In the spirit of Billy Mays, let me show you the product for all your needs – it slices, it dices, it trims hair, your dog’s coat, your lawn, it grows hair on your head and in a little terracotta pottery dish and in upside down planters.  It will steal your money. … But that’s not all!  ACT NOW and you’ll receive, not one but TWO FREE GIFTS along with your payment of $14 thousand dollars every two weeks for just SIX WEEKS!  That’s about a dollar a day and change by the Venutian exchange rate so you won’t have to cut into your 12 coffee a day habit and will still have money left over for QVC Gold Jewelry days!

For all of you who just LOVE TV – and there should be many of you who are reading this blog – to get the absolute most out of your life, you need the new TV HAT.  Yes, you heard right: the TV HAT.  We’re not going to hide the TV in the frames of your glasses or make a wrist-TV, the likes of which James Bond would be envious all in his martini.  We’re going to slip that TV over your eyes by way of a HAT! Get Smart! Get one today! This is no fancy shoe phone.  As someone called it, it’s a “feedbag for your head.”

Duck inside and watch full living color.  No more will you have to be disturbed by the real world.  Going to the beach?  Shield yourself from the sun AND get in a dose of golf or 30 year old reruns of Wide World of Sports.  AND THERE’S MORE!  ACT NOW and you will receive your choice of color!  Buy one in each color to coordinate your wardrobe.

Is a full on hat too much for you?  Order the popular VISOR!  Comes complete with neck protector, because, when you start having fits of laughter and no one knows what you are looking at, you’re liable to bust a gut and give yourself whiplash all at the same time!

No more will you have to watch TV in the cold den while your spouse goes to the warm bed. Instead of snuggling for warmth and sharing a quiet romantic evening, wear your hat to bed and take in the late late show to the comforting snoring of your sleeping spouse.

How did we ever get to the 21st century without this product?

Anonymous testimonial: “The TV HAT ™ has changed my life.  No more will I ever miss an episode of All My Children.  Speaking of which.. where’d my children go? Ralph? Ralph? Where are the kids?!! Hey. Ralph.. where did YOU go???!  Anyone??”

THIS HAS BEEN A PRODUCT UN-PLACEMENT.    Proudly un-supporting TVs and TV products for one whole day and counting.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Life Without TV.  For a happier world.  For a happier you.

ANSWER TO MONDAY’S QUIZ:  Each post thus far has an allusion or a direct reference to either a television show or a movie.   In fact, from “The Pilot” forward, there has been a direct reference to a movie title in each post.

TV is wildly popular, and so are the movies. Is there any way to determine which is the more popular medium?  Is there a way to determine which is more influential?  I don’t know.  But I do know this: I’m crazy about the movies.  But going to the movies – that’s another subject altogether!

We recently saw Toy Story 3, to the tune of $32.00 (thanks Fandango for driving up the cost!). That’s $32.00 for two people – NO CONCESSIONS STAND!  That’s almost 2 months worth of Netflix on our 3-unlimited schedule. That’s almost two hours of being hungry for watching a multimillion dollar cartoon!

Oh, was that a movie reference?

Stay tuned for more of Life Without TV soon.  And as always, thanks for reading.

Life Without TV.  For a happier world.  For a happier you.

This weekend was … lazy.  Ahhhh, the summer months, when the air is warm, the senses dull, and the Dodgers are blowing yet another late inning game.  As the weekend ended, we had homemade dinner (low-cal meatloaf and steamed veggies) as we watched a movie that had been sitting around for some time:  Thoroughly Modern Millie.

As movies go, TMM was delightful!  It was directed by George Roy Hill, the same director who brought us, among other great movies, the great teamwork of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in not one, but two GREAT GREAT movies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting.   TMM is a musical with Julie Andrews (always one of my favs – post Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music), Mary Tyler Moore (pre-Mary Tyler Moore show), Carol Channing (how DID she get where she got, and how did she get to where she got without winning more awards!?), and a great great cast, including a mute Pat Morita and almost-mute Jack Soo in stereotypical parodies sure to make Mao roll over in his grave.  For those of you who haven’t seen this movie, I’m not going to give it away.

If you like musicals, period pieces of the 20s, dancing, and a movie with a plot – rated G – with one semi-curse word in it that the title character, Mary Richards, in the Mary Tyler Moore would have never said, give TMM a shot.   It felt like an old musical or even a Broadway musical that was made into a movie, but it wasn’t.  It actually was a movie that was successful and was turned into a stage musical.

