A sudden realization...

Many of you will know of my disdain for television. I haven't watched anything with the exception of CNN in a hotel room for years. I might be able to name two or three shows that are on right now, but only because I read Gary's blog. I simply find the medium irritating.

You can imagine my surprise this week when I realized that I can find tv interesting when watching four channels at once. Kelsey and I were at the gym, each on our own elliptical machine, swooshing our way towards 140bpm and the long life assured with that. Directly in front of us hung four identical plasma screen tv's, each approximately the size of a billboard.

Left to right, the showed Barack Obama making a speech (close captioned), The X Games snowboarders, VH1 (audio playing) and Barack Obama (or a look alike) making a different speech, interspersed with cutaways to Hillary Clinton and John "Don't Mess My Hair" Edwards (also all close captioned).

I was able to track with both speeches, enjoy the X Games, and pace myself to the soundtrack of VH1, all while keeping a running commentary on all four channels, directed generally toward Kelsey (although at one point I was reading Obama's speech in full voice to the entire room, inserting my own punctuation, which made it a heck of a lot more interesting for me but seemed to irk others).

Seems like I've always hated TV because I haven't had enough of it at one time. Funny what you learn about yourself.