Brett Favre can’t make up his mind whether or not attend offseason minicamp, Ricky Williams is getting high in the offseason, basketball is once again screwing up its own playoffs with suspensions that the fans can’t identify with, and the four or five dramatic television series I care about are within a week or two of their season finales.
In other words, it must be the verge of summer. And I’m ready for it.
Growing up here in South Florida where “winter” means that it’s cooled down by ten or twenty degrees, I’ve always been amused by the fact that the rest of North American society anchors its annual entertainment schedule around the idea of not wanting to go outdoors during certain times of the year. In the winter, when it’s snowing or sleeting or whatever it is that happens in places other than here, the TV series offer up new episodes nearly every week. And then in the summer, when the northerners are aching to go out and do something, the TV shows go on hiatus and the big movies roll into the theaters.
It’s all very logical. Just not in the kind of climate I’ve always lived in. Determining how inclined I am to go out and do something doesn’t generally involve checking the calendar first. But we in the minority still have to play by the rules of the majority in cases like this, so we end up being force-fed the same seasonal motivation when it comes to mass entertainment.
And in this case the timing couldn’t be better. There are four or five TV shows that I care enough about to catch every week, but lately that’s meant recording them all on my DVR and then finally catching up, one series at a time, on the odd Sunday afternoon, all the while begging others not to ruin any of the forthcoming surprises. As much as I enjoy good dramatic television, a break right now might not be a bad thing. With the singular exception of Studio 60’s triumphant return for six episodes on May 24th, I can’t think of a reason to turn on the television in the month of June or July.
That goes for televised sports as well. I can’t force myself to be interested in early-season baseball, the basketball playoffs are only made intriguing by the controversial player suspensions, and if the hockey playoffs are still going on I’m not aware of it (I’ve been to a few Panthers hockey games this year, but they haven’t made the playoffs since I was…well, it was a long time ago). The only sport I find myself deeply interested in these days is football, and this is just not the NFL’s time of year. When Brett’s minicamp decision qualifies as “Breaking News” on ESPN, you know there’s nothing doing (it also shows that football is the king of pro sports no matter what time of year it is, but that’s another story).
Bottom line: beyond the occasional tentpole movie (why is every major release this summer the third part of a trilogy? does this mean there won’t be any movies next summer? stay tuned), there won’t be much in the way of mass-entertainment distractions over the next few months to keep me from focusing on more focus-worthy things.
That’s good timing, because we’re barely a month away from not only the launch of the iPhone, but the rise of the entire iPhone economy. And I can’t wait.
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