With its anonymity, formlessness, and deficit of fact checkers, the Internet can make liars out of us all, or at least it allows us to hide inconvenient truths about ourselves.
Some take the opposite tack, telling anything and all about themselves—that anonymity again—but not this cowboy. I’m more likely to embellish, like going into chatrooms as an 18-year-old blonde lesbian ready for some hot cyber action, likely with some other middle-aged guy who is pretending to be an 18-year-old blonde lesbian dying for hot cyber action.
Thus, it is with some hesitance that I reveal the following:
I have done air guitar and white man’s overbite over the age of 40.
I truly believe that bowling represents the highest form of human existence.
And I am a TV addict.
I have not addressed this latter issue, the most evil, nefarious, awful threat to my writing career, because I steadfastly have believed it is not a problem, like a junkie saying he doesn’t have a problem while shooting up, like a family member pretending Junior doesn’t have a heroin problem, or like a drug dealer pretending that he’s doing a public service.
Graphic evidence
I am addicted to television, but to be more truthful, I’m addicted to distraction. These days, most distractions are related to the computer: games, burning CDs, surfing. Or air guitar. But as grew up far before the Dawn of the Internet, television is my original, brain-wasting exercise and why I have not written more than I have, or that my writing isn’t better.
(I guess I could say to myself, “Maybe my writing is not more voluminous or of a higher quality because I just have nothing to say and I have no talent,” but that, as we all know, is simply an excuse to quit, and the coward’s way out. I’d rather blame something else.)
As I grew up before there was e-mail and PlayStation, I wasted prodigious hours before our family’s warm blue glow. Cartoons, game shows, dramas, comedies, pro wrestling, “Wide World of Sports,” just about anything but soap operas. The “ABC Movie of the Week,” I was there. “The Price Is Right,” I was there with Bob Barker. “The Six-Million Dollar Man,” “Star Trek,” and hell, even “Barnaby Jones.”
In a way, it’s amazing that I ever became a writer, or am not illiterate.
My purpose is not to give those of us old enough to reminisce that we can rebuild Steve Austin—better, faster, stronger—but that television has rotted my brain from a very early age and can take up inordinate amounts of time if I let it.
I knew better. So worried was I that yours truly did not own a television until my mid-30s. I didn’t get cable until 2002. Far from being a Luddite or a snob, I feared that once I got TV, I would never write again.
Wife and I got a set when we started playing house, and if it has not been fatal to my writing, it now plays the role of constant temptation.
Even though there’s really very little to watch. Save for “The Sopranos,” there isn’t a show that I make a point of watching every week. But there’s always Law & Order repeats, all the time. We’re talking the regular show and two spinoffs, of course, but there’s always a murder, rape, or robbery for New York’s finest to solve.
Not to mention “Seinfeld” reruns, “South Park,” “WWE Raw,” and a whole panoply of fine family programming.
It’s odd how, when I’m stuck on a piece of fiction, feeling jumpy and unsure of myself, my inclination is to watch television, to park myself in front of that radiating box of ultimate acceptance—no TV set, star, or show ever rejected one of my stories.
Hello, my name is Bookfraud, and I’m a TV addict
A wise teacher of Wife’s said that television had corroded a generation of writers, and that all of one’s free time should be spent in a book. Sound advice, if followed. This older gentleman came of age long before cable, never mind the Internet, so it was easier for him to avoid the four channels of crap available back then, instead of the 500 channels of crap available to us now.
On several occasions, Wife has lauded my discipline, my ability to come home from work and launch right into composing the written word. But she also notes that I am not one to unwind, and this probably leaves me less productive, for about twenty minutes after setting off for my adventures in the Land of Fiction Writing, I feel the siren call of television.
Perhaps I should start a new book. Reading or writing one. Help me.
glitz: tv as background noise — right now i am taping something for wife, and when i hear something distracting, i have to get up and run to the set. it’s evil.
neil: i would like to think that we at least get our ideas from “the andy griffith show.”
lang. lover: out of the house? my computer is in the house! my tv is in the house! wife is in the house!
and wife is still a jb junkie. she’s got, like, 324 concerts she is going to make me see. no cure.
jordan: the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. welcome.
Ah. the opium den analogy you gave Dora then makes perfect sense. that’s tough.
BTW – loved the Six million dollar man when I was a kid . . . and Rescue. . . and the “horrible,” short-lived Spider-man tv show. Then there were all those great, cheesy 80′s shows. . . and Night Tracks.
Ouch. Painful to admit the truth, but I, as well, am a TV addict.