One more thing to do other than watch TV:  watch an old movie on a Sunday night, relax with family with quality entertainment, before taking on the stresses of the world come Monday morning.

Life Without TV.  For a happier world.  For a happier you.

But if you are lucky–like moi–you don’t actually own a washer and dryer, and your abode doesn’t offer washers and dryers to the standards to which one (moi) has become accustomed.  Thus, we must trek, every 3rd month or so, to the Pier 32 marina, where the machines are new, almost unused, like most of the boats, where the facilities sparkle freshly like spring-washed sheets…or something like that.  This past week saw our bi-yearly laundry expedition (okay, it’s not that bad, but hey, it’s still laundry and not the #1 priority on our to-do list).  We made the best of it.

With leashed dog, ice chest, a stop at the store for quarters, we headed for the shore.  Our marina sits across from a marshy sanctuary. The unseasonably cool weather this year has kept the place virtually bug-free. Even before the sun goes down, it’s mild, yet sweatshirt weather.  We loaded up 5 machines twice (one was broken), headed up to the barbecue grill and had a regular cookout with Trader Joe’s hamburger. (Did we remember a spatula? Nooo. Utensils?  Nooo.)  But we had a nice meal, outdoors, as the sun went down.  Afterwards, with dog tied to doggie cleat, we opened the large sliding doors to the Boater’s lounge, the pull-up-and-down variety like on storage sheds, except designer fashion, and read our books.  I’m reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, and Alex is reading Forever by Pete Hamill.   After a time, between wash and dry cycles, we took the dog for a walk, checked on the boat, enjoyed a short walk in the evening air.  No loud music, no buzzing bugs, just the gentle clang-clank of halyards against masts and the creak of docks and boats held taut by dock lines. Then we folded the clothes and made our way home.

A Trip to Bountiful it was not.  It was laundry after all.  But for all that, it’s as close to a perfectly pleasant summer’s evening one can get without a bottle of wine, a full moon, and date of choice.

Notable about the evening:  in the Boater’s Lounge is a beautiful flat panel LCD screen with full Direct TV package, and in the laundry room is a large wall-mounted TV as well.

We never even reached for the remote.

Life Without TV.   For a happier world.  For a happier you.

“AARRRRGGHHHH!  MY TV!! WHO TOOK MY TV? WHERE DID IT GO?  WHAT AM I EVER GOING TO DO??  MY LIFE IS OVER!!”

And then, realizing this isn’t a bad dream, you wake up anyway, remembering that you VOLUNTARILY REMOVED THE TV from your living room (and den, and bedroom, all 2.93 sets per house, vs. the 2.54 people per house in the US – http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/05/more-tv-sets-than-people-per-household.html).  THERE ARE MORE TVs THAN PEOPLE IN THE AVERAGE HOUSE.   WTF?!  Talk about Koyaanisqatsi!

So now, what are you going to do?   First, breathe.  Imagine all the time you have available to you now; that average of 6 hours per day of TV watching you’ve been doing has to be filled.  Sleeping more is not an option.  Working more leads to even more work.  Break that vicious cycle now!  Eating more, not unless you want to also buy an entirely new XXXL wardrobe, though taking more time to eat properly and savoring your meals is a viable option.  So what are you going to do? … Here are some ideas, based on things that we do in our TV-less house:

Play with the dog, cook meals together, play the piano or musical instrument, READ BOOKS, play video games, play board and other games (Scrabble! Trivial Pursuit! Monopoly! Yahtzee! Backgammon), play card games (gin rummy, cribbage, poker, blackjack).

Take art classes, join a club, get more exercise, take a walk at the beach, get up early to watch the sun rise, stay up late to watch the moon set, go sailing, surfing, hang gliding, parasailing, jet skiing, take another walk at the beach, take up yoga, jogging, running, calisthenics.  Take another walk on the beach.  Jump in the surf with all your clothes on.

SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH YOUR KIDS.  Play hide ‘n’ seek with them. Play tag. Teach them something new. Build a tree fort, a birdhouse, a model airplane.

SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH YOUR SPOUSE/GF/BF/BFF/LOVED ONES/YOURSELF.  Not everyone has an extended family, though you may have close friends. But even if you enjoy solitude and alone time more than not, there is plenty of life to share with just yourself.  Go to a movie (though, you might have to mortgage the house nowadays to do so), venture to a new restaurant or try a new cuisine, order a special glass of wine or a selection of tequilas, go to a baseball game on a warm summer evening, to a lake or river or bay or the ocean and listen to the water.

