Geek Gems

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Why Do I OWN This?: Defined By Limits

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: once upon a time, a publisher made a writer a bet.

This gifted writer was so artful with language, painting in so many vivid hues, that a contemporary felt like testing him. The writer’s previous book used a total 223 words over an entire story. The publisher bet the writer that the writer couldn’t write a good story using a mere 50 different words.

Good news! The writer won the bet! Bad news! You’ve probably never read the story. Who really remembers a story about some kid talking an adult into eating questionably colored eggs and ham, anyway?

The best news? The most inspiring, brilliant things sometimes arise not when the sky’s the limit, but instead the ceiling.

I could spend hours parrusing Netflix and never finish finding interesting movies – new ones that I can slip comfortably into like a hot tub, or awful ones that, like biting into a green egg, remind me what makes the good stuff so good.

But there’s the rub. I think I rely too much upon Netflix. At least a few hundred DVDs sit upon my shelves and draw dust whilst I forget little by little why I treasure them so much in the first place. Disturbing, considering that it’s those items – and not my Netflix queue – that hints to anyone at what I really value, movie-wise.

So I’m casting down my own gauntlet: Sleepless One, cast your analytical eye upon yourself and honestly assess what your collection says about what you actually like about movies. I’ll traverse my entire library, in alphabetical order, and ascertain exactly why I love and own the movies I do. So often among Internet critics, it’s eviscerating shitty movies that comes easily, and makes the best entertainment. I won’t lie, I own some awful bad movies myself. But I bet I can do something few other personalities can: make an intriguing case for actually loving certain movies.

For this purpose, I’m leaving out complete TV-series seasons and wrestling DVDs. Tv-on-DVD would just take too long, and some collections have their own dedicated reviews in the pipeline. The wrestling DVDs just don’t lend themselves to this format. Besides, if you’re not a wrestling fan to begin with, even what I really love about those DVDs probably wouldn’t register with you, anyway.

But I’m starting with “numerical” titles. That constitutes exactly what it implies: any title that begins with numerals. The first candidate? Well, here’s a hint:



You know as well as I do that something about “Academy Award-winner Eminem” will never, ever fully register just right.

Until then, I’m Sleepless Colin and you’re not.