Opening Statement / Mission

What in the world am I doing here and what in the world are you doing here looking at this babble?!?!?!

Well... I'm not sure why I am here. My intention is to take my personal writing and share it on the wide world of the web. In the past I have enjoyed writing about what I love - the media. I love to see films (especially indies and foreign), buy music (over 1000 Cd's I owned until i purged my collection) and read books. I erratically kept journals of these things that I consumed and passed them along via e-mail to friends and family. So why not put them in the blogosphere and see who stumbles upon them. Maybe do some networking or meet new people or even just start an interesting conversation.

Why are you here? Well I really don't know. If you aren't a friend or family, then some how you stumbled upon this site. Perhaps you googled a topic that I wrote about. Well, you're here so let me warn you about a few things. I am not a professional journalist. My writing is not very good (though with practice perhaps I'll improve). Don't expect much in that way. These are basically journal entries. I don't intend to write carefully planned, well edited articles. I'm just putting them out there as they come out with minimal editing. So if you think I'm full of it, you are probably right and we should just start out right away with that premise. That way no one's expectations are disappointed.

Another thing that I should warn you about is that I try to rank everything by a star system. Art (film, literature and music) is of course subjective so some people might argue that stars have no value and I would agree with those people. But I know when I look at a review magazine, I don't have time to read every review and I know I don't have enough money to buy every CD/book/film, so I am more interested in what are the "best" (Subjective word) pieces out there to spend my hard - days wages on. Sure I might miss something that is really great becasue it didn't get enough "stars", but I ususally review more than one magazine (we're talking mostly about music now) so that if one critic overlooks some great treasure, perhaps someone else will rave about it somewhere else.

To have ratings of any kind, I believe it is best to define those ratings. Otherwise a 2 could be pretty good for one person and lousy for another person. So...

None = no stars = worthless
You should see this rating rarely since i pick my own stuff, and I like to think that I have pretty good taste. I'm not obliged to buy/review anything I am not interested in.
* = has some redeeming values
** = worth seeing/reading/listening - good but probably not high on a priority list of stuff to see/buy/read.
*** = Excellent
**** - Masterpiece
This should also be rare since a masterpiece should be a rare miracle.

I'm not afraid to use half stars either.

One last word about reviews. I tend to like some reviewers more than others. Probably because their tastes are more similar to mine. That might happen to you too. If we have different tastes, I probably will never see you again. If our tastes are similar (or you are the aforementioned friends and family - then you will be obliged to visit here often) then you might want to visit often - in spite of the amateurishness of the whole proceeding.

I also might throw some other stuff on here beside films, music and literature - some other odds and ends that might be interesting or useful.

Man - I thought I would write a couple of posts tonight, but I'm plum tuckered out. If I can find some old work, maybe I'll post. Otherwise...