Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A life without cable.

My entire life I've had basically open access to cable TV. That isn't to say that I was or am spoiled. Now I don't have the spoils of cable in the house I'm living in, college life is expensive and spending way too much money on cable just isn't in the cards when you have internet, electricity, gas, and other bills to pay.

Not having cable (which is in essence not having television at all because in this town the only things you can get from antennae are Canadian networks which have no good programing) makes a person do strange things when combined with the stress of University. Such as purchasing (not renting, actually buying) the entire series of Stacked.

Now if you don't know, Stacked (pictured on left) was a Fox television show staring, who else, Pamela Anderson. It chronicles the misadventures of a dumb blond (played by the incomparable Ms. Anderson) who gets a job in a book store. That's right, a book store.

Here's the thing. It isn't bad. It's actually pretty good, except for the bad acting from the lead actress, the scripts are pretty well written and it's a wonderful show for mindless watching either to veg out to or to have playing in the background while you're working on school work or just lounging about the house surfing the internet. I don't recommend going out and buying it, but I hit an amazing deal at Hollywood video (which is where I buy most of my dvds) and I got the whole series (all three disks) for under ten bucks.

Another thing you do while you don't have cable is watch bad movies. Well sometimes you watch good movies, but most of the time you watch bad movies. Then you watch bad movies with their commentary tracks playing. I never was one for watching commentary tracks, but now that I don't have the distraction of cable I can watch my favorite movies over and over and then with commentary from either the stars or the director. Surprisingly the best commentary track I've watched is from Mean Girls, with Tina Fey doing most of the work talking about making the movie and making jokes the entire way.

You also start renting television shows on DVD, it's amazing how fast you can get through an entire season of a show. Ugly Betty was the first we rented, and we watched it in two weeks, renting one disk at a time. Currently I've rented Qeer As Folk, which I watched on Showtime when it aired originally, but it's generally a fun show to watch.

I also rented the first disk of Weeds, mostly 'cause my friends are all about this show. So we'll see how it turns out.

Any recommendations of good television shows to rent? I'm always looking for something new.

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