Oh, The Things I Know!

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Through the magic of the internet, a poor young Dickensian orphan such as myself has a place to espouse on his various, trivial, interests. I've customized this webspace with all the comforts of home (i.e. a background and some links,), and it is here where I hope to house my thoughts, both stray and cultivated. Here are some background bullet-points that hopefully will ad some context to whatever you, the reader, are subjected to over the posts that follow:

• I am none of the following things: poor, an orphan, or Dickensian.

• Comics Books. Oh my stars and garters to I love comic books. I know that given the nature of my Log title and background this may seem obvious. I figured that I may as well throw it out there during this Getting To Know You, Sound of Music-style post. Personal favorites of mine are Y-The Last Man, The Walking Dead, Ultimate Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Bone, The Flash, and the comic book that I've read, re-read, and if there was a word for "read almost constantly" I'd use that, is Daredevil.

• Then there was film. Film and Television are another huge part of how my brain works. Walking down the street, I play out little scenes in my head; people, places, shots, and especially dialog for random characters (often people I know) flood my senses to the point where I often am almost hit by oncoming traffic or miss my public transportation du jour. I love the poetry of film: a complete story, encapsulated and complete and hopefully profound and striving for something new. It combines a great deal of sensations, not only sight and hearing, but I think film manages to give us a wholly sixth sense, one that stretches the hundred feet across the theater to the screen and puts you into a completely different time and place. Truly there lies a sacred power within Gigli. (Also something you should know: I'm always looking for the cheap Gigli joke.) Some of my favorite films are Adaptation, Ghostbusters, Breathless, Clerks, Dr. Strangelove, Jaws, The Fellowship of the Ring, pi, and The Usual Suspects.

• Okay, so maybe I'm a little Dickensian. It's the hat.

• I mentioned Television. Ah Television... teacher, mother, secret lover. While I feel film is visual poetry TV harkens back to the 18th century serials that were published in newspapers. As such, they do occasionally have that "paid-by-the-word" feel to them, but hit the right batch of it and you can really connect. Good television is less about events and more about characters and moving with them. I feel with and care more for C.J. Craig, Tim Canterbury, or Lorelai Gilmore than I have and do for any film character I can think of. Also a must for Television to hit with me is sharp dialog. I mean "shave-with-it-in-the-morning cut-yourself-just-looking-at-it" sharp. I don't do Friends. I don't do Family Guy. I don't do Survivor. I might come off like a snob, but I assure you: I just need a some substance. What I do like is The West Wing, The Shield, Gilmore Girls, 24, Lost, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I am also slowing warming to Sports Night, but that's a post in it's own right.

• So other than those frivolous hobbies, the one substantive thing that interests me is politics. I'm not going to go into too many details on where I stand, but I believe the finest book available on the political state of the American Media is "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" by Al Franken. Again, I'm not going to say where I am on the spectrum, or who I voted for but if you pay attention and follow the clues, you'll see where I lay...

So that's about it for this post. I'm going to try and update every other day, I hope I stick to that. I'd also like to keep this about my thoughts on comics, on film, on the state of things. So to start me off right, I figure I'd let one of my favorite directors say something about one of my favorite things:

"Comic books are the ghostly fascination of these paper people, paralyzed in time, stringless puppets, imobiles, unable to be transported to movies, whose charm lies in rhythm and dynamism. It's a radically different way to please the eyes, an unique way of expression. The world of comics books can, in its generosity, lend plots, characters and stories to the movies, but can't lend its inexpressible power of suggestion that lies in the permanence and immobility of a butterfly in a pin."
- Frederico Fellini