My mixed media playroom

I’ve decided to expand my classic movie blogging by add a second blog to write about other forms of media that I "consume," namely music, books, TV, and recent films, so let me briefly note where my interests lie in these media. I have, over the years, been a record store manager, a bookseller, an English teacher, and a librarian, so all these media have not only been casual interests but have also been important to me in my careers. I grew up with the Beatles (I was 7 when they appeared on Ed Sullivan) and still love their music but was only a casual pop music fan until 1969 when I apparently has some kind of epiphany, the exact nature of which is lost in the mists of time, that caused me to surround myself with the sounds of AM radio as close to 24 hours a day as I could manage. I’ve never quite lost this love of pop music, even if most current radio fodder doesn’t engage me. In fact, with the coming of digital music, first through Napster and, later, iTunes, I have found my interest in pop music reignited and I have an iPod filled with pop, bubblegum, old school soul, folk, and psychedelic music, by artists such as T. Rex, Carly Simon, Sly and the Family Stone, R.E.M., Blondie, The Ohio Express, and Prince, up to Fountains of Wayne, The Decemberists, Wondermints, The Postal Service, and Franz Ferdinand. I feel lucky to be a baby-boomer, someone who can continue to cocoon himself in the music of his youth, unlike my parents who had to rely largely on scratchy copies of out-of-print records and didn’t have the music they loved coming at them from TV ads, radio stations, and computers.

As far as books, my favorite authors are Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and Ray Bradbury; I used to read a lot of “midlist” fiction (not popular enough to hit the bestseller lists but not "literary" enough to be taken up by academics), but quite honestly, I find myself these days reading mostly non-fiction (WWII, movies, religion, biographies, pop culture) and classics. When it comes to TV, I’m a sucker for sitcoms, from Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore to Cheers and Friends, to Will & Grace and Arrested Development. I'm not much for hour-long dramas, though largely because of my partner's tastes, I have kept up, off and on, with shows like Lost, CSI, Invasion, and House. We're also devout watchers the Game Show Network's Lingo, Chain Reaction, and their weekend reruns of What's My Line. And that should be enough background for my occasional blog entries on things other than classic movies.