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The unofficial marker of autumn is upon us with the start of the next season of Monday Night Football (the Monday after Labor Day), the start of a new semester of classes, and another birthday.   Of course, fall is also the start of a new television season, after enduring so much new summer filler they threw at us on television.

I don’t watch much television, most of it seriously sucks, but there is room for America’s Next Top Model and a couple hours worth of Project Runway reruns every week.  Kathy Griffin is a riot, so is Family Guy and both never fail to lighten my mood when I need a TV break. Most of my TV time is reserved for the Red Sox and anything related to pro football. That’s my ritual Sunday for the fall (and Monday night, and Thursdays when I can find someone who actually gets the NFL network).

But for the most part, I am no longer sucked in by medical dramas, supernatural mysteries (unless you count the popularity of Monk) politically correct sitcoms and How I Met Your Mother.   Some of it is better written than the rest, but none of it drags me in front the TV the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends and early episodes of CSI used to.  

Maybe it’s because a television habit is not a compatible activity without just about any other productive use of my time.  Nothing drains away my mental capacity like Next.   It’s not even the visual menagerie that distracts me so much as the constant audio stream. It’s amazing that I long ago learned to tune out commercials (even as I watch them, I have no idea what they are advertising) but the shows themselves still wrest away my attention.

I realize our addiction to TV is piled on years of conditioning. It’s my babysitter, my best friend and occasionally, my lover. It has been with me through all the ups and downs of my life and somehow, never passes judgment on…okay, I can’t keep that up anymore. But you know where I was going with it.

Fall itself is a product of the same rigorous conditioning. Even people who no longer live on the academic cycle from September to May have the imprint of twelves years or more of moving to the tune of the school year. It’s ingrained in many of us from an early age. The best television starts in the fall. Summer is for vacations, for camping and long weekends and day trips. Autumn is for buckling down and relearning all the good habits that were so easily forgotten for the three months when the sun shined. Winter is the darkness, and spring the revival. Even when all those patterns of behavior are striped away, we still think of the start of fall as a substantial indicator of promise, the least of which is there might be something worth watching on TV.

While I’m damn excited about the next season of Top Model, it’s the promise of another season of football that has me restless and buzzing with eagerness. Sure the Pats might have to rely on a back-up quarterback (pick one, the result will be the same) the Jets are riding Brett Favre until he drops, and Pennington is with Dolphins? Apparently, they are comfortable bottom dwelling for another year. But, fuck Lost, that’s all the drama I need to make my fall a special one.

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