Next week is TV Turn Off Week. I?ve been semi-doing this for nearly a year. I say semi, because while I don’t watch TV (broadcast/cable TV) per se, I am a movie junkie and still watch anywhere from two to three DVDs a week.

I didn’t turn off the TV out of any moral or noble reasons, though some suspect it had more nefarious origins. Even though I turned off the TV a mere week after the series finale of the Dawson’s Creek, then end of delicious Pacey-ness on my TV was not the reason for such drastic action.

As a matter of fact, it was a temper tantrum. see, when I first moved to the lovely shores of prior lake (and by lovely shores I mean across the street from an empty field soon to be home to a new post office which, much to my chagrin, I had decided was a Barnes & Noble and was quite crushed when my friend the Webboy said “no doofis, that’s gonna be a post office” and then laughed in my face– so crushed that even the nearness of my delovely postmaster cannot quell my disappointment) I could not afford cable. I couldn’t afford much besides rent and gas to get to work. Eventually I climbed the corporate ladder and by the time cable had become a viable option, I was poo-pooing it.

I didn’t need cable, but what I did need was a wretched pair of rabbit-ear like antenna to get in even the local stations. Anyway, during a fit of spring cleaning, I decided to move the TV. Since cleaning isn’t on the top 394 things I like to do I was in a pretty foul mood. When it came time to hook up the rabbit-ears, I couldn’t seem to get it to work. None of the stations would come in anywhere remotely clear. In a bratty-temper-tantrum-like fit that would put any two-year-old kid to shame, I tossed out the rabbit ears and swore off the TV.

I haven’t looked back since. Well, I have a little. I did manage to watch the most-boring Oscar telecast in recent history through the static, but that’s about it. I do, occasionally see the TV while visiting one of the sisters?and it?s bad. I?m like unfrozen Cavewoman TV watcher ? ?What is that magical box with moving pictures and people talking?? Lucky for me, my sisters have bad taste in TV, so it usually only captures my attention for about ten minutes.

There are downsides to being a non-TV watcher. Over Easter, I learned of a revolution in food storage devices. Apparently there?s a new invention called Glad? Press ?n Seal?. According to three out of four sisters and one out of one moms, this is the best thing to hit the home since the microwave oven. As they rambled on and on about the beauty of the Press ?n Seal, I sat in wide-eyed wonder that something so super-swanky had passed completely under my radar.

?You need to turn on the TV,? my brother-in-law Stink said, when I expressed my distress over never having heard of such a wonder.

Despite the chance of missing any further household cleaning device-type revolutions, I haven?t turned on the TV. However, last night while watching, Murder on a Sunday Morning, I?ve discovered that I am a reality-TV-type junkie. Documentaries have become my reality TV. I am a complete and total documentary junkie; I can’t get enough of them. I crave them, I ask people to recommend them. I talk about them with anybody who will listen.

Dogtown and Z-boys, Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, What I Want My Words to Do, Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, Crumb– those are just a few I?ve watched in the last few months. I?ve got about twenty-three more in my Netflix queue. I feel as though I have discovered some great cinematic secret. Do people know about these things?

It?s simply amazing the things I?ve discovered by turning off the regular TV. You should all give it a try next week.