A Nation of Misled TV Addicts

Television's main purpose is to keep you watching the commercials.
The latest Nielsen statistics are out. The average American household is exposed to 2.75 hours of commercials per day, out of a 8 hours, 21 minutes in front of a television.

That's pretty scary considering that in 1991, the first year Nielson did such a survey, the typical home only spent 1 hour, 50 minutes in front of the boob tube.

This increase in viewing may be due to a tight economy with frugal households trying to save money by not going out. Of course, it is a bit of a false economy since tv was once free, and these days most people pay for tv - still with commercials - through cable or satellite.

These services average $71.00 a month. It is quite a rise from $43.00 in 2005.

TV is a black hole into which billions of dollars are sucked out of the economy for products we could live without.
Young people can not believe that television was actually free in its first few decades of existence, and that the amount of commercials have almost doubled since its inception.

It is the cable channels like AMC with "Mad Men" and FX's "Damages" that are getting the additional eyeballs for content that is surprisingly good compared to the reality and talk shows the networks have increasingly used to fill their time slots.

Interestingly, prime time television growth is flat, while the off peak times is where the audience is growing. This could be because of the increasing number of people who are surviving with part time jobs, or are out of work.

TV depresses brain function and creativity.

The brain waves seen during hypnosis are quite similar to those measured in people watching television. Television advertisers have seized on this effect of television and brain function for their television commercials. When people watch most television programs, they are quite suggestible. Thus a claim made in favor of a specific product, on some level, causes the person watching television to be more apt to believe it.


The net effect of all this television watching has been a seismic shift in how American's view life, work and buy products. It has also changed the way we elect our officials and view the democratic process, most of which has coarsened both public discourse and interpersonal behavior.

Television is a mixed blessing. But that is a story for another day.

Thomas Pynchon and Inherent Vice

A fascination with the hot cars of their day.
Writer Thomas Pynchon is fascinating, and not just because we grew up on opposite shores of Long Island. He was a North Shore beat guy, me a South Shore clamdigger a few years younger, but with aspirations. His writing tends towards offbeat themes: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use and paranoia.

Pynchon in a rare photo from his younger days.
He was Hunter Thompson before Rolling Stone was a magazine. And he was gonzo before Charles Giuliano coined the word. He holds the same fascination for me as did Jean Shepherd whose storytelling abilities are almost cinematic. The ability to draw word pictures and conjure up mental images is a special gift that not every writer masters. Pynchon does this with a sparing use of words, not volumes of them.

His latest book, released this past summer is Inherent Vice and the video below gives you a good taste of his work. The voice over is allegedly done by the reclusive Pynchon himself.

The Incredible Tracey Moffatt is a God

Tracey Moffatt, "Marie Curie, Under the Sign of Scorpio", 2005, archival pigment ink on acid-free rag paper, 17 x 23 inches

Artist. Feminist. Human Being. Her words and work use the artifice of culture and get to the sinew that connects life with death. Spend twenty minutes with her via these videos and you may follow her work for the rest of your life. Tracey Moffatt may be Australian and part aboriginal by birth, but her creative gift belongs to the world.

First, a short interview with her about her latest project at The Brooklyn Museum.


Twenty years ago, she created this short experimental film that is about the relationship between an aboriginal daughter and her white mother. The daughter cares for her mother as she approaches death in a film shot entirely in her own created visual environment. It is easy to see this film as at least partially autobiographical, and yet its wordlessness brings to mind the simplicity of Beckett, the desolate world of Sam Shepherd and even the early experimental films of Kenneth Anger.

Her film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy is in two parts.





The Brooklyn Museum has an extensive collection of her work.

The Berkshires - Chicago Connection

In seeking out diversions, people fall into predictable patterns. There is a great deal of traffic between Boston, New York and the Berkshires. Tanglewood has its roots in Boston's Symphony Hall, and the Willliamstown Theatre Festival in Manhattan's theater scene. But there are other circuits, too.

Not nearly as well travelled, but still significant is the Chicago-Berkshires loop, bringing players from the Windy City's Goodman Theatre now running the hilarious musical, Animal Crackers, and Steepenwolf (currently running Fake and The House on Mango Street) to the resident companies along Route 7: Berkshire Theatre Festival, Barrington Stage Company, Shakespeare & Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival.


The only train service in the Berkshires is the Lake Shore Limited which runs between Boston and Chicago, stopping at the Intermodal Center in Pittsfield along the way. And for a limited time, you can save 40% on tickets.

Here's the deal: travel with a friend on the Lake Shore Limited and save 40% on the companion rail fare. Whether you want to travel from Boston, New York, Chicago or anywhere in between, take advantage of this limited-time offer to plan your next trip.

Watch the seasons change from your train window as you travel along the shorelines of the Great Lakes and through the Berkshire mountains. Relax in your spacious seat or grab a bite to eat in the dining car — you'll enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245) or visit Amtrak online.

Etiquette - Non-Theater Carried to an Extreme

I don't think it is theater either.

The Premise: Etiquette is Theater

For this intimate piece of participatory theater, two museum visitors sit across from each other at a small table...

The response from theater critic Gail Burns: No, it's not.

…Etiquette failed to qualify for lack of an audience. I wanted to see a) if there was anything worth watching, b) if there was anything visually provocative that would cause other people in the café to watch, and c) if people actually did watch. The answer was “no” on all counts.

Points to Mass MoCA for trying this, but it is a new form of social networking in which you come in contact with other people in a ultimately meaningless way.