Ouch. Painful to admit the truth, but I, as well, am a TV addict.
f.w.c.: you’re enalbling, alright. and i loved “hawaii 5-0,” jack lord’s hair, and the greatest theme song ever. pop culture can be an important part of fiction, yes, but for me, it just eats away at the desire to create.
dora: sorry to hear you were on vocal rest (did not know you were a musician) but complete vegetation before the tv for three days is like descending into an opium den, for me.
glad you’ve caught up. good to hear from ya.
quinn: but you don’t understand. it rots my brain. it serves nothing. at least cleaning the house has to be done. tv is worse than downloading porn, which, at least, i could write about. i get sucked into the vortex. i am lost. not the show.
f.w.c.: you’re enalbling, alright. and i loved “hawaii 5-0,” jack lord’s hair, and the greatest theme song ever. pop culture can be an important part of fiction, yes, but for me, it just eats away at the desire to create.
dora: sorry to hear you were on vocal rest (did not know you were a musician) but complete vegetation before the tv for three days is like descending into an opium den, for me.
glad you’ve caught up. good to hear from ya.
quinn: but you don’t understand. it rots my brain. it serves nothing. at least cleaning the house has to be done. tv is worse than downloading porn, which, at least, i could write about. i get sucked into the vortex. i am lost. not the show.
glitz: tv as background noise — right now i am taping something for wife, and when i hear something distracting, i have to get up and run to the set. it’s evil.
neil: i would like to think that we at least get our ideas from “the andy griffith show.”
glitz: tv as background noise — right now i am taping something for wife, and when i hear something distracting, i have to get up and run to the set. it’s evil.
neil: i would like to think that we at least get our ideas from “the andy griffith show.”
lang. lover: out of the house? my computer is in the house! my tv is in the house! wife is in the house!
and wife is still a jb junkie. she’s got, like, 324 concerts she is going to make me see. no cure.
jordan: the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. welcome.
lang. lover: out of the house? my computer is in the house! my tv is in the house! wife is in the house!
and wife is still a jb junkie. she’s got, like, 324 concerts she is going to make me see. no cure.
jordan: the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. welcome.
Ah. the opium den analogy you gave Dora then makes perfect sense. that’s tough.
BTW – loved the Six million dollar man when I was a kid . . . and Rescue. . . and the “horrible,” short-lived Spider-man tv show. Then there were all those great, cheesy 80′s shows. . . and Night Tracks.
Ah. the opium den analogy you gave Dora then makes perfect sense. that’s tough.
BTW – loved the Six million dollar man when I was a kid . . . and Rescue. . . and the “horrible,” short-lived Spider-man tv show. Then there were all those great, cheesy 80′s shows. . . and Night Tracks.
My husband and I fall into the mixed original family category for so many things: Catholic-Jewish, New York-Iowa, Democrat-Republican, military-civilian, but our biggest hurdle was television viewing. In my family it was dubbed “the idiot box” and viewed with a level of disdain. In his family it was the 7th family member. On at all times. Seriously all times. I came downstairs one morning to their gigantic tv turned on to static. I asked “what’s up” and was told “the cable was out”. When I asked “why not turn it off?”, the answer, with complete ernesty was, “how will we know when the cable is back on?”. Can’t beat that logic with a stick.
I do have to say that it is kind of sweet that he has some strong family memories, and almost gets misty over Hee Haw, Green Acres and the Lawrence Welk Show.
My husband and I fall into the mixed original family category for so many things: Catholic-Jewish, New York-Iowa, Democrat-Republican, military-civilian, but our biggest hurdle was television viewing. In my family it was dubbed “the idiot box” and viewed with a level of disdain. In his family it was the 7th family member. On at all times. Seriously all times. I came downstairs one morning to their gigantic tv turned on to static. I asked “what’s up” and was told “the cable was out”. When I asked “why not turn it off?”, the answer, with complete ernesty was, “how will we know when the cable is back on?”. Can’t beat that logic with a stick.
I do have to say that it is kind of sweet that he has some strong family memories, and almost gets misty over Hee Haw, Green Acres and the Lawrence Welk Show.
My husband and I fall into the mixed original family category for so many things: Catholic-Jewish, New York-Iowa, Democrat-Republican, military-civilian, but our biggest hurdle was television viewing. In my family it was dubbed “the idiot box” and viewed with a level of disdain. In his family it was the 7th family member. On at all times. Seriously all times. I came downstairs one morning to their gigantic tv turned on to static. I asked “what’s up” and was told “the cable was out”. When I asked “why not turn it off?”, the answer, with complete ernesty was, “how will we know when the cable is back on?”. Can’t beat that logic with a stick.
I do have to say that it is kind of sweet that he has some strong family memories, and almost gets misty over Hee Haw, Green Acres and the Lawrence Welk Show.