a simple conversation (or blog for that matter) without switching topics or wandering of visually. Plus, ever since Max Headroom, I've been kind of afraid that a rapid-fire series of images will cause my body to explode. ZIK-ZAK!

3. Time. How much time do you spend in front of the TV? Way to much. Now this arguement can be used against the art of movies too. However, with TV, you actually have to plan around your television just to keep track of any individual show. "I was going to go shopping on Sunday but I couldn't miss the cliffhanger for Desperate Housewifes"; "Monday is football, can't go out"; "I'm too tired for sex after watching My Name is Earl, The Office, Scrubs, and 30 Rock." Granted, TiVo offers to solve that problem. But as TV adicts, we use that recording oportunity to fit more shows onto our plate.

With movies, you get no commercials, no channel flipping (although many action scenes are becoming more tightly edited), and you can watch them whenever you want to take that time.

So what makes me a hypocrit? This past Thursday I realized at 1:30 am that I had been watching television for four and a half hours straight. I could have read an entire book in that time! It is so easy to just sit there and soak in the moving pictures. I don't even have cable; I just watched My Name is Earl, Scrubs, Late Show with David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and some biography on Rod Serling from the "Twilight Zone".

Yet, I'm the same guy who in the past has haughtily said things like:
"I don't watch television."
"Television rots your brain."
"I only watch DVD's of TV shows."
"I heard your daddy went into a restaurant and ate all the food in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant."

You get the point.

If I ever mount my high horse again (snicker) please remind me that I am a television adict just like you. May this next video remind you to rage against the machine.



Speaking of hyper-editing, here's today's random video. This is a short movie by Lasse Gjertsen, a European director who can't play music but can sure edit!