With just a little attention to the life outside of yourself, you will be able to see and experience more of the world.

ENTER NEW CHARACTER – ALEX, THE WONDERFUL GORGEOUS SPOUSE

Here’s what Alex and I do on any given week outside of work:

Watch movies on Netflix, eat dinner together, go to the marina, work and sail on the boat, visit with marina friends, go out to eat for date night, take the dog to the dog park, visit doggy neighbors while visiting with our human neighbors, walk on the beach, look for new boats, go for power walks, play cards, unwind with a nice wine or a beer, listen to music, watch movie trailers, play video games, snuggle, hold hands.

Our life of the mind and our living schedule is not cluttered by TV shows and commercials.  Our headspace is our own.  And there is a lot of room in it.  And those rooms are TV free.

Take time to do one new thing a week, cut out one TV show a week. Start with the dumb 1/2 hour shows, the one you always watch and then say, “why do I watch that? It’s so dumb!”  And do something else, that involves outdoor air, breathing, thinking, and a little moving your body around.  You’ll find that… life outside of TV may be a little more addicting–and interesting, and engaging, and fun–than you thought.

Life Without TV.  For a happier world.  For a happier you.

Is your iPad a TV?  Do you use it like a TV?  Is there a reason you need yet another TV-like device?

Studies have shown that your life is oozing away as you read these words. To make the most of it, without taking meds that make you want to run through meadow-green meadows with while and yellow flowers in them, in slow motion, toward childhood friends, it’s time to put the TV away and focus on life.

I almost bought an iPad upon first release. I’ve been an early adopter of many items.  And then my inclination to be an early adopter waned with age. But there was something about the iPad – sleek, slick, slippery—-did you know that word starting with “sl” have negative connotations?  Slimy, sleazy, slithery…..  Students I work with (or for, if you talk to them) talked me out of buying the iPad the day it went on sale.  “Wait for the 2nd generation. Apple never gets it right the first time.”  Only one student had the faith to say, “Let him do what he wants.”  I listened to them all, and then did what I wanted — I waited.  *sigh*

And then I saw one.  It gleamed and shined.  The interface was so sensitive.  It was fast.  I looked at my Kindle, and I *sighed* as it flashed when it changed its now-seemingly-archaic eInk pages.

But you know what?  Today, I still read my Kindle (and I still love it!).  And I do not pine for an iPad.  I spend a lot of time at the computer, and to tell the truth, I don’t know what I would do with an iPad.   Play Bejeweled for 5 minutes while waiting in the car?  Look up movie times in the bathroom instead of waiting until I get to my computer desk?  I live in 615 sq. ft.  and I have two large computer monitors within 20 ft of each other.  What could an iPad add to my life?

Someone else had the same experience, except he went through the trouble of buying and iPad and then returning it.  Peter Bregman writes a post about why he returned his iPad – http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/06/why-i-returned-my-ipad.html

I applaud Mr. Bregman.  Embracing boredom as a catalyst to creativity is one of the highest pursuits of the mind.

The dull droning of the television actually stamps out awareness of boredom. It’s beyond boredom, dulling senses and frontal lobes alike.  Television: the modern labotomy.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Go on.  Unplug it.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

(humms Jeopardy! theme)

We all know that the scariest part of a movie is “when the lights go out,” and the lights are usually out in scary movies, such as Halloween, which takes place largely at night.  “When the lights go out” happens when the killer is getting closer to catching the potential victim, who is in a dead end hiding spot, a closet with a solid back wall, an alley with a high brick wall, a large house with all the doors seemingly locked from the outside.  “Lights out” at camp is synonymous with the time of telling ghost stories and pulling scary pranks on unsuspecting bunk mates.  “Lights out” is also a metaphor for UNTHINKING behavior.  As in, “he shot the lights out” (well, that’s a complicated metaphor, which also includes he shot so well that the game was over and everyone went home and they turned the gym lights out because it was no contest. Shooting the “lights out” also means ending something, as in the final act of a play, or a life, and then the “lights go out” – such a fruitful metaphor, but I digress).  And the whole point of removing the television is to rejoin the land of the thinking.

Now that you have a large empty space in your home, you have your first task: what are you going to put there?

Finding things to do when you change your life from a television-centric one to a magically full life is actually quite easy.  There’s just not that much time in life to dilly-dally.  So let’s go!  Let’s examine just how much time you have in this short life.

