My movie watching habits aren’t what they used to be. I was just sitting here watching a movie and I lasted about five minutes before I turned it off and decided to do some writing. It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying the movie but I had enough of it. After five minutes I was done. I’ll go back and watch it some other time but probably in bits and pieces just like I watched that bit. I don’t think I have the patience to watch many movies all the way through in one sitting anymore.
Patience is an odd thing. I still have plenty of patience for getting stuff done. Just this past Saturday I spent the whole day working on a big ink drawing. I started at about eight in the morning and kept going until about five at night. That takes a lot of concentration. It’s not like my powers of patience and concentration have gone away.
I also have plenty of patience for TV shows. I can put on a TV show and watch it for however long it is. Though without commercials TV shows are usually only 20 minutes or 40 minutes long. That’s considerably shorter than a two hour movie. I don’t binge watch TV either. I like to take time between episodes and give them some space. Normally I watch TV at night. I go to bed at 11PM so from about 9 until 11 I kick back and watch some shows. It helps me wind down.
The only time I’ve binge watched anything recently was when I was sick. I had a flu, sinus infection, cold, or some such. I had a fever and head congestion. What it lacked in severity it made up for in duration. I was sick for nearly two weeks and it lingered after that a bit too. The first week I had no concentration. I couldn’t watch anything because I couldn’t pay attention. That finally wore off in the second week and I had the TV back on.
One Saturday when I could concentrate a little I had the TV on all day. I binge watched the new Netflix zombie show “Black Summer.” Or at least what counts as binge watching for a sick person. What I liked about the show was that it didn’t demand I pay that close of attention to it. I could sit back, rest, watch the show, or not watch the show as my concentration waned. I had no expectations of the show except that it help me pass the time as I got better. It wasn’t a great show so I’m not sure if I would have watched all the episodes if I was well but since I was sick they hit the spot. It just kind of pleasantly passed by as I sat there with no energy.
I don’t go to the movies anymore either. I never went to them very much, maybe I went to six moxies a year in my heyday, but now I don’t go at all. I don’t miss them either. A lot of people like to go to the movies because they like the experience of it. The popcorn, sodas, big screen, and watching the movie with an audience. None of that ever appealed to me. I’d rather hang out and talk to my friends than go to a movie and have to sit there and be quiet for two hours. The movie always seemed to interrupt my good time.
A couple of days ago I decided I wanted to watch John Wick Chapter 2 for a second time. The first time I watched it I sat through it from beginning to end one night but not this time. I watched in in what I call “Old man style.” I watched it twenty minutes at a time. I enjoyed the movie and though it was a lot of fun but sitting there and watching it for two hours wasn’t something I wanted to do. That was too long. It took a couple of days to get through. I’d take a break from working on my big ink drawing and watch for a few minutes. I even watched it on my iPad a couple of times instead of my big TV. Sometimes it’s fun to hold the movie in my hands with headphones blaring in my ears. That’s a way different experience from being in the theatre.
The closest I come to binge watching a TV show is when I’m rewatching a sitcom. Right now I’m doing that with the show “Superstore.” I’ll watch an episode at lunch time, one at diner time, and maybe one more at night. That’s three episodes a day but at only about 20 minutes an episode they go fast. Of course them I might not watch any for a few days so it’s a slow motion binge. If it’s a forty minute TV show then one show a day is enough for me. I’m not sure what 40 minute show I’ve rewatched lately. It seems that comedies always get the rewatch with me.
Back in the days when I used to have cable TV and movie channels I would sometimes watch a movie a little bit at a time. A channel would play a movie over and over at different times the day so if I were to turn on the TV at any given time and see a movie I liked I’d watch it for a little while. Maybe I turned it on midway through and a good scene was coming up so I’d sit there and wait for the scene. But more often I’d watch a movie from start to finish when I got the chance.
The longest things I have on these days are podcasts. Though I often watch them on YouTube and they have video components I’m really just listening to them. I put them on as I work and they pass the time. I’ve had a bunch of true crime ones on lately but I also listen to a lot of comic book ones. They can be anywhere from five minutes to over an hour but almost none of them are two hours long. These days that seems to be an unreasonable amount of time for me to sit still.