Why the blog, dog?

I decided to take advantage of the free blog service Google has to offer because I thought it might be entertaining to have discussions about a few specific subjects, or whatever else, with whomever via a blog. My main motivation is that it will keep me writing on a fairly consistent basis. My girlfriend is an Economics major with a math minor at a very fine (and therefore demanding) school. Not only does she have little time to watch movies and baseball (my big obsessions) with me, but do much of anything else except for studying. My other friends locally are mostly into music and enjoy playing the “rawk” music or have families with children. So that leaves me high and dry (in terms of film/Red Sox friends, not Def Leppard albums). I used to have a myspace page but that site smacks of being an electronic popularity contest. Wow you have 567 friends? Your value as a human being must be extraordinary. I have many friends too but I don’t collect or have the urge to put them on display, not unlike an old lady may with Hummel figurines. I’m also a horrible correspondent so I find myself infrequently spending time composing letters and email. This does not seem to be conducive to myspace where there appears to be a requisite 6-7 hours a day of one’s time devoted to emailing but more so (creepily) browsing the profiles of complete strangers. To me that’s about as much fun as Carrie White had at the prom

I’ve just recently finished my last semester at U-Mass where I’m a 36 year old undergrad English major. Perhaps I’ll get my graduate degree when I’m simultaneously collecting social security and Medicaid benefits. Regardless the reason I mention this is because I have more free time and that means more time to feed my celluloid addiction. This also means more time to devote to the Boston Red Sox, a lifelong passion of mine. I would ideally like to have some people to discuss the Sox and film with in an intelligent, lively and most importantly fun manner. I’m not interested in putting other people’s tastes or opinions down, or promoting my own as somehow better. It’s obviously subjective. How you feel about a film is not the most important reaction you can have. I think that the intent, the result and the reasoning behind the film is where discussion is merited and interesting. So you ‘loved’ “Crash” and ‘hated’ “Turner and Hooch.” So what? I’m more interested in figuring out what the filmmakers are trying to say and how they say it, or show it (Crash- anything that happens in southern California is racially motivated, Turner and Hooch – a giant dog’s drool and poop is hilarious.) I’m also a big fan of film noir and there is a great website called Back Alley Noir which hosts a cast of very knowledgeable and friendly people. It’s a good place to chew the fat about noir with some fine people.

For the most part I want to keep the blog focused on three subjects: Film, Boston Red Sox and sharks. Yes I've got a thing about (which is a euphemism for obsession) sharks. They are the only real monsters we have left on planet earth. They are man-eating cold blooded killers which kill more humans every year than we are led to believe. I'll save my wacky conspiracy theories about the Australian and South African tourism bureaus and shark attack cover-ups for another day. I've found that that the majority of blogs out there are a real hodgepodge of subjects people seem to feel qualified to comment about. That's the beauty of the blog, the voice of the common person writing about what they want to write about in a forum that anyone in the world can read. However, in practice it can make for such exciting entries as a bored housewife in Corvallis, Oregon writing about the cutest little fern candle holder she found in the Lillian Vernon catalog when she should be writing about her take on today's episode of Passions, or some hipster tool in Brooklyn talking about how much the President sucks when he should be writing about some obscure band that only he and a few others have listened to play. My point is; stick with what you know and keep it simple. Therefore it's movies, sharks and Red Sox on this blog. I may throw a changeup entry on occasion too. Enjoy.