Beware the TV shows on DVD!

As a naive 18 year old starting my college career at Chapman University in Orange County, I was given a veritable encyclopedia of advice. It ranged from the comedic (“Fuck bad bitches!”) to the well meaning, possibly true, but ultimately extremely clichè (“College is the best years of your life, make sure to live it to it’s fullest.”), to the sublime (Those, I will take to my grave.). However, never was the advice overtly specific, it was always more of the meandering inner-peace type magniloquence. In retrospect what I needed was some specificity, specifically a little advice on the addictive nature of television shows on DVD.

That’s correct, if I were to give an incoming college freshman some advice it would be this: Beware the TV shows on DVD! Yet, I fear that this advice would be in vain. It’s inevitable that one will discover a new television show and end up spending an entire weekend (sometimes an entire WEEK) watching the show. This is the precise reason that TV shows are aired once a week, so people don’t sit down and accidentally watch them for 16 straight hours. Sometimes you don’t even notice until it’s dark outside and you realize that you haven’t moved your legs at all today.

I may be the worst culprit of all here. People often talk about self control and how it relates to obese people. People say they have no sympathy for the obese because they should just stop eating, or eat healthy, or go exercise, or something, anything, just stop eating those bags of Chips Ahoy. Let me tell you, after discovering TV on DVD, I don’t agree with this at all. I have all the sympathy in the world for obese people. If television shows on DVD were food, I would be so fat. Grossly, disgustingly, fat. Fatter than pre-Trim Spa, but post-Playboy Anna Nicole Smith. Fatter (but with less of a weird accent) than John Travolta in Hairspray. Sales people would ignore me at stores, I would have to purchase two cinema tickets, I wouldn’t ever be able to travel by submarine, I would even have to shop at Mrs. Plus Size next to the Food4Less.* I simply have no self control whatsoever when it comes to a good TV show that I have unfettered access to. I always tell myself I will savor it, watch an episode every other day or something, but that never has happened and I fear it never will. Inevitably, I watch them all back to back to back to back. And then if there is another season, count me in for that too. I’m doomed to forever be a compulsive and obsessive watcher of television shows on DVD. There is no cure.

I bring this up because my affliction has recently struck again, this time in the form of the excellent science-fiction-Western** show: Firefly. I’ve started watching it, and much like some sort of Off The Wall era Michael Jackson, I won’t stop until I get enough. Right now Mal, Wash, Simon, and of course Kaylee and Inara are the only friends I need. If my blog isn’t updated with my usual witticism that you have come to expect much in the near future, you know why. If nobody sees or hears from me at all in the near future you know why. If my family actually calls you up, worried about me because they are concerned that my limbs might actually no longer function, tell them you know why.

And if you are currently languishing, with many hours to kill, might I recommend Firefly? Maybe you can be more responsible about it that I can.

-John

john@addictedtowords.com

*Somehow in the process of getting really fat I became a cross-dresser, it’s a long story.
**Which is an admittedly niche genre.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 12:49 am and is filed under Magical Things, All, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.