About The Site

These are the things that define me. For those just jumping on now this is all you need to read to know me, though the other nine are pretty good foreplay. You can look at these favourites and get a very good insight into my psyche and manner of being. We’re through the looking glass, people…

Top Ten Movies
1. Chasing Amy – All I had to show for it was some foolish pride, which then gave way to regret
This is just my favourite movie of all time. I could watch it any day and always come away feeling the same. The script just feels so tight. I know what these people are feeling. The moment where Holden pulls away from Alyssa outside the hockey rink, that moment is completely nailed. This movie is funny, it is serious and it is true. I have the poster of the Silent Bob speech on my wall. Greatest monologue ever! In my eyes there is nothing wrong with this movie, nothing at all. I saw it at the movies when it first came out and loved it. As I have grown older this movie just continues to mean more to me. Even the extras on the dvd are hilarious, “Where are the whores?” Jason Lee is a one man show that proves to me he should be an A-list leading man. He can do it, just some poor choices have not helped him, dammit. But Earl is his big ticket at the moment, and I love that. Man falls in love with a lesbian, hilarity ensues. Absolute gold dust.

Top Ten TV Shows
1. LOST
There is no doubt in my mind that this is my favourite show of all time, and it hasn’t even finished yet. It may be a preemptive call, but I’m sticking with it. Never before has a show constantly made me think. Think about characters, ideas and themes of such a broad scope. Each actor just chews the shit out of the script each week and the writers just keep raising the bar. Flashbacks switch to flashforwards. We go from knowing things that most characters don’t know to knowing things that they will all have to wait to find out. For each question answered another two rise to take its place. For the record I think that Sawyer is the best character. He’s just such a dude, no other way to put it. Evangeline Lilly is a goddess and I will marry her. I don’t mean that in some sick stalker way, I mean it in the way that I know once I am writing comics for a living I will bump into her at some convention and she will forget who the fuck the hobbit is that she rolls with now. There are so many good characters, good episodes and I know that for each good thing they are each making what is one unbelievably great fucking whole. Not to mention Brian K Vaughan writes for them, which is always good. I even listen to the podcast. We’re looking at love, redemption, secret societies, mystical science, emotional breakdown and time travel. There’s nothing else out there that can top that.

Top Ten Books
1. The Shining – Stephen King
I finished it and it automatically took the top spot, and it will take something pretty unreal to wrest it from the icy clutches of Jack Torrance. Officious little prick; now that’s an opening. I was amazed, as I had already seen the movie a fair few times, how well written this was. The characters are so well crafted and it is only then that the situation takes real gravity and comes to life. Kubrick did a good job making a piece of cinema, but he forgot the heart of the book. The father son struggle, the wife in the middle, the character of The Overlook itself. A descent into madness has to mean something, and in the book it means so much as you hope it won’t end in implosion, but know it will. The question is, who will get caught within the eye of the storm, forever living it out in Room 217. I love that King was going to call it The Shine but soon found out that was a derogatory name used on black people. This is a book that proves to me that horror books can be very well written, and that Stephen King is the writer who makes the best characters in the business today.

Top Ten Comic Books
1. Daredevil
I can remember being about six and playing at school. I was playing superheroes and I wanted to be Daredevil. I explained to my friends who he was and how his billy club always came back. And he was blind, but could see better than any of us. Yeah, I was a wicked nerd even at that tender an age. I had read some Matt Murdock helmed comics that my older brother owned, yes always the one and the same. I loved the character. Years went by and comics fell off the radar. Then, about a month or so after The Walking Dead pulled me back in I found an interesting piece of information that pretty much sold me on the fact that I would forever more be a junkie for the cause. Kevin Smith had written a run on Daredevil, the relaunch run in fact. I don’t know how that ever escaped me, but I quickly bought up the issues and loved them. It brought back all the reasons I loved Murdock. This was the slippery slope they spoke of. Of the original 380 issue run I now own well over a hundred of the single issues, and I have the first 50 issues collected in Essentials volumes. Of the new run I have every issue amongst floppies and hardcover collections. Not to mention the eight other ancillary trades that collect mini-series’. I have even written a short Daredevil story and my own DD mini-series that I will pitch once it is cleaned up into issues. Everyone will crap on about the Frank Miller runs, and they are pretty good, and he did create Elektra which was pretty bitching, but I have to agree that the Bendis run is the best. Perhaps not all of it, but him becoming the new Kingpin of Hell’s Kitchen and The Murdock Papers were just awesome. I have just finished the Mr Fear arc from Brubaker and it was very good, though I am certain that it is just a piece in a much larger scheme. I also, and this is just fucking amazingly cool, own the first issue! In very good condition! The only thing cooler than that will be when I get the chance to pen the movie that will redeem the character from his previous cinematic outing. I already have my villain and premise waiting. It’s like my nephew asked me, “Do you wanna write Daredevil?” Only one response there, champ, “Mate, it’s not a chance of do I, it’s more like I am going to write Daredevil one day. I am not certain of when, exactly, but it will go down.”

Top Ten Songs
1. Gravedigger – Dave Matthews – Could you make it shallow, so that I can feel the rain
This has to be acoustic, has to be. I like the themes of mortality that play through the song, but tweaked with some aspects of happiness. Cyrus Jones who lived a full life, Mikey Carson who rode his bike. These offer up two very happy images in my head, but the figure of death is always in the sidelines, waiting to take over. Dave Matthews is a genius, as far as I am concerned, and one of the greatest musicians getting around today. His concerts are so interactive and personable, ending so many songs with a ‘thank you very much’. There is everything to love about the way he arranges a song and composes the lyrics. In the end I just get this song, and it bloody well gets me. I want this song played at my funeral, no way around it, and if someone actually wants to play, even more power to them. This song will be my coda, and I think it’s a happy one. Probably morbid to have your funeral song as your favourite thing…or it’s completely life affirming. Not to mention the fact that my funeral will not be a sad event at all, kegs all around people. But if you are sad, then so be it, I’m a nice guy, feel free to mourn me, but whatever you feel just have the same level of emotion as this song has. I know that when I stood about 10 people away and heard Dave Matthews play this song live and alone I was completely happy. The world shut down around me, my minds stopped and I was in the moment. He nailed it and the smile burned across my face. After that I knew that the song would be it for me. It’s just it.

That’s me. Nerd through and through. But one with impeccable taste.
I guess I gotta find other shit to write about now…hmmm…

Posted on March 30th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: books, comics, life, movies, music