Those People

I really admire people who are on one track. Sports nuts, insane hobbyists, single-track folk who just want to be immersed in their one thing all the time. I cannot do that. The desire to absorb different kinds of media and attempt to be physically active is a job in an of itself. There just aren't enough hours in a day to watch a complete season of some show I missed out on, catch up on a couple of horror films, watch at least one brand new movie I've never heard of before, read a book, play some video games, go to the gym, beat this dead-horse of a blog and earn a living each day. How nice it would be to just not care about anything but one thing.

I sit down and think about what's important and what I really want to do and what can be discarded, and I come up with a big chunk of something that isn't important to me: TV. I do not care about TV anymore. I have no energy for it. I'm one of those people who said out loud to everyone who would listen when I was in single digits, "I will never get tired of TV. I love commercials."

I hate fucking commercials. I hate TV. Every time there's supposed to be a swear word or a bare breast or a sucking chest wound there's just a void unable to be filled. You watch a horror movie on TV, the axe is coming down towards the actor's stomach and then, it just cuts to the rest of the cast running away from whatever monster is doing the axing. It's like missing a shift in your car and you get that lag that prevents your body from accelerating along with the automobile at the rate physics wants it to and you feel strange and stunted. TV edits are the uncanny valley of hard-R horror films. It's still the movie you know,but there's something about it that just doesn't feel genuine or authentic.

So I don't watch much TV. I do watch it, because you can't really live in a household in this country and not get some exposure, but mostly I stay away. I enjoy the TV that I happen upon, but I am not drawn to it. So I push the need for TV away from myself and I'm fine with that.

Then I have to read posts like this fucking bullshit from Patton Oswalt's Myspace.com blog telling me all the amazing stuff that is on TV and how I really am not giving TV a chance. Patton Oswalt is probably the funniest and most well-read and well-watched person I have the pleasure to know about these days, but he's a total cocksucker for stuff like this.

Patton Oswalt can write a blog post about KFC, 10 of the best movies the world has ever created and the best television shows around today all while quoting and referencing classic works of literature, canon Sci-Fi book series' and noir from the 1950's. He's a well-rounded guy who writes really well. He is to be admired, respected and emulated. Fucking Patton-goddamned-Oswalt.