I reveal my Inmost Self

For some reason*, I've decided to allow the seal to be broken on the crypt containing artifacts of my past life.

Here's a sample:

The rest can be found via the link above or at "My TV Reel" under LINKS.

So, was I right to cut my losses and get out, or should I have stayed the course, a la Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove?

*There seems to be a fine line between self-loathing and self-aggrandizement. Either way, at least I'm getting something on the blog.

My Epitaph

"Oh, shit; that was today?!"

What's yours?

I'm Thinking...!

So there's this old Jack Benny bit, where he's accosted on the street:

Mugger:
“Your money or your life!”

Benny: (after a beat)
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”

That’s me. Not because I’m cheap (though I am, a bit). It’s because I’m an over-thinker. A hyper-analyzer. A hand-wringer.

This is harldy news to anyone who's tuned into this space over the last year. It's painfully obvious to even a wayward visitor or would-be drinking-song-singer who might have popped by during the the marathon cricket concert that comprised the last three months: I'm more thinker than doer.

It's taken me a while to figure that out, but there it is. I'd rather read than write. What's worse, I'd rather read pop-culture critiques that write them. I mean, I love the idea of writing them; I have the ideas and the inclination. Somehow, though I just can't seem to pull the trigger. Consequently, I tend to consume far more than I produce when it comes to anything creative. Not atypical for the average joe, but shameful for someone whose ostensible job title is "creative." And now that every other average joe has a blog--and blogs more reliably that I--it's all the more shameful.

One of the reasons I started this blog (as if it were some great calculated move in the first place) was to rejigger my thinking/doing ratio. To be just a little more impulsive and shoot-from-the hip on whatever I found interesting and noteworthy--movies, TV, music, the ad biz, politics, punctuation, food and drink, you name it. It was supposed to be a virtual watercooler where I could talk about the things that interest me with IRL friends and vitual aquaintances. Trouble is, instead of busting out with a post whenever I had a thought or observation to share, I somehow got it into my head that every blog post had to be this epic multimedia thing.

I blame Ixtab. And Dennis. And TLRHB. Ed shares some of the responsibility. Oh, and fish--that miracle of evolution who eats and blogs and makes little fish--he's crazy culpable. In fact, my entire blog roll should now be regarded as a kind of rogues' gallery. All those people, those witty, prolific, insightful blog-o-maniacs who started out as glorious inspiration are, I now realize, the cause of my ignominious cranial constipation. They're just too good; they set a standard I simply can't reach.

Now, the last three months have been something of an aberration, even for me, in part because I'm (wait for it) thinking seriously about a fairly major course change. (More on that later. Maybe.)

So, in an effort to jump-start (maybe defibrilate is a more apt metaphor--CLEAR!) this electronic beached whale, I'm going to try something a little bold and daring: Seven consecutive days of blog entries. I figure if I can just get some forward momentum built up, I can overcome the fear or the need to edit on the fly or whatever it is and just blog.

I'm just going to warn you now: It's not going to be pretty. My guess is that, over the next week, things around here resemble something between a car wreck and the inside of a sausage factory. If nothing else, it should be entertaining. I think.

A thumbprint on a skyscraper.

Like most things in my life, I've gotten into blogging kind of quasi-accidentally. It wasn't entirely random; I didn't trip over something and fall on my computer and spawn a blog. But it definitely wasn't really planned or deliberated over much, either. It's the way the zeitgest was blowing, I guess.

So I'm at what I imagine is a pretty typical point in the new-blogger process: what now? Why am I here (on the train to blogsville)? What do I want to do when I get there? Should I eat on the train or find a coffee shop later? What kind of bird was that? How long should I try to extend this metaphor?

Point is, I'm just a little stuck at the moment. Because what is a blog? It's an online journal, a Web log, right? So I'll just do all the same things I'd do in a journal (which, historically, means making some half-hearted entries for about three weeks, then "losing" it under a sofa cushion), only with photos and links and such. Then there's the whole 'online' thing. No one ever read my journals before. At least they weren't written for anyone but me. This, though, this is out there. So it's really more like a scrapbook left on the water cooler for all to peruse at their leisure.

So, I guess that's the approach I'll take: I'm just gonna hold forth on things that I care about--my family (whose request for anonymity I'll honor), my work, movies and TV, old German cars, food and drink, worthwhile reading, lefty politics and minor-league baseball--and see how it goes. See if anyone notices. If they do (and I hope they do, 'cause, y'know, if a tree falls in the forest and all that) then, great. If not, I'll just quietly slide my laptop under the sofa, I guess.

Huh. That wasn't so hard.