Mark I. Pinsky, �The Gospel According to the Simpsons�
I don�t think I�ve really stated my revulsion to television. It probably started from my hippy parents, who had the rule of not watching more than an hour a day, and no more that six hours a week. Any normal person could do the math and see that we were getting screwed, but we were too young to make the arguments.
What was worse was that our restrictions came with yet another restriction � the only television we could watch for these allotted times were PBS programming. Not to denigrate PBS as I�m an unabashed Muppet fanatic, and even based my entire philosophy of life on one skit. But I hungered for more.
[Side Tangent: Today I priced two Muppet books geared for potty training. There is something wrong with seeing a picture of Miss Piggy with her panties around her ankles, big moony eyes looking directly at you as she sits on a toilet with one hand strategically covering her privates with her arm resting on her meaty thigh.]
Growing up under these regulations, it stands to reason that I was fascinated with cartoons, which were completely verboten. My sister and I worked angles to try and get around these rules � mostly revolving around staying over at friend�s houses and gluing ourselves to their free rein television.
For myself, I learned that if I rode home on my bicycle as fast and furious as I could when school ended, I could get home 15 minutes before my mother and have ten minutes of unsupervised cartoon bliss. The only cartoon on at that time were Popeye reruns, which I didn�t care for, but that didn�t matter � I was seeing cartoon violence.
Eventually my parents divorced, and while the argument could be made that we were now old enough to make intelligent decisions, the fact that both parents dropped the television restrictions seemed like a power play for affection and loyalty. �I let you watch reruns of The Monkees! I bet your father doesn�t let you do that, huh?�
For a time, my sister and I basked in our newfound television freedom, watching everything and anything that came on. I remember getting chided by an adult as we watched an old rerun of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and calmly explaining that the show, while old and outdated, was new to us, a fairly grownup argument for a kid of 14 years-old.
It didn�t take long to notice, however, that most of what we had been missing all these years did indeed suck, and there were more exciting things, like skateboarding, girls, wine coolers and 100 proof peppermint schnapps. But I never lost my fascination with cartoons, learning to program the VCR to record the limit of Saturday morning shows, which I would watch after viewing eight other programs that played simultaneously.
I moved out of the house early, and my roommates would laugh at the sight of me, an 18 year-old glued to the front of the television on Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal and a glazed expression.
And thus, when The Simpsons began, it was a godsend to my cartoon-deprived mind. It played in the evening, so I didn�t have to watch it with a throbbing hangover, unless the previous night had been particularly busy. I was hooked from the start.
But I still had a fair amount of aversion to television. I couldn�t make myself watch sitcoms. I couldn�t watch movies of the week. I didn�t have the attention span for serials. It didn�t take long to realize that I was imposing my own regulation on television viewing � I watched The Simpsons, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, and nothing else. If you do the math, this meant I was watching two-and-a-half hours of television a week � far less than when restrictions were placed upon me.
MST3K is gone now, and the only live action show I watch with any regularity is The Daily Show. There are other shows I want to watch and they all happen to be cartoons, mostly from Adult Swim. But I don�t even get to see those, as I have roommates.
And my roommates watch a lot of TV.
There are times I feel bad, because I don�t hang out with the people I live with. They�re two guys that I�ve known for years, and they�re good people. But I knew them before television became the central point of their lives, so now when I get home and they�re huddled around the cathode tube watching C.O.P.S. I�ve tried � lord, how I�ve tried � to hang out, but all they�re doing is staring at the TV. When I attempt to join them, I can almost feel my brain escaping from the drool from my agape mouth as another white trash couple argues over who stabbed who. So I get up and retreat to my room.
The other night, I decided that I wanted some television watching time. They�re used to me taking over the TV at 11 for The Daily Show, leaving the TV for their command after it finished, but this time I kept the remote in my hand, and watched Futurama, The Family Guy and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Unused to me being in the same room, one of my roommates started up an actual conversation during the commercial break.
�Hey,� he said, �how big is this TV?�
�I think it�s 38 inches, I think,� I said, �Why?�
�Oh, I�m buying a 54 inch TV. It�s gonna take up that entire corner. I�m gonna move all that shit on the shelves and set up speakers in surround sound.�
�You�re gonna do all that just to watch C.O.P.S.?�
�I don�t just watch C.O.P.S., there�s also Real TV.�
�You�re serious? You�re gonna spend all that money to watch something that bad?�
�Well, you know, I also got movies.�
I snuck a peek at his film collection. Behind Enemy Lines. Not Another Teen Movie. Badder Santa. Concert DVD�s from bad obnoxious punk bands, worse crusty bands, and totally terrible country bands.
Jesus Christ. Does anybody need a roommate?
Speaking of annoying the audience, tonight I was at the punk rock night at the local dive bar I mentioned previously, and the DJ�s asked me to do a set for them next week. I accepted in a fucking heartbeat.
I�ve done a few sit-in sessions before, as people know that I have a lot of harder-to-find records. The last time I did this was for the local college radio station, whereupon I created a set I titled, �Songs I Like Which Nobody Else Does�
I wasn�t asked back. This means you should all come to The Cinebar next Wednesday around ten o�clock, because this will never happen again.
