It is no secret to anybody that knows me that I am obsessed with television series. I am not a calm normal member of society who can just watch one episode of something and then casually wait until next week for the second episode. I am a binge viewer, As soon as I finish one episode I must then knock out the next 17 episodes immediately.

This means that it is not in the least way unusual for me to spend entire weeks doing very little besides sitting in the dark in my apartment watching series after series of any given show, only taken a break once every four hours to let the pizza man into the house.

Now I don’t know if it is because of the 14 hour sessions on the same show that I grind out or if it is just the show in general but every time I watch one of these shows I get so caught up in the lifestyle of the show that I always start acting like I am one of the characters.

Take ‘The Sopranos’ for example, I have watched every single episode of this show from start to finish three times in my life and every time I watch it I find myself talking in a New York American Accent where ever I go, my hand will not leave my groin area and I literally can’t go anywhere without a cigarette or a cigar in my hand! I also find myself developing plans to rob trucks full of goods and trying to build massive organised crime rings with my friends and ‘family’. However luckily for me I am afraid of going to jail and my friends are all as lazy as I am so our mob mentality never really progresses further then sitting around at a coffee shop in full tracksuits, smoking, drinking coffee and talking about the ‘old country’.

‘Boston Legal’ is another great example. Again I have watched every episode and if it was legal to marry a fictional character Denny Crane and I would be on our honeymoon right now. I find whenever I watch this show my scotch intake more or less triples (and it is pretty high to begin with). I walk around making filthy, derogatory and animalistic sexual advances to every single woman I meet (which (much to my girlfriends delight) often ends with me being slapped across the face)! The best part about my Boston Legal watching moments is that my good friend Pazz comes over more or less every night to drink scotch and smoke cigars. The only difference between our conversations and there ones is that they are actually successful and we are just pretending.

Now I am of Italian decent so ‘The Sopranos’ situation isn’t that bad and running around pretending I am a fanatically right winged lawyer is a great party trick so I don’t think ‘Boston Legal’ has caused me too much grief but it is my latest binge series which has everyone questioning my sanity. For the past two weeks I have been obsessed with a show called ‘Trailer Park Boys’ if you don’t know it, as the name suggests it is just three guys sitting around in a trailer park, getting drunk, getting stoned and going to jail. That means pretty much all I have done since I watched the first episode is wear the same clothes, talk about ‘shit storms’, drink, think about getting stoned and just generally try my hardest to resemble trailer park trash in any way that I can. I am having a lot of fun, sleeping in all day and just being a mess but when my girlfriend comes over and finds out that I have been sleeping in the car things start to go a little pear shaped.

Am I the only one who has these kind of binge induced alter lifestyle sessions or is this a normal phenomenon that happens to all. What shows do you find yourself trying to resemble in everyday life?

The next series I am going to watch is ‘Confessions Of A Call Girl’ I don’t know what this will do for my lifestyle, but at least I should make a few extra bucks!

Joey Del