Okay, so it's been a month, more or less, and I haven't put a word here in all that time. The last one I did was an image and literally one word! In my defense, I wrote my afterNaNo speech, as it were, over at Paperback Reader, in my column the Quarter Bin. A bunch has happened since then. I decided on a new title for the collected Colinaude tale, The Cloak of Shrouded Men, and although Bart Gerardi, the head cheese at Paperback, has once already offered to publish this stuff, I'm still eying the indy route, and an attractive package available that would give me one free copy but a bounty in return. Help Me Help You, that sitcom people kept writing about here, ended up on the bubble. I don't know how much longer it'll be around, which sucks. I wrote a defense of it to a colleague at Paperback (that site again!), comparing it to Arrested Development, The Office, and My Name is Earl, which I really believe. It's an absolute gem I would love to stick around for years.
I've just responded to another comment left here by adapting a poem on another blog. I haven't done poetry here in years, which either means they've been doing their research or they're a really lucky and pleasant spammer. Here's something for the old school:
Blue Boy in Blue
Blue Boy is blue
is blue
is blue
Blue Boy is blue
because his secret is out
is out
is out
Blue Boy is blue
because those who
read his poem know
he's not a baby
but is a dog
is a dog
is a dog
Blue Boy is a poem
is a poem
is a poem
that I've thought about recently
and so it's not so hard to write about again
Blue Boy bubbled just beneath the surface
Blue Boy was a bit of nonsense
just a little bit of fun,
and now he's fun again,
or so I hope
I wish I had a monkey
had a monkey
had a monkey
had a monkey
which is a thought
that has nothing at all to do
with the rest of this piece!
But,
that's just what you get
when you visit with
Blue Boy in Blue!
In WWE, Batista is champion again on Smackdown, which people are apparently watching and actually enjoying. The joke on them is that they've been ignoring everything they seem to be enjoying for years now. That's irony. One of the major thoughts from 2006, however, is the amount of interbrand action there's been, how often stars from one show would appear on another. And even though this was so evident, the remarkable thing was that each brand, be they Raw, Smackdown, or ECW, still remained distinctly their own. Their signature stars rarely crossed over, from DX to Ken Kennedy to C.M. Punk (though this is been fudged from time to time, too). I used to write a lot about wrestling here (I used to do a lot different stuff before that, too), and maybe next year, that will happen again. But for now, and because this may be my final post of the year, we're going to leave the ring behind and return to other thoughts.
By next Monday, I'll have seen roughly 40 movies in the theater and amassed god only knows how many DVDs in 2006 alone. That's a lot of movies. I'm writing about my favorite comics from the year at Paperback (there I go again!), but I have no specific place to talk movies, books, or music. Much of my favorite music from the year came from 2005, or earlier. I was still crazy over Oasis (Don't Believe the Truth), Coldplay (X&Y), and Hootie & the Blowfish (Looking for Lucky). My new job and old helped make John Mayer's Continuum perhaps the most memorable disc of this year. I grew addicted to Grey's Anatomy, and very nearly came into possession of the holy grail of Superman DVDs (a clue: it came in a silver tin). I read a few classics, and oggled perhaps a new one (Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day), and came closer than ever to Jeff Smith's Bone: One Volume Edition (I may have that by the end of next month!). It was a terrible year and a good year, a productive year and a frustrating year. It was probably something I'll need for whatever awaits me, because the future is going to be wide open very soon.
And that's all I'm going to write for now.