In an 80 year life, there are 730,000 hours.  That’s not even a million hours!  Get a move on!

In a life, we sleep 1/3 of that:  26.7 years of sleeping (avg.ing 8/hrs a night) or 243,333 hours!

We work about 50 years of our life, starting at age 16 (thereabouts) to age 65, rounding up.  A 40 hours work week with a two week vacation each year equals 2,000 hours worked per year, multiplied by 50 years is 100,000 hours worked, or 11.4 years of our life spent WORKING! (There are 8764.81277 hours in a year).

Then there are all the “tings” we have to take care of, as in, eaTING, defecaTING, fornicaTING. We’ll average these out to 3 hours a day.  3 x  365 days/year x 80 years = 87,600/hours!  Your mileage may vary, as they say.

Then there’s the time we’re sick, in school, having babies, making babies (see above), caring for sick babies who should be in school, as well as forced family vacations, summer camp, church, synagogue, temple, playing sports, birthday parties, holiday gatherings, hanging out, going to the movies, dating … let’s just add on 200,000 more hours to make sure! I’m pretty sure that’s an underestimation.

Sleep: 243,333 hours
Work: 100,000 hours
‘Tings: 87,600 hours
Other: 200,000 hours

TOTAL:  630,633 hours, out of 730,000 hours!  That leaves us about 100,000 hours (give or take) to DO THINGS, things we want to do.  That’s about the same amount of time we work in our life, or a little less than 11.5 years of our life.

Do you want to spend 11.5 years watching television?   ELEVEN AND A HALF FREAKIN’ YEARS SITTING ON YOUR BUTT WATCHING TV??!

AND THEN … the lights go out.

… to be continued …

Just like the addict who occasionally falls off the proverbial wagon, however, I, too, will reach for the forbidden triple-scoop sprinkle-laden ice come in double-dipped chocolate fudge waffle cone. I just do so with very teeny servings, to get just the barest of smells before I whisk myself away from temptation.

My guilty television pleasures are very few now:

• a South Park episode now and then on Netflix when we are between movies delivered by mail and nothing is appealing on watch on demand;
• 10 minute video segments of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show when friends suggest a particularly funny-sounding clip on social media Internet sites, maybe 2 or 3 times a month;
• a Top 10 List now and then from The David Letterman Show;
• Jayhawk basketball, in season and when available;
• very important, life-changing news events, and then only through the Internet;
• some MLB baseball, if available at a sport bar during playoff/world series time.
• super bowl commercials, post-super bowl and on the Internet

The last television show I watched faithfully was Battlestar Galactica, the newer Sci-Fi Channel version.  My nephew and his then-girlfriend introduced us to the show.

But I had already had a history with the previous incarnation starring Lorne Greene. I was completely enthralled and fascinated by the show. Stars Wars entranced me (and the world) and I was at a high point of science fiction in my life. I dedicated myself to Battlestar Galactica, watching every single moment, every rerun, every commercial preceding and after the show, every moment of the credits.  It’s the closest I ever came to being obsessed with anything in a total indulgent unhealthy way.

I had heard that Battlestar Galactica had been remade, with a female Starbuck, and a new cast and new treatment. Upon watching the first episode, my wife and I were hooked. We ordered the first season’s discs from Netflix to catch up and then made Friday night dates to watch the show on a nice flat screen tv screen that had a satellite package at the marina.  Then we found ways to find the show online. And when that ended, I stopped watching commercial television completely.

I’ve never been a fan of football, and I don’t watch the Super Bowl. But I do enjoy creativity, and I will watch Super Bowl commercials on the Internet after the fact.  That may be the guiltiest of all the pleasures of television I have left.  Unless I’ve inadvertently forgotten something, the above is all the TV I watch, and not regularly.  If I go to a restaurant or bar that has a TV on, I will ignore it.  I can tune it out completely.

And daily, as I hear people talk about this TV show and that, especially of the “reality TV” variety, I am glad that TV is no longer coursing through my veins like a drug. I’m reminded of the great movie Network, how prophetic it is now to see network news presented as entertainment. (think FOX news).

So now when I think of turning the non-existent TV on in my home, (it helps not to have a TV if one doesn’t want to watch one), I think of all the other wonderful gifts I have in life that I can turn my attention to:  my wife, my dog, reading, the beach, sailing, writing, design, Internet, games, and so forth.   More about those healthy unguilty pleasures in the next episode of……

Life Without TV.

