Braving a Life Without Television

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Television wakes me up, keeps me company while i eat and tucks me in at night, and, thanks to Cinemax, I sometimes take it as a lover. The average American adult leads the world in television viewing, clocking four hours a day. While you're reading your precious newsmagazine, I'm doing my patriotic duty making sure the second-place Greeks don't pass us.

This week is TV-Turnoff Week, which was created by a nonprofit group called the TV-Turnoff Network--a group that in its eighth year, being generous, is only 1/52 toward its goal. I felt it my responsibility as a journalist to play Russian space monkey for you, and test drive a TV-less week seven days before the real thing starts on April 22. To get the rules straight, I called the TV-Turnoff Network, where spokesman Frank Vespe nixed renting movies, playing videogames and taping this week's shows for later viewing. Reading TV Guide, however, was O.K. "You have to ask yourself, 'Am I trying to get around the week or embrace the point of the week?' This is supposed to be fun," Frank said. When I asked him to expound on this fun idea, Frank said lots of people use the time to exercise or read. I told him to try again on the fun thing. He suggested, "Learn an instrument or write a book." People who don't watch TV are either freakishly ambitious or they do so many mind-altering drugs to soothe their bored brains that they no longer have any idea how long a week actually is. I gave him one more shot at the fun question. "It should be a fun time to get back to the simpler pleasures in life that we ignore but are more basic pleasures," he said. I finally understood that Frank was talking about sex.

SATURDAY, DAY 1: I have already listened to every disk I own, including both Sun Ra records. Eventually it gets so bad that I go to a play. It's like watching a TV show from one camera angle. At 10 p.m. I stretch out with a book. By page 13, I am face down in my pillow, drooling, the book still in my extended hand. I conclude that reading uses such a huge part of the brain that it exhausts me immediately. Either that or it's boring as hell.

SUNDAY, DAY 2: I surf the Web while my new, lovely wife Cassandra watches Six Feet Under. I put on headphones, but I can still hear her laughing. Not the light chuckle I got out of her during dinner, but the deep, explosive laugh that only TV can bring. And this is a show about a funeral home.

MONDAY, DAY 3: At 2 a.m., I awaken to Sun Ra-esque noises and lights so colorful and blinding that I see them through my closed lids. I hear the words Zorak and Moltar and realize that my new, lovely wife Cassandra is watching Space Ghost. I tell Frank the next day. "We often hear complaints from wives that their husbands are not helping," he says. "It's an interesting twist that your wife is undermining you. Welcome to married life."