In anticipation of the premiere of its newest show, "Game of Thrones", HBO decided to offer people a free preview this passed weekend. I guess the thinking was that, much like with drugs, just a taste of the show will get you so hooked on the series that you feel compelled to order the channel full-time. (Alas for you, Home Box Office, I will be passing. The show was fine, but not interesting enough that I would want to order 50 additionally channels specifically for this one program. Also, just a bit of constructive criticism, go a little easier on the black eyeliner for some of the guys. It doesn't make them look bad-ass, it makes them look like sad Emo kids.) Anyway, even though I wasn't interested in the actual reason for the free weekend, I was interested in all the other movies that came along with 72 hours of free HBO and Cinemax. I finally got around to viewing the Russell Crowe version of "Robin Hood", "MacGruber" as well as rewatched "Clash of the Titans" (which I should have let quit while it was ahead after going into the initial viewing with low expectations). Still, there were enough movies On-Demand to keep me occupied for the three days.
The thing about only having movie channels for a limited time is that you feel practically obligated to watch them. For example, Saturday night I was ready to go to bed when I thought I should give the movie channels one last check, just in case there was something coming on that I had missed. I managed to time it just right so as to catch the opening minutes of "She's Out Of My League". (For those of you who have never seen the movie, it is about a nerdy kid who starts dating a ridiculously attractive girl. There is slightly more to it than that, but that's the main premise.) Now, I like the kid who stars in it well enough, so I thought I would see if there were any laughs to be had. Big mistake. The first 10 minutes were ok and the second 10 were also ok, but at that point I should have cut my loses and turned off the TV. Instead I figured I was 20 minutes in to a 90 minutes movie and since I only had the channel for another day I had better watch it, because I certainly wasn't going to put the title on my NetFlix list when I've already seen almost half the film.
So up I stayed until almost 2 AM (which wouldn't have phased me 5 years ago, but is now an absurd hour for me to still be awake), watching a movie I wasn't overly interested in exclusively because I felt compelled to finish what I started. I've talked before about weighing the time wasted while doing something versus how much you value the other things you could be doing (in this case sleeping) when trying to decide if an activity is a waste of time and after calculating the total on this night it's not even close - I should have gone to bed. It's one thing to stay up very late watching a fantastic film, but that wasn't what I was doing. I was watching a pretty nondescript comedy where a nerdy guy gets a girl he couldn't possibly get in real life, with the message that this could happen to you, only we all know it really can't. It took me another half an hour to fall asleep after the movie was over because I was berating myself about being so stupid as to stay up for this. It's not that the movie was really bad but, under the circumstances, it was not worth sacrificing sleep for. The only good news is that the preview is over, so I can resume going to bed at a reasonable hour.
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