Have you ever sat down to watch a TV show or movie, or picked up a book, and in the first few minutes said: this is terrible, but you persist anyway?

This happened to me recently. I was surfing the dozens of channels on my subscription and complaining about how there was nothing to watch.
Not quite true, but I’ve never been into a dozen home shopping channels or following the exploits of housewives in this week’s target city. It was also that time of the evening when movies I might be interested in are well under way, and my cable provider is very unpredictable on which shows get the restart option.

I never thought I’d say it out loud, but there are times when I miss Comcast and Xfinity. Anyway, after the third cycle through the channel guide, I settled on a movie called Trailer Park Shark which was just starting.

Yes, you did read that correctly, and a couple of minutes in, it was about what I expected. “This is awful,” I said more than once. Despite that, an hour later, I was still watching. I may even watch the movie again because there must have been something in the way the story was told that kept me in front of the screen.

I’m sure there’s a learning opportunity there, and techniques I can use in my own writing once I figure them out.