No TV at all Day 5; no TV at all Day 6. Oh dang it — that’s not true. Wacky Boy fell and wiped out his knee again, so I let him watch half of “Jakers” and half of “Curious George.” Since, you know, he doesn’t nurse any more.

Now that he’s four and a half.

So make that almost no TV for Day 6.

Fuzzy sez: “I guess you can get use to anything when you’re exposed to it enough, the question is why expose yourself to it in the first place?” Yeah, no doubt.

I was at my uncle’s house one time, he was like, chained to his Barcolounger apparently, because he did not seem able to move his ass from it. He was venting about, “This shit! This shit that’s on TV all the time!” And my aunt piped up, “Really, I cannot believe what’s on TV nowadays,” tsk-tsk-tsk. They like watching all those “Primetime Live”-type crazy shows about gross people doing gross stuff and ewwwwwwww! That’s gross! Etc. I remained baffled as to why he couldn’t dislodge his ass from the chair and do something besides watch TV. He didn’t even need to get up to turn the TV off — he was flailing around with the remote in his hand like it was a sixth digit.

Me: “The TV doesn’t have to be turned on. Turn it off.”

Aunt/Uncle, in unison: “Fwaaaaaaaaa huh?”

Maybe our TV should go into the attic. We do have a DVD player and VCR hooked up to the computer, so that’s enough.

Also? Have you read the Lovely Miss Amalah today? She and Mr. Nice Guy had blog entries stolen and posted on a lameass, making-my-eyeballs-twitch, poorly designed MySpace blogger. It gave me a headache, I had to take four Tylenol.

I know bloggers. Excellent bloggers. And you, MySpace thief, are no blogger.

I hate thieves. We’re writers here, for pete’s sake. Photographers. Artists. Craftspeople. This is our work, not yours. You want some of your own work — go create. I blog and write fiction and try to sell fiction and get rejection letters and chase kids and pick kids up from school and drop kids off at school and write and read other people’s blogs and it’s my deal.

Mine.

Not yours.

Your deal is whatever variation or improvisation of the above that you yourself do.

People who aren’t part of the blogger world think it’s weird sometimes, when I talk about how cute the Blogger Babies are, or how yeah, everyone else has asshole neighbors, too! Not just me and Hockey God! And the bloggers — they’re like my invisible friends, but they’re real. We’re there for each other and support each other and the most righteous part is — we’re writing. Taking photos. Doing our art. Trying not to be late to pick up the kids from school. (Me, right now. Yes.)

So if you want to be a part of that, do your own thing. Don’t try to horn in on someone else’s deal.

Love,

WM

Kids had no TV all day yesterday. They rode bikes instead, played, helped clean the house (??? amazing…) and didn’t scream for television at all. And best of all, no tantrums when I tried to turn the TV off. (A bonus of never turning it on in the first place.)

Hockey God and I watched Valley Girl but THAT WAS IT I SWEAR TO YOU INTERNET. It was even more tripindicular then the first eight times I’ve watched it. (I cheat and it’s with Valley Girl? Something I’ve already viewed over and over? What’s it with me and this movie? “…they’ve got a word/for girls like me…” Totally. Fer shure.) Martha Coolidge’s commentary on the DVD is hilarious — Nicolas Cage was fretting about the shooting schedule for Rumblefish, there was a conflict, she told him, “I know Coppola, it’s okay. I’ll call him.” He gives her a funny look. She calls the production company and they give her a hard time, “We don’t have a Nicolas Cage on the film — just Nicolas Coppola.” Hee hee.

Day Four: No TV should be easy today. (Once we make it past the withdrawal pangs from no morning cartoons things go pretty smoothly.) But can I avoid Earth Girls are Easy? Who woulda thought Geena Davis would go from that to Thelma and Louise to… Commander in Chief? Dammit, I would rather see her play Thelma on the show than the character she plays, who Must. Not. Crack. A Smile. How cool would this be? She shows up in the Oval Office, all dusty, wearing her black T-shirt, and says, “If nobody loses their head, nobody loses their head.”

Happy Labor Day, everyone! Hope you’re off work today.

(9/5 — Edited to say: We watched no TV yesterday at all. Nada. None of us. Call Guinness Book of World Records, would you?)

