Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky

Author:David Lipsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307592446
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

No, it was more just that they could see—that my parents are intelligent, and they realized that it wasn’t, that they were projecting certain fears about TV onto their kids, and that we were giving the lie to them. I mean, my parents never leaned on us about grades or athletic teams, and both Amy and I were pretty functional as little kids.

OK. So aside from the telethon … what’s the most you ever watched at a sitting? Even now I’ll go on these kind of benders when I decide to schedule them. I’ll go on a bender now where I’ll decide I’m going to start watching, I’ll start with The X-Files on Friday night, and then decide to go on until, I’ll realize …

But it’s also sort of—I mean, it’ll be on for a while. Then you get restless and maybe you’ll make a phone call while it’s on or maybe you’ll—[I’m shaking my head] No?

Not me.

See … maybe we’re a little different.

No. If I get into that phase and someone calls, I’ll get off as quickly as I possibly can …

Now if I get that deeply immersed in something, what’ll happen to me now is that I’ll fall asleep. You know? Because I’ll get so relaxed. I think the most that I’ve ever sat and just stared at and watched would have been, you know, late in high school, and we’re probably talkin’ about eight hours.

Ha. And you haven’t watched that much TV since?

You mean all in a sitting? I can remember a couple of times having the flu, you know. And like being at my girlfriend’s house with the TV on, and just lyin’ there with the set on. And just kind of drifting in and out of consciousness, you know. But that’s—you seem to me to be meaning something different, by watching. Maybe in the posture of the Bose-through-that-speaker commercial. Where the guy’s just kind of sitting in the chair like this …? [Demonstrates: Hunkered in chair]

(Laughs) You’ve never done that.

I also, here’s the—like the thing that’s killed it recently for me, is the channel-surfing thing. Is because, I always have this terrible fear that there’s something even better on, somewhere else. And so I will spend all this time kind of skating up and down the channel system. And not be able to get all that immersed in any one thing.

But the problem is, there always is something better. So you can always find something else to watch.

Yeah, but there’s this terrible anxiety, this gnawing anxiety about it. That was the great thing about last night, I just decided, I’m gonna watch Sodom and Gomorrah. This is gonna be cool.

No, but when you can trapeze to something else … swing on to the next bar … there’s always a next bar coming …

That’s true.

I mean I could go home now and watch ten hours of television.

Fill me in on something … [Shuts off machine]

[Break]

… and read for a couple hours, and it’s much harder if there’s a girl there.

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