Is 288 minutes of Father of the Pride worth your dwindling time? © DreamWorks.

Okay, let’s see… got my Acme solar calculator right here, I’m ready to rock. Now… 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day, that’s, um, 1,440 minutes… times 365 days per year… got it, that’s 525,600 minutes… times… hunnh… an average life expectancy of roughly 76 years, so that’s… 39,945,600. Let’s agree to call it 40 million minutes. Yep, that’s it. That’s all we get. Hmm, don’t we spend about a third of that time snuggled up with Mr. Sandman? All right, divide by three… that comes to about 27 million sentient minutes. Of course, if you’re reading this column, you’ve just spent another minute and you’re not exactly fresh on the clock in the first place. So, my rapidly aging amigos, what exactly do you DO with all those free minutes the Great Timekeeper put on your card? Good deeds/great works? Contemplation? Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll? Chucking the ol’ pixels around on Maya 6.5? Maybe you’d like to spend some of it watching cartoons. Hey, you just drained two more minutes! Quick… what do you watch?

“Doc,” you ask, what’s with this “minutes” riff? Fair ‘nuff. I chose this chronological unit because it happens to be the standard measurement of time in estimating the contents of a DVD. DVD listings typically don’t express time in terms of “three hours,” “one eighth of a day,” or “the entire childhood and adolescence of a fruit fly.” Nope. They say, “180 minutes.” What I am doing here is converting your lives to DVD time. Why? To show you a) How said commodity “life” could be spent, and b) more importantly, how it could be misspent. When we examine things in terms of those precious minutes (there goes another one) that we actually do have, a completely new perspective is possible. Hey, stick with me; this is an important public service, and I’m a journalist who truly cares.

With the advent of the DVD came, as Robin Williams put it, “Phenomenal cosmic powers… itty bitty living space.” It became possible to put hours of material on a disc, and, more importantly, package several of them together for what amounts to eons of digital time. Thus was born the DVD boxed set. Entire seasons of animated shows are now available for viewing in any episodic order for a one-time fee. For some series, this is rather good idea.

Aficionados can relive favorite episodes and the times that went with them. Critics can study the evolution of style (both verbal and visual) within a given show. Animation collectors get another kewl artifact to pursue. Problem is, for many series on DVD, all of the above isn’t exactly true. Companies put them out there anyway. This is where your good judgment and deep appreciation of those precious minutes (and your skinny wallet) comes to the fore.

Let us consider the following example. Recently a passel of Hanna-Barbera “classics” was released on multiple DVD sets. Many of them are “classics” in the sense that they are older than you are, but the quality quotient is a wee bit under par. Exhibit A — One can now purchase the entire series of The Dastardly and Muttley Show (Suggested retail price: $34.98).

This set would make a deadly tool in the hands of the military. Repeated showings of this dross-filled DVD at the Guatanamo Bay detention camp would make the staunchest scion of the Taliban cough up the exact location of Osama Bin Laden. Our forces could also use the DVD as a component of Navy SEALS training. Any prospective member of that elite force who can endure three consecutive episodes without screaming, “Stop That Pigeon! Please, I beg you!” should be put into uniform and deployed immediately. Oh, yes, before I forget… the DVDs will consume 459 minutes of your allotted days on Earth. What’s your life worth, chum?

There are examples even funnier than that, and they involve DVD sets of series that were abysmal failures. One can hear the studios and companies pleading to recoup their losses by releasing these putrid plastic pancakes. “Please!” they cry, “We’ll give you the entire series of God, the Devil, and Bob for only $26.99!” (That’s 338 minutes, O mortal ones). “Wait! Don’t go away! How about the entire manifest of Father of the Pride? Only $29.99!” (In addition, 228 minutes of this fleeting existence.) Oh, hold on, this just in — another Hanna-Barbera “classic” — The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Yep, you can own the complete series for just under 35 bucks. If you’ve seen one episode of this poorly animated, repetitious bushwhack you’ve seen everything, but you could give up 355 minutes on this vale of tears to find out for yourself.