Day 2 of No Idiot Box: Going well. Wacky Boy had one major freak-out over no Saturday a.m. cartoons, but I distracted him by teaching him to burn CDs. We went out for breakfast and the kids were angels. Life, she is sweet. Huevos rancheros and fresh fruit for me, Greek omelet for Hockey God, ginormous pancakes for the kids with a pound of butter and a half-cup of syrup apiece. Hot cocoa for them because we were worried the syrup wasn’t giving them all the sugar they needed. Coffee for the grown-ups… hot damn. It was good.

Wacky Grandma is bringing over her favorite movie, The Apple Dumpling Gang, to watch with the kids so that kills making this an entire day of no TV.

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“If you came and you found a strange man… teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you’d kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don’t think twice about it.”

-Jerome Singer

We do watch too much television here, it’s the truth. Yeah, but I do think twice about it, and that’s why all my kids watch on TV is PBS Kids and some movies that are not “Scary Movie 3,” Chucky or “Snakes on a MFin’ Plane.” (They love “Herbie Fully Loaded,” all the Muppets movies, “Cheaper by the Dozen” 1 but not 2, you know. Stuff like that.

Now comes Wacky Girl with a plan: No TV for the month of September.

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Funniest episode ever (I just watched this last night): Where the gang does an intervention on Chrissy re: his heroin addiction, and it ends with Sil and Paulie pounding the crap out of him.

Here’s the script from the scene.

Apparently everyone and his little old rat-faced granny has seen the Sopranos but me. I’m rooting for Adrianna. Heh heh.

OK, even though I haven’t seen any of ’em except for the entire first season, and a couple of episodes here and there, the Sopranos has completely and thoroughly become entrenched in America pop culture and I know all the jokes, I know all about the plots, the characters, I know the recipes from reading them in TV Guide.

It’s a righteous show. The best way for me to watch is to get copies from the library. And while I am 303rd of 366 reserves for the fifth season, I’m four of four for the second season! I mean, hot damn. For those of you not fluent in “library speak,” this means there are 3 people ahead of me on the wait list. Each person gets the set of that entire season for three weeks.

Most of us are crazy, and don’t keep the tapes or DVDs that long because we’re powering through them. Cuz they’re like crack cocaine or Pez, really, they’re that good. So that’s, like, no wait time at all for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th seasons. Fifth is the popular one.

Also? We went hiking in the Columbia River Gorge today. I am so lucky to live here. See? That’s the thing about Oregon. It rains just about 9 months out of the year, combined. But those clear days, when you can see Mt. St. Helens forever (it has no TOP! What happened to its TOP?), this is God’s country and the best place to live in the universe.

xxox

WM

PS — Internet, did I mention that I love you? I do.

Dear Martha Stewart,

Hi, it’s me. What should I do, Martha? I just want to slap the shit out of practically everyone I run into. (Not my spouse or kids, thanks. I have some, but not much, self-control.) I can’t go slapping everyone who pisses me off. I mean, there was that kicking incident at Staples recently (see Jan. 10 entry). Pattern may be emerging.

So how did you handle it in prison?

It’s like your theme song, “…am I the same girl?/yes I am/yes I am…” Am I the same girl? I don’t think I’ve always been so irritable.

Please advise.

Love,

Wacky Mommy

Have gone back to original plan — will drink heavily until both children are in school full days.

— WM

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All these warm, sunny days make me think of being 12 years old, cool and happy watching television for hours in our dark, cocoon-like basement. No exercise, no running around sweating at the park, just Froot Loops and the tube. We’d watch my sister’s favorite, Speed Racer, then Gilligan’s Island, the Brady Bunch was next, I think, followed by Star Trek, then Emergency…

Ah… Johnny Gage, you fox you. But Star Trek, that was the best. The comforting theme music, the Troglodytes, the Tribbles. The sexy girls, the fake rocks, the fights.

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Norm: Gentlemen, start your taps.
— Cheers, “The Coach’s Daughter”

Coach: How’s life treating you, Norm?
Norm: Like it caught me in bed with his wife.
— Cheers, “Any Friend of Diane’s”

Coach: How’s life, Norm?
Norm: Not for the squeamish, Coach.
— Cheers, “Friends, Romans, and Accountants”