Even though I like to think of myself having some inside knowledge of the movie and television industry (it's because of the subscription to Entertainment Weekly) it doesn't mean that I always make the best entertainment choices. I'm sure there have been many good movies and television shows that I have missed over the years even with this "inside" information.
Worst of all is even with this information I still don't make the best choices. Though I watched the series 'Earth 2' religiously from the first episode to the last dreadful minute on that godforsaken planet (those people are still up there), I didn't discover 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' until it was on two hours a day on FX in syndication. (And I can't tell you how many articles I read on how good Buffy was, and how few articles I even found that mentioned 'Earth 2' let alone in a positive context.)
In this column, I'll try to sort through my biggest entertainment blunders. In two weeks (or when I'm good and ready, whichever comes first) I'll relay my successes.
My Biggest Entertainment Blunders:
I saw the movie 'Gothika' inside a movie theater. I knew it would be bad but I couldn't resist - nothing else was playing that particular week. I should have revisited harder. My brain still hurts after sitting through two hours of that dreck.
Another entertainment mistake I've made is telling people "I don't care about a movie's story and plot as long as the special effects are cool." Just like some middle-aged republicans regret being a member of the communist party during their "wild and wacky" days of college, I regret saying this. Like these commies, I chalk this statement up to being a dumb kid.
I just want to state this for the record; though special effects might add something to movie, I won't go see a movie just because of good special effects. I've learned my lesson after seeing such debacles of 'Soldier' and 'Event Horizon.' (And even a republican ex-commie is still a commie in my book.)
As I touched on a bit above, another of my mistakes is all the time I've devoted to bad television looking for those few rare gems in the television landscape. For every hour of joy that shows like 'The Office, 'Arrested Development' or 'Deadwood' have brought, I have watched at least ten hours of dreck like 'Space:1999', 'Line of Fire', or 'Just the Ten of Us' (the hardly ever seen spin-off to the show 'Growing Pains'). What's bad is that the only way to discover gems like 'The Office' is to sit through stinkers like our version of 'Coupling.'
Some men spend their time in bars watching the NFL or NCAA, I spend my time at home hoping to find a show that I'll be able to brag to my friends about.
Sometimes at night, I dream of having all those hours I've wasted on bad television back. In my dream, I spend these saved hours on other pursuits like reading or art. But I know that I'd just take all these saved hours and waste them once again on television. (Damn straight - Eds.)
Television isn't all that bad. People will still be talking about shows like 'The Sopranos' many years from now even if it's in the same breath they mention their love of 'Friends.'
Even with all these wasted hours, I'd have to say that my biggest mistake is that I still can't quite understand why I didn't watch 'Seinfeld' when it originally aired on NBC. For a show that will probably still be on the air in syndication thirty years from now (when I run this country of ours), I was blissfully unaware of how good 'Seinfeld' was. People would ask if I had seen the previous episode of 'Seinfeld' and I would laugh. I figured that 'Seinfeld' was just a popular show that a lot of people liked who got it's popularity from the same place that makes 'Fear Factor' return year after year. (Won't someone please make 'Fear Factor' go away? My stomach can't take much more of people wading through tanks full of cow insides only to eat those same insides after the commercial break.)
With 'Seinfeld', I was left out of conversations at my part time job when people swooned over George and Elaine and that time when Kramer set his hair on fire. My co-workers would literally question my sanity on not watching the show. (To be honest, people do question my sanity on a weekly basis.) I'd laugh at them and then try to get the store manager to turn the break room television over to 'Space: Above and Beyond'.
It wasn't until 'Seinfeld' was almost over and airing on just about every even numbered cable station in syndication that I began watching and saw just what I had been missing. Yes, 'Seinfeld' is probably the best show that corporate television is able to produce. And me with my dumb ideas about the show made me miss out on seeing it happen with the rest of the world.
Though I may have made mistakes that were more painful (like the time I tried electrocuting a cricket in a wall socket but only managed to shock myself) it's the entertainment ones that hurt the most. But this isn't the end of the story. Pick up the next copy of The Fort Wayne Reader in two weeks to learn of my entertainment successes. To spoil this a bit for you, this list includes more making fun of 'Friends' and something special that happed to me the first time I saw 'Star Wars.' Was it that Mark Hamill was also in attendance or that I got free butter on my popcorn?
Be back in fourteen (that sounded a lot cooler in my head that it reads on the page) to learn the shocking truth!