HOURS AND HOURS

Dear Spike:

I think I've got Lost Syndrome.

Let me explain: Your mother and I haven't watched a live television program since long before we were married. Our TV isn't hooked up to a cable line or a satellite dish or even an old-fashion antenna.

We do have a DVD player and a nice collection of movies...

... and the entire 11-season series of the show M*A*S*H — all 256 episodes.

That's how it all began.

Your mother was younger than you are now when M*A*S*H ended its run on television. How she managed to get through two more decades on this planet without being exposed to the show in syndication, I don't know, but she'd never seen an episode until I came home, one day, after dropping $39.99 on the DVD collection of the first season. By season two, she was pretty well hooked.

I guess good television, like good film or good music, is simply timeless like that.

They call TV "the boob tube" but my friend DeAnn, a professional TV and movie critic, once told me that she believes the very best things on television are far better than the very best things in the movie theater. I guess that could be so, although I could never bring myself to order cable to find out for sure. It's just all too easy to turn on when you've got nothing better to do — and then leave it on, for hours and hours and hours.

So, we're in the habit of simply waiting for the DVD collections of the best shows to show up at the city library. Largely, we've been unimpressed with what's out there, although there are indeed some gems.

Which brings me to Lost. We started watching the series last week and have been having a hard time turning it off. And even when I'm not watching the show, I'm thinking about the show. We blew through the first season. Then we blew through the second season. Now we're anxiously awaiting the third season (but, alas, we're number 53 on a list of 57 library patrons waiting for the discs.)

It's true: In spite our our best efforts to avoid the great, hungry vortex of television, we got sucked in all the same.

Television isn't bad. Occassionally it can be quite good. But as in all things, moderation is the key.

No one would fault you for loving the symphony. But if you spent every night at the symphony, avoiding other responsibilities and jumping from performance to performance regardless of how good or bad it was, people might start to wonder about you.

And if you loved the museum, no one would think you strange — unless you spent every single afternoon and evening there, looking at exhibit after exhibit after exhibit in lieu of doing anything else with your life.

It's hard for me to say how much of anything is too much, though I suppose that as your father, it will be my job to do just that, at least for the first couple of decades of your life. So we'll limit your TV intake (hopefully better than we've limited our own, over the past week) and try our best to steer you toward things like the symphony and the museum (in moderation, of course.)

But if you occassionally get Lost in the boob tube, I'll understand. I've been Lost too.

Love,
dad