MyLifeInWriting.com

I happen to catch the Colbert Report the other day and he had a guest on who was promoting a foundation called "Nothing But Nets." Apparently almost 3,000 people in Africa die from malaria every day… EVERY DAY! Now I’m not a bleeding heart, nor am I someone who gets behind every cause to come along, but that number is astounding to me.

The foundation works by distributing sleeping nets to families which can protect them for up to 4 years. It’s only $10 per net, which includes installation, so I bought a bunch of them. I don’t know about you, but getting bitten by mosquitoes while you try to sleep is bad enough — let alone worrying about dying from it.

If you can manage $10, I’d encourage you to go for it. Seriously, how hard is it to skip starbucks for two days?

I’m an Entourage watcher. I’ll admit it. It’s 30 minutes (actually more like 22, and getting shorter every week) of entertainment that I look forward to on my Sunday nights. Is it thought provoking? Well written? Well acted?… Not particularly, but their formula works:

A little plot +
A little nudity +
Some celeb cameos +
A few Ari Gold one-liners +
A lifestyle that everyone wants =
————————————————————
A show that most guys will watch

It really is that simple! Ready? Here’s a future episode of Entourage I’m about to dome off the top of my head in 30 seconds:

Vince finds a script he likes. Ari tries to get him the role, but together he and "E" screw it up. In the process, Ari pisses off his wife — but makes up with her later. Drama freaks out about his abs not being firm enough after (celebrity) Mario Lopez bumps into him at the beach. Turtle tries to lure some girls over to the house using weed as an incentive.

Hire me… Seriously.

I guess the beauty of it is that everyone knows exactly what they’re getting. They’re getting a half hour of the story I just described above (customized slightly for a different celebrity), with one or two larger, underlying plot lines that get nudged forward each week. Guys can sit, listen to Ari cuss his face off, see a few hot women, and dream that they had 20 million in the bank so that they could move out to LA or NYC with their boys. Until that formula fails — and I don’t think it will for some time — people will keep tuning in for Entourage… including myself.

I finally got around to seeing "The Dark Knight" two weeks ago (yes, I was officially the last person in the country to see it), and they showed a preview for a movie called "Watchmen." The title sounded familiar, so I decided to do a little research. I read up on it and found that "Watchmen" is a graphic novel (read: comic book) from the 80’s set in a world that’s influenced by the existence of "super" heros. Most of them, however,  don’t have any significant powers, they’re more vigilante type heros, like batman — with the exception of this dude to the right who was given god-like powers after some kind of nuclear testing accident.

I’ll pause here while you unavoidably force yourself to check whether he’s wearing any pants…

Ok, now that that’s out of the way…

I know the whole "powers from a nuclear experiment gone wrong" is very cliche, and if you saw the preview yourself, you may be thinking that the other characters all seem pretty lame. They do have a kind of "old" feel to them, like something you’d expect to see in a movie 50 years ago. But, it turns out that "Watchmen" is actually supposed to be superbly written. So well written, in fact, that in 2005 Time magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels! That’s not graphic novels, or comic book novels, or anything else… That’s all English-language novels. It’s up there with "The Great Gatsby", "To Kill a Mockingbird", etc. etc. which I found to be pretty impressive, so I ordered a copy off Amazon to read this week.

We’ll see if it lives up to the hype that I just created for it. As far as the movie, I don’t really have any expectations. The preview was kind of cool, but it’s hard to tell with these types of films, and it’s not out for another 6 months, so we’ll see when the time comes.

Hey all, and welcome to my new blog. It’s been a while since my last attempt, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to stay active this time around. I actually had a blog at this same URL back while I was in college — before everyone and their brother started blogging — but I just couldn’t find the time (or motivation) to keep posting. I love the domain name though, and I’ve always intended to start back up, so here goes.

What am I going to be posting about? Well, right now I can say that my life really revolves around 3 major things: web development, internet entrepreneurship, and mixed martial arts. So, many of my posts will likely revolve around those things, but I’m sure there will also be a lot of random stuff along the way. I’ve been traveling quite a bit recently, and I definitely want to cover some of that.

Anyway, that’s enough for this first post. I’m still updating some of the basic features around the site, so sit tight — and look for more posts soon!