The Nielson Company’s “Three Screen Report” is now saying that the average American is watching 151 hours of television a month, or about 5 hours a day. Couch potatoes everywhere are uniting around the remote to enjoy hours and hours of mindless, inexpensive fun. It’s so easy to get sucked in, so this increase is no surprise to me: just flick on the screen, flip through a couple channels and you are set for the night (or almost a third of your day, apparently).

But what boggles my mind is not the amount of TV we are watching, but the quality. Have you turned on your TV lately? Oh, wait – of course you have. For at least 5 hours a day. 90% of the stuff on there is mind numbing or trashy crap. Even I am embarassed by the dribble that’s currently clogging my DVR.

Knowing that people are spending more time watching any of these 10 horrid TV shows makes me nervous. With this stuff taking over our lives, our country is in for some (more) real problems. Read More »

I am never alone in college. Sure, I have the elevator to myself occasionally and sometimes my roommate is at class when I’m not, but usually there is always someone else nearby. This is drastically different from my high school experience.

Of course I would spend every high school moment from that morning bell—which seemed to ring earlier and earlier as my senior year wore on—to the final bell with my friends by my side. I was part of a bunch of different groups, all of which met after or before school and surrounded me with people. But at home, I had solitude.

With both my parents working and my brother off at college, I spent many nights doing homework, watching bad television and heating up leftovers all by myself. Some may think that would be lonely, but I really liked the peace and quiet.

It’s never quiet here. And sometimes I like it; with all the commotion, I haven’t had time to get homesick or have a culture shock freak out. There’s a feeling of community when I walk around campus and see someone I know or when I strike up a conversation with a stranger in the dining hall. Yet every once in awhile I realize… I never have a moment to myself. Read More »

I was raised, essentially, without TV. I use the word ‘essentially’ because we did have a TV. We just also had extremely conservative republican parents filtering everything that we watched on the total of 2 or 3 channels that we received with our antenna on the top of our TV. (One of those channels was, conveniently, The Christian Network where I was routinely made to watch The 700 Club.)

So, needless to say, TV wasn’t a big part of my childhood. That was fine by me; I spent my time outside and learning how to play guitar.

When I moved out and into dorms at 18, I still didn’t watch TV much. I think there was one in my dorm, but I wouldn’t have noticed either way. It just wasn’t a part of my life. But when I moved in with new roomies in a real apartment when I was 19, everything changed. Not only did we have a TV, but we had every channel (not to mention On Demand and, mmmm, DVR). I learned to love TV.

In fact, I’m watching it right now.

Since I have spent a few years getting to know the ins and out of this tube and the entertainment that it so benevolently offers me, I have noticed that there are some very bad people on TV. And I love lists. So, naturally, I made a list of the worst people on TV. Read More »

I watch a lot of really bad TV, but I can proudly admit that I have never watched a single episode of The Tyra Banks Show. That bitch is crazy; I had enough of her antics on ANTM. That being said, after hearing that Speidi would be making an appearance on Monday’s episode, I searched the interwebs high and low to find a clip of their interview.

The highlights are below.