Divisions and Precisions

Viewers Like Me?

Home sick today, hacking and coughing. It's about as fun as it sounds. This has been due for several days, though, so it's no great surprise.

It's funny, since I moved, I've been watching TV again. I hadn't actually watched it with any regularity for well over a year. Mostly because the TV I had in my room in the old place was really only there to hook up to the VCR, it had no reception to speak of. I got rather snobbish about it, though -- "No, I've never heard of that show... I never watch TV..."

Serves me right for getting so into it now. Of course, with no cable, I still have very little reception, but there's enough. After years of hearing people talk about it, I finally got to see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Not a bad show. However, it's on when I'm still at work, so I don't see it often. But, I, um... I got started watching "Angel" too. Isn't it, like, a law that if you're a female journaler you have to watch it, though? Oh all right, I confess. I'm as much a sucker for the brooding angsty handsome type as the next single-occasionally-lonely female.

But I found a way to salve my conscience! My intellectual snobbery can rejoice: I watch a lot of PBS. Admittedly, it started out because the local PBS station is the one I pick up the clearest. But now I think I'm hooked. I never realized how much of a history buff I am. Last week I watched Ken Burns' documentary on Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Not For Ourselves Alone". This week it's his brother Ric's documentary on New York City.

PBS is like this whole little subculture, I think. They have as specific a target audience as any other network. I have a feeling I know what Brand would say. He'd make comments about pseudo-intellectual bourgeois. And he'd probably be right. But then there are people like me who get caught up in actually learning things.

I've gotten so caught up, in fact, that I'm realizing just how much I'm into history. I never really thought about studying history before, as history classes have usually been pretty boring to me. But watching the historians on these documentaries was completely different from watching a history teacher. The historians seem more alive about their subject, with interesting bits of trivia to go along with their facts. Yet another thing I could almost see myself doing. Now you see the real reason I'm not back in school. I can't decide what to focus on. I want to learn everything!

Oh okay. I'm also developing a liking for British comedy too, like "Are You Being Served?" and "Red Dwarf". Posted by Lisa at November 16, 1999 03:34 PM