More on TV, movies and life

(You might want to read the previous entry first.)

Truth be told, I’m not some kind of anti-TV snob. I will drop a Simpsons quote or Star Trek reference at the drop of a hat; I am, after all a pop culture aficionado. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered to dress up for The Matrix: Reloaded.

(I draw the line at dressing up for Lord of the Rings or any of the Harry Potter movies. However, I know a supreme Harry Potter nerd who wears a Gryffindor scarf.)

I’d love to catch more episodes of 24 — I believe the first season is available on DVD. I caught up with my Sex and the City viewing — people gave me the first two seasons on DVD for my birthday. I have to get around to catching all those Sopranos episodes I missed. I have two strategies for watching TV that allow me to lead a bloggable, gooftastic existence and still stay reasonable up-to-date on plotlines:

• Doing it at the gym. My gym’s got a very nice room full of tradmills, stairclimbers, stationary bikes and cross-country skiing machines, each equipped with a multi-channel headphone jack that allows you to get the audio feed from several sources: the six TVs in the room, or from a bank of CD players, FM tuners and tape decks. I managed to catch of couple of episodes of 24 this way.
• Time-shifting. I usually catch Enterprise episodes and The Daily Show by programming my VCR to record them and watching them over breakfast. I’d rather this were a little more automatic, but until TiVo service comes to Canada, I have to remember to plop new tapes into the machine.

As for movies, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it feel less like a passive experience. Maybe it’s because it’s still an outing, or perhaps it’s that there’s still a social aspect to it. I’m trying to see a few more movies, and yes, especially films (film aficionados will tell you that there’s a difference between the two).

Books, in my opinion, are a different beastie entirely. I will always set some time aside for a good book. Maybe the McLuhanesque distinction of books as a “hot” medium may be a little silly or New Age-y sounding, but I think he has a point; you do have to do a little more work when reading, even if it’s extremely light fare such as the Captain Underpants series (which I highly recommend). I also notice that I’ve done more reading since starting the blog; perhaps it’s that reading leads to writing, which in turn leads to more reading.

That being said, you might want to re-consider your options if the highlight of your weekend is invariably making Saturday night a Blockbuster night. Maybe silly accordion-powered mayhem isn’t your scene, but life’s too short to always spend in front of some screen whose primary purpose is to convince you to buy more stuff. Go for a walk, a bike ride or a swim. Help your mom bake a cake or clean the garage. Whittle wood, stone or even soap. Join a gym or a sports team. Kick someone’s ass in the first-person shooter of your choice, chess, Trivial Pursit or Jenga. Go dancing. Hit the library. Hang out at a cafe or patio with friends. Explore the streets or the woods. Play darts, shoot a bow or take a BB gun and shoot cans off a fence.

Just do something.