How I Gave Up Television

Fernwood Street, Hollywood, 1970: My old ex-roommate John Hill, the Rock and Roll bass player, and I decided that we’d move out of the house at Third and Western. As I remember, we decided this right after Lamont and Carolyn decided that everybody else should move out.

We found an inexpensive place with one bedroom in the back. John took that. I took the living room up front for my room. There was a kitchen and a bath in the middle. Perfect!

I had only two pieces of furniture: a thin mat on which I slept, and a wooden desk from the second-hand store. But when we moved in, I went to the rent-a-couch store, and there I rented a television.

That’s how the trouble started.

John, of course, asked me if he could watch it. I said that when I was watching it, of course he could, or if I wasn’t home of course he could. So he did.

One evening I came home from somewhere, and John and a couple of our friends were there, sitting on the floor, watching the television. I was walking across the room to fetch something from my desk, but the program looked interesting, so I flopped down on the floor. This program might have been a Jim Croce special, or the Sonny and Cher show, I don’t recall.

I do remember that, after that show, something else came on. You may have noticed how the television does that.

As it was, it was three hours when I got up, fetched whatever I’d wanted, and left. But as I left, I came to a realization:

I hadn’t really decided to spend that time. I’d been caught like a fish. Actually the way it struck me was that an alien force had somehow pinned me to the floor for three hours.

That was it. The next morning I returned the television to the rent-a-couch people. John sulked for a while; then he got over it. I was 26 at the time.

I then lived without television for many, many years. Didn’t miss it, either. Saved a lot of time.

I say the hell with it.