Columnist Susan Snyder: TV viewing is a real turnoff

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 | 8:23 a.m.

According to the people who have called this national TV-Turnoff Week, Americans average four hours of daily television viewing.

Those would be the people who know how to turn on their televisions. I could just as well be in the 2 percent of Americans who, according to the nonprofit TV-Turnoff Network, don't have a television.

I live in a household where The Lord Of The Big Screen has plugged everything but the toaster and the coffee maker into the back of the television -- a television that takes up an entire wall. If it has prongs, it's serving a function back there, somewhere.

Our Operating System for viewing one episode of "The West Wing" each week was at one point composed of three remote controls (which meant I got to hold one). It was routed through the VCR, stereo receiver, the speakers mounted on the wall behind the sofa, and, as far as I could tell, may have included the electric shaver in the master bathroom and a couple of power tools out in the garage.

But recently His Lordship streamlined the system so that we now use only the remote for the VCR to operate the TV. I have not completely mastered the configuration of buttons needed to actually turn it on, so the TV-Turnoff Network's annual weeklong television boycott is alive and well at my house.

I can still work a book.

It's probably not a bad idea to curb our viewing habits. A December U.S. Surgeon General's report says 61 percent of American adults are overweight, while 27 percent of adults and 13 percent of children are obese. We should go outside and run around a little.

Of course, TV-Turnoff Network's message would go nowhere if people didn't sit on their hindquarters in front of home computers. Their website is tvturnoff.org. Check it out during a commercial.

In other household news, Ames True Temper Inc. is recalling 647,000 wheelbarrows because they blow up.

It seems the wheel assemblies explode during high-pressure inflation of the tires, causing injury to those for whom such an incident is likely the capstone of a very long, unproductive day of household chores. (Think: How many good days of spring chores can start with a wheelbarrow that has a flat?)

Officials from the U.S. Office of Homeland McCarthyism have released no statements linking the recalled Mustang and Douglas models of wheelbarrows to terrorist suicide gardeners working in the United States under legally acquired visas.

Finally, a 30-year-old Dallas man who desperately needs some direction in his life is on a mission to visit every Starbucks coffee joint in the chain.

John Winter Smith's list of more than 2,800 stores visited (photos are posted at starbuckseverywhere.net) includes 31 Las Vegas locations and one in Primm.

He called the Summerlin Trails Center Starbucks a "lovely store" in the "Vegan boonies." Catchy, isn't it? "Vegan Boonies -- from the low $300s."

The photo of a Starbucks at Charleston and Rampart boulevards shows an empty lot in front. And Smith writes, "By the time I next visit Vegas, I expect shops to have been erected on that lot, as Las Vegas continues to expand and expand."

Maybe all that caffeine makes us do it.