When I first moved to SF just over a year ago I made a solemn promise not to rot my brain. After all, San Francisco is a city of thinkers and radicals and advertising that you watch TV is rather like telling someone you have a hidden cocaine habit. One does not disclose to others in this city that you crave low-brow entertainment in a city of such cultural significance.
“They”, (Sycophants of the City) would rather hear you are reading Karl Marx or the latest Booker prize winner.

Being a long-standing bibliophile, I assumed the cable embargo would not impact me severely-after all don’t I read the Wall Street Journal every day, The New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC Online? I am, if not, a thorough news junkie. I strive for headlines crafted by the subtle hands of spin doctors, and yearn for trumped-up stories that make our lives all the more fuller-those token human interest stories that are the bread and butter of media.

Little did I know that this yearning was my minds way of coping, that without the constant influx of cable and its commercials, E! Television, What Not to Wear, and news banter, that my futile search for sensationalist news was merely a false antidote-a methadone if you will, for the real thing my brain hungered for: broadcast cable television.

I was fueled by the addiction.

My mind (subconsciously), ever savvy (and labyrinthine), was deceitfully concocting a way to get a fix.
Any fix.
But publications simply do not have the same impact. That one dimensional space, that fixed medium despite the luxuriously glossy interior of flashy magazines like ID, Juxtapose, and Flaunt, cannot fulfill the compulsive shopper, and media hound in me.

To combat the almost Machiavellian and rebellious bent that my mind had taken, I decided to embark on a strategic offensive campaign to outwit it. I would not, could not, give in to the temptation of cable. If I hungered for the low-brow entertainment that seedy television offered, I would seek out replacements.

I ignored the water cooler banter at work about “Desperate Housewives”, the latest on-dit in celebrity lives, Brangelina, the latest sensationalist story on CNN. I painstakingly pretended that I was above the plebian desires of broadcast television, yet I secretely felt I was missing out. That somehow I had become unplugged from the mainframe and had taken the RED pill unknowingly. Life had lost its color, supplanted now by the monochromatic hues of news and book print.

I dove into a smidgen of interesting books on the New York Times best seller list to fulfill the quest for intellectual thought and portray that image to others. Yet the baser desires took over, and what I really hungered for were those fictional novels that careened on the fringes of literary acceptance.

That was my guiltiest secret.

Yes, I am fan of horror and sci-fi as well as the latest piece of transgressional literature to fulfill my metamorphosis into underground radical. I secretely laugh out loud to Christopher Moore, Kinky Friedman, Chuck Palahniuk and wonder why can’t they be edgier? It still wasn’t enough to combat the longings for the warm EMF radiation that bathes the face and soothes the soul.

Despite the journey away from TV Land over the course of the year seeming to be a logical choice, it was also excruciatingly painful. I could definitely boast of not succumbing to the lure of The Box (with some hair flipping panache thrown in) but not without it taking a toll. Talk about being cut off from the proverbial umbilical--every hot current event that played out over the year buzzed straight past me and each day was spent in a glazed fog.

Are my clothes still fashionable? How could I be sure if I wasn’t watching E! or Style? Didn’t
I need these programs to validate my very branded existence? How would I know which thickening mascara to pick out? This seasons “it” color? What(!) (brakes screeching) Paris and Nicole are friends again? Holy Crap! When did Pluto get demoted? How could I cook the right dishes without Rachel Ray? And the Crocodile Hunter-dude I loved that guy!

For a tiniest sliver in time, I felt like Bridget Jones musing, “And what do you think about
Chechnya?” Uh…what’s Chechnya?
Pretending to be “in the moment” with the mere publication resources at hand lends a serious disadvantage on every level.

Living previously in L.A. the acceptance of watching broadcast television is common place-and accepted. You will not be ostracized for saying you had to watch the latest episode of Project Runway. It is expected that you should be “in the know”. After all, it is the city of illusion, its very life’s blood, where screenwriters, television writers’, directors, producers, agents, actors/actresses and the like abound. Television and movies are THEIR domain. Watching TV is as ingrained as sipping your half-caff-non-fat-sugar-free-mocha-latte from behind Armani shades at the Coffee Bean on Sunset, while eyeing the newest entrant into the café as a potential networking opp.

So after a debate that took at tops thirty seconds I plugged back into life support.

Ahhh, I am now bathed in the bluish glow of the matrix. Two days-one entire weekend of cable TV (including one sunny day in SF) missed while basking in its glow. The seductive voice of commercials now reshape my shopping habits.... how could I have ever lived without them? I now know everything about Angelina thanks to E!'s True Hollywood Story. My beauty regimen is once again filled with choices in bright shiny packages...now this is living..in color.

Yes I have no shame! On one last note, what the hell happened while I was away? "Dancing with the Stars"? Who the hell thought up that particular crap on toast? Phooey!
(c)N.A.Mattos 2006