Despite my sister’s open rebellion against family tradition, we were definitely a “media-oriented” family, of which I will have much to say, soon.

Now I rarely watch TV, and never lazily so.  I admit, however, to a passion for movies, and I’m often “on the Internet,” as one says.   Recently, I saw an ad for Google TV – smash all your media centers together into a single point of contact and output through a screen and you got Google TV, all your media in one place.   That way, The Shawshank Redemption crowd will never have to suffer a single minute without that movie playing somewhere.  It’s such a problem!

So in this day of DVD players, TiVo and DVRs, Hulu and TV on demand, and Entire TV Series Disc sets available to watch instantly on Netflix, isn’t “Life Without TV” a somewhat arbitrary and artificial distinction that doesn’t make a whit of difference?   Obviously, I think “Life Without TV” is important enough to blog about it.   So here are my discriminatory (if somewhat arbitrary and artificial) distinctions as to just what I’m getting at:

I watch:

Movies (at home-Go Netflix! and at the theater (rarely)
Trailers (Apple site, IMDB, Yahoo! Movies)
Video Clips of various news items, including cute animals (all over the Internet and YouTube)

I read voraciously:

Internet News
Books and stories
Nonfiction

I don’t watch:

Commercial Television (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX (Hell no!), the affiliates, Cable, Satellite, no no no)
Hulu
TV Shows through Netflix

Why?  TV doesn’t challenge me. It’s prepackaged and repackaged, same stories, different year. And now with reality TV, everyone’s an instant star and tabloid god or goddess. No thank you.  I will not be a passive stooge, watching for the betterment of the advertiser’s bank accounts.   Ahh, I hear about some TV shows that seem interesting, clever, witty, creative… yet they are siren songs to me, the call to make me sit on the couch and lose time with… what do I have after watching 1/2 hour sitcom?  A couple of jokes, if that?

What do I have after a full-length movie?  A conversation over pie with my date!

There is much more to why I have given up TV.   Being a passive shell in which to plug a veritable I-V of entertainment into my brain is not how to live life fully or consciously.

For those elites out there – you know who you are – who are saying, “But Mongo likes watching TV, Mongo likes watching things blow up!” I say, “Okay, caveman, wipe that drool off your chin and get back to your reclinable rock. There’s another show about to start any minute now, when the big hand is on the 12 and the….. oh just sit down, shut up, and watch.”

But me? I’m going to … save the world.  Tune in next time for the continuing adventures of…….

So it is with me and walking.   Or, so I wish it were with me and walking, had I but world enough and time…. but that’s for another post.

I walk, almost every day, at least a mile.  I record my walks (thank you Nike Plus!), and I walk consciously.  My carpool could drop me off at work’s door, but I consciously choose to walk.  It’s relaxing, calming.  It allows me time to think, to plan for the day, to think about the day before, and, oxymoronishly, to be in the present moment.  I try to take different paths, to seek out new ways to see the world, though for my morning work walk, I measure the walk to be just the right length so that my Nike Plus indicator reads exactly 1.00 miles when I land at my desk.

In southern California during May and June, we have what’s known as May gray and June gloom.  Many tourists don’t understand why they aren’t getting sunshine when they come here at the beginning of their summer vacations.  California is not the Sunshine State – go east to the land of humid and alligators if you want that.   One of the nice things about May and June in SoCal, though, is that there is a little window of sunshine every day, around mid day, surrounded by periods of gray.  It’s during this gray–early morning, evening, sunset–that a brisk walk is cooling, refreshing, even invigorating.

What does all of this have to do with Life Without TV?   Everything.

TV is the land of unconsciousness, at least that’s what the advertisers want. You, prone, motionless, immovable, unthinking, a waiting vessel, to fill with their ads and products, to passively take in jokes and canned laughter, overly dramatic melodrama (that means metamelomelodrama).   They don’t want you to walk away.  At least not before you’ve bought something or before they can implant in your head the suggestion to buy something.

Talk a walk. Make life conscious.  Give up one 1/2 hour TV show a day and walk.  I can walk 1 mile in 15-17 leisurely minutes.  In 1/2 hour, I can walk 2 miles.   Do this 5 times a week, and you’ve walked 10 miles.  For me, that’s about 900 plus calories a week.   More energy for you, more awake time during the day to spend with your loved ones or doing something you like.

Even if that’s watching TV.  For me, I prefer not to.

And that’s all I have to say about that.