I’m Trying To Take A Break From TV

Monday is about movies. And sometimes TV. Today it’s about trying to take a break

I am lucky to live in a house with only two TVs. We have one in the bedroom — and the rule is it’s only to be used in the weekends. And that rule is firm. And has held for the year or so that the TV has been there. There’s another in the main TV room which we call ‘the den’, but you might call it a lounge. It’s a big TV, 65”, has a soundbar, and a DVD player connected; I’ve got about 500 DVDs, which is inarguably ludicrous, especially considering we are subbed to most of the mainstream streaming channels, have the TV1 and 3 apps for the new age, and all the freebie things you can get hold of like Kanopy and Tubi too. I also still support the video store down the road — the last one standing — with a monthly subscription.

My Letterboxd account is creeping towards 10,000 film listings — and that’s with me doing my best to go back to my days (wasted) as a self-appointed film critic; my days working in a video store too, and just the daze of staring at a screen forever, watching concert films and docos and collections of videoclips, as well as TV series’ and movies…

It gives me comfort to rewatch an old slasher film, or to find new Drumeo clips and interviews on YouTube. I am still working through a list of Westerns you lot helped me assemble, and one of martial movies I made for myself.

And usually, over winter, I try to go through an entire TV show from start to finish. A couple of years ago I finally finished Breaking Bad and absolutely could not see the fuss — but I’ll acknowledge it was probably a time/place thing. I’ve heard of people not really digging The Sopranos when they watch it now, if they hadn’t already watched it back in the day. I can’t understand that at all, I recently rewatched most of season one and thought it was utterly brilliant. But I can appreciate that it’s a thing. Sometimes you had to be there when it landed, and your rewatch is really just refuelling your nostalgia, both scratching the itch and providing several new itches for future scratches.

Last year I watched seven seasons of The Golden Girls and I still think, beyond getting married, the birth of our son, watching Brian Wilson and band performing SMiLE on stage, and meeting Suzanne Vega, it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever done with my life. All seven seasons.

A few years ago I watched most of Taxi — and I still think I’d like to go back and do that again and then go all the way in on Cheers again too, but I watched the first three seasons a while back, and I don’t know that I need to go through those episodes again, brilliant though they were.

But this winter — although the desire is kinda there to work through Family Ties — I am trying to give the TV screen a big break.

My folks have a television set in nearly every room. They might have earned that right, but it’s still enough to make me feel a bit sick. Me. The guy that watches TV movies from the 70s on YouTube as if it’s some sort of sport. I really like to be able to escape TVs also.

We have a second lounge room — or actually it’s our lounge, given we call the TV room ‘the den’. We sometimes refer to our lounge now as ‘The Beach House’. We don’t own a beach house, and it’s not particularly aspirational, nor remotely close to being realistic for us to ever do so, so why not create a beach house in your home. A place you go to when you want a holiday from everyday life, but one where you also never need to leave the house!

Sometimes a Monday or Tuesday or Thursday night feels like a Saturday or Sunday, or a holiday, when you’re in ‘The Beach House’. There an old fashioned mini-system stereo, a total junker, TradeMe special — $40 for the whole unit. But it plays cassettes and CDs. And ensures the technology in the room is kept to a minimum.

There’s even an old typewriter, two in fact! They don’t really work. But that’s symbolic of the fact that when you’re in the room you’re not really meant to be at work. So, yeah, I might dash out a poem or two, a post for the newsletter, a gig review — but I am not really meant to be in there ‘working’ in any capacity. Even if it’s sometimes a very nice space to be in on a work from home day.

There is a little Tivoli radio with a Bluetooth connection, so it’s not just an “old stereo” room. We can play our playlists. But the idea is definitely to be about as removed from the apps as can be.

The room is the “dumb phone” of our house, where everywhere else is the latest iPhone. And ew…

I’m still attending some Film Society screenings, and I plan to go to the movies as much as I can when I can, and if I can be bothered. But I’m really trying to cut down on the TV while I’m at home this winter. There’s only so many 3-episode true-crime Netflix docos you can watch before you feel softly disgusted. With yourself. And then all of humanity. And in that order.

In ‘The Beach House’ I listen to Tangerine Dream and Hans Zimmer and John Williams and Pharoah Sanders and Ry Cooder and Randy Newman and Kali Malone and Peggy Lee. I drink cups of tea. And I try to engage with books.

This weekend I read a single story from the new Stephen King collection, You Like It Darker. It was a vicious little bugger of a story, and I liked it. I read a bit of a book about Nine Inch Nails, some poetry, and I tidied some books away. Because sometimes walking around with books is almost as much fun as reading them, and pretending you have a bookstore inside your house gives nice flashbacks to retail without having to actually work in it.

I rewatched Robot Dreams this weekend — which remains a lovely film, if about 20 minutes too long. And I enjoyed watching some old concert footage of Tool and Smashing Pumpkins, both bands I liked for a while before the fans started to irritate me.

So, it’s not like I didn’t watch anything at all. But I feel myself withdrawing from the TV room. The ‘Beach House’ is the haven. I listen to The Beach Boys in that room. And do my very best to hide from the screen.