First post!

If I recall correctly, I set this blog up in May of last year, shortly after Iron Man 2 was released, with the intent of writing film reviews, etc. But I soon grew discouraged with the idea and shelved it. And so, this blog has remained, sitting here empty, for the better part of nine months. However, my interest was recently rekindled, but I knew that if I took too long to get started I would simply get discouraged again. So I needed to act fast.

I started brainstorming ideas for postings. I had a few ideas, and I felt confident I had enough to say to fill a blog posting about each one of them, but for some reason or another they all felt flimsy.

The first was a comparison of the films RoboCop and Starship Troopers. The two films are extremely similar: both written by Ed Neumeier and directed by Paul Verhoeven, both are political/social satires in the guise of action films. They have similar tones, similar structures, and rousing musical scores by Basil Poledouris. But while RoboCop is generally well-regarded, Starship Troopers has received a far more mixed response. Perhaps a detailed look at the successes and failures of both films could be revealing as to the source of this discrepancy.

But it seemed a little self-indulgent to start off with something like that. It's 2011, and those films were released in 1987 & 1997. Surely I could think of something a bit more topical than that, something people would be more interested in reading.

I had another idea for an essay about Lethal Weapon, and how it's story and themes were reflective of the national mood in the years following the Vietnam War. This one was at least a little bit topical, as there's been some recent news regarding a possible remake, but the premise was thin. I thought up several examples from the film to support my thesis, but at the end of the day it was all conjecture. I'm only 25; what the hell do I really know about how Americans were feeling after the Vietnam War? The concept was simple hypothesis, and it felt a little like bullshit.

My other ideas were a little more basic: A post about how Footloose is a deeper movie than people give it credit for; one dissecting the line between art and pornography; an analysis of what makes for a good film adaptation of a literary work; a simple review of the most recent film I'd seen in theaters; an in-depth discussion of one of my favorite movies.

There was no shortage of ideas.

But finding the right one seemed impossible. This was my first post, after all, and I wanted to put my best foot forward. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the more I thought about every idea, the more each one seemed like the wrong choice. They either felt pretentious and faux-intellectual, or hollow and surface-y. I wanted to come off as clever and articulate, but I didn't want to seem boring. I wanted to dig deep and get really geeky, but I didn't want to be off-putting to casual film-viewers.

Ultimately, though, the problem was simple: I wanted that first post to be absolutely perfect, and no matter what it was about, it simply wasn't going to be. Because I am not perfect, and am therefore incapable of writing something perfect.

And as I sat here tonight looking at the blank screen, I realized that I had the answer to my problem sitting right in my pocket.

In February of 2010 I purchased a Moleskine notebook at my local Barnes and Noble. Here is the first page of that notebook:

Alright. Today is Monday, August 9th, and I am only now making it to this notebook. I bought this in early February, at the same time that I purchased George R.R. Martin's A Storm Of Swords. The reason I hadn't written in it until now was that I felt daunted by the idea of starting a new notebook. I felt the pressure of making everything I wrote worthwhile. So, of course, nothing ever seemed good enough. It's a trap I've fallen into many times before. So let this notebook, and particularly this first page, be a reminder that if you wait for things to be perfect, you'll wait forever. At the end of the day, it's just a notebook. And it's not the end of the world if not everything I write in it is brilliant.

There it was: The Exact. Same. Problem.

A problem I'd found a suitable solution to. A lesson learned, a conflict resolved. And yet here I was, months later, putting myself through the same crap all over again.

So here it is. My first post. It's not perfect, but I think it's pretty good, and I'm going to have to live with that.

It is my intention to write a new post at least once a week. Hope you enjoy....