So, I skimmed through the latest issue.
Entertainment Weekly was featuring a “Fall TV Preview, 31 New Shows and 70 of Your Old Favorites,” and so I just had to see what everyone will soon be talking about.
I should preface this musing with a simple disclosure—truth be told, I don’t watch TV—just so you know where I’m going with this…
Anyway, about three quarters into lingering and fingering and ogling all the new and slim limbs of these ascending twenty-somethings and being bedazzled by the shimmering smiles of the upstarts and the starlets, I closed my eyes…I mean, I closed the glossy skin-tillator to conclude—“It comes down to you or them amigo. Ultimately, in the end, you have to decide whose life will be more exciting.”
I knew the answer was not to be found slouching on the couch for hours on end, trying desperately to catch up with friends and the other whos and whats of network sitcoms and cable dramas. No, this is not for me.
And admittedly, as a result of this haughty stance my eyes often gloss over as I usually find myself sinking into oblivion whenever my peers babble and thunder on about Seinfeld, Sex in the City, and Six Feet Under, in addition to the usually lip-smacking about Friends, The Sopranos, as well as Law & Order. Together with the 101 shows I have never seen, I glean that I probably have watched no more than a total of 4 episodes all together. How I’ve weathered the social derision in light of my bold-faced ignorance is far less than a miracle to me.
It should be noted that any implied criticism here does not berate the contextual merit of any these shows, but rather finds fault in the act (or lack thereof) of passively watching them.
Granted, I’ll confess that I’m a prime candidate for contradiction, for I’m also an avid cinemaphile and watch at least a film a week. And I’m apt to lounge on the sofa much the same as anyone else at the end of the day, the difference being that I do so reading.
And it’s usually not magazines—this morning’s exception being one of mere curiosity combined with an effort to perk myself up (insert smirking, winking-wanking emoticon here)
I realize, ultimately, my position may appear to be tainted with liberal arrogance, as if to say “I am better than thou and thy tele” in some estranged and eccentric way, but none the less and all the more I stand firmly in my disposition.
Besides, lambasting the wasteland is actually a distant cousin of my remonstration and aim, which is actually to advocate increasing control—not over the remote, but over one’s own destiny, as well as the droll and drab and less then fab tedium of life that often leads to ennui and the resignation to television and its reclusive, mind-numbing apathy.
So, Good Lord! Get off your butt and stop being bored, don’t let the excitement in your life hinge on the suspenseful fate of others—create your own episode for gods sakes, be your own leading man or rollicking comedian; venture to laugh at yourself and try something only actors seem to have the courage to do, even it means merely using your imagination; go out and seek sensations other than the static that cracks when you pan your hand across the screen; or just go to sleep in the name of sanguine convalescence, even if it means missing “what happens next on the WB.” For you see, otherwise what’s really happening here is—nothing.
So, don’t be a victim to fashion and complacency, for one should fear less being uniformed about happened last night on the daily show, then having to reflect upon where your life goes after your mind consistently televises nothing happening here.
*
epilogue
So what’s the good news here? Well, for starters—your life is yours and fate is your hands. Moreover, it can be more exciting than anyone else’s you might be inclined to live vicariously through, but you have to make it happen.
daily archives
l.m