I Like to Watch

June 25, 2006 | People often write to me and say that they're grateful, because I save them from having to watching crappy stuff on TV. That gives me the illusion that I'm providing a service of some kind, like passing out free cans of tuna to pregnant women or speaking with teenagers about the benefits of proper hydration while tripping on ecstasy.

But then I have to wonder: What are these people doing instead of watching crappy TV all the time like I do? Because I've been watching crappy TV long enough now that if I weren't watching crappy TV, I'm not sure how I would spend my time.

It's like my friend who, when I mentioned the question of whether or not to have kids, said, "I don't like going to bars anymore. I don't have the energy for parties. I fall asleep after a few pages of reading. I can only travel so much. What the hell else am I going to do but have kids, really?"

And my friends who never watch crappy TV? They remind me of myself, before I started wasting half of my time watching crappy TV: Their minds are overactive. They never seem to unwind. They have productivity fetishes. Everything they do has to have value or meaning. They make lists constantly. They don't like to "waste" their time on things that have no inherent benefits beyond being vaguely enjoyable and sort of amusingly stupid.

But for people who believe that every single minute of their lives really should be meaningful or productive -- and I used to fit into this category, incredibly enough -- finding something that has no value or meaning whatsoever is, in and of itself, quite valuable. It's called "relaxation."

In other words, bad TV for me is almost like a way of meditating. It takes me out of my head. It doesn't make me stupid any more than sleeping makes me stupid. That's why I no longer understand people who decry TV as a "total waste of time." I used to do that -- when I lived in San Francisco, I remember telling my brother, who lived in L.A. and watched maybe three hours of TV a week, that he watched way too much TV and that he should do something else instead. At the time, the only TV I watched was about five minutes of "Law and Order" while chatting with my roommate, who got high and watched that show every single night at around the same time I was coming home from being out with friends.

But what was so incredibly meaningful and special about my life back then, going out and drinking beers with friends all the time? All we did was talk about the same problems and dilemmas, over and over and over again. At least the plot of "Law and Order" actually changes every week -- or at least it seems to, if you get high enough.

The advocate
In short, I'm shifting from decrying the vast volumes of crappy TV I watch to advocating it as a lifestyle choice. But isn't that the most common trajectory for someone whose seemingly odd choices or habits or vices have become, slowly but surely, a way of life? Whether you have a soft spot for rescue dogs, Japanese anime, or trading sexual partners with your next-door neighbor Lou, if you make the same choice enough times, before you know it, you'll be marching in the streets with a T-shirt that says, "Ask me about my swing," or even more likely, "Do you screw other people's wives? Because I do, and I can't recommend it highly enough."

Sadly, this doesn't change the fact that, no matter how relaxing you find it to nurture homeless dogs or care for high-maintenance plants or bed Lou's wife, no one really wants to hear about it. No matter what demographic any person falls into, no matter how a person relaxes, whether by articulating a litany of gripes about their co-workers or collecting baseball cards or masturbating to pictures of the Olsen twins, they'll always make you feel that your particular habit is arbitrary and shallow, if not deeply unsavory.

People don't like lifestyles. People think lifestyles are for weirdos. Even as they identify with their own particular hobbies or habits at a profound level, even as they wear their own "Dentists make people smile" or "Golfers have tiny little balls" T-shirts, they'll casually label your pursuit as boring or stupid or perverted, without even trying it, without even knowing a thing about it, without ever meeting Lou's wife and recognizing what a stone cold babe she is.

And look, don't even tell me that you've tried to watch crappy TV and you still don't like it, because unless you've bit the palm of your hand like Squiggy while waiting for the judges of "So You Think You Can Dance" to decide whether to send Ryan or Jason home, you don't really know. Not really.

Man, can you believe they sent Jason home? He was a like a floodlight from heaven! That was so not fair.

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