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Let’s Try This Again…Again

Jeff Martin — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:21:57 +0000

The apologetic, early-year post about lack of updates and resolve to course correct is a tired trope in the blog sphere these days, but here I am writing one. Over the past several months, I’ve seen movies and come home afraid to write about them. The empty screen was a scary thing; a bottomless chasm that I felt I needed to fill with as many words as possible. I instead posted shorter, 140-character reviews to my Twitter and Facebook pages. Surely, somewhere between six-paragraph screeds and tightly-packaged tweets, there lies a middle ground.

So, we’re going to try something new here: get back to updating with some level of frequency, but relish in brevity. You’ll get thoughtful reviews of the pop culture that I consume (not always guaranteed to be new releases; it’s too expensive to go to the multiplex anymore), just shorter. I’ll also be trying to expand the variety of my posts as I keep up with some of my New Year’s goals: to take a photo per week and read a book per month. Hopefully, that will keep me active enough to post.

In Which Basketball Betrays Me

Jeff Martin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:19:55 +0000

The quirky scheduling of the NCAA tournament pushed CBS’ Sunday primetime schedule a half hour back, which means that my DVR recorded the last half of 60 Minutes and the first half of The Amazing Race in the time slot that Race is supposed to run. The good news is that I got to see my weekly dose of confused rambling, courtesy Andy Rooney’s eyebrows. The bad news is that I didn’t watch any of the Race, and there’s no recap. At least not until I watch it online tonight.

March Blandness

Jeff Martin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:59:45 +0000

I’m sure by now you’re as tired as I am of all these gaps in writing time, and there’s not much I can say but “sorry.” Honestly, this time, a total lack of interesting movies to see or worthwhile reviews to write has kept me away for more than a month. Finally, though, there’s a stockpile of films in theaters that I’m moderately interested in seeing. That includes two this past weekend: Run, Fatboy, Run and 21. You’ll get reviews of those in the next couple days. Stay tuned.

It’s good to be back.

Best Laid Plans

Jeff Martin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:41:31 +0000

Okay, so I failed at the stated objective of NaBloPoMo. But just because I couldn’t post thirty times in thirty days doesn’t mean the project wasn’t a success. I matched my monthly all-time high in posts with 24 and found some good reasons to keep blogging. Many thanks to those who continue to read.

Gobble Gobble

Jeff Martin — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:50:53 +0000

You’ll have to forgive me if, in my tryptophan-induced coma, I’m not up for posting anything of great value today.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanskgiving.

Blogiversary

Jeff Martin — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:01:43 +0000

It was four years ago today that, “jealous” of people in a theatre group I was part of who posted humorous highlights of rehearsal, I signed up for LiveJournal. Since then, I have bounced from TypePad to Blogger, from semi-private to semi-popular, from the now-defunct minutiae31.com back to LiveJournal and now here, hopefully to stay. Many thanks to all those who have read my site in any of its incarnations and who continue to do so today.

Pluses and Minuses

Jeff Martin — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:10:50 +0000

As I continue to consider what new blogs to add to my blogroll, I bid a fond adieu to a few former favorites; namely, “It Moves Me!” Bill is a good friend of mine, and he’s a hell of a writer, but he hasn’t posted in more than a year. If Avington one day goes back to writing online, I’ll be one of the first to welcome him back with open arms.

Keep Sharp

Jeff Martin — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:32:35 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blogroll, and while I consider what to remove, I offer up one new addition: Tack Sharp, the new blog from uber-photographer and Movie Hawk sibling Kelly Anne. As TS grows, it will no doubt be a useful photography resource, something that will be extremely useful as I try to become a better casual photographer. Not to mention a good place to see some neat photos.

X Men

Jeff Martin — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:27:57 +0000

Before I start doing any serious writing in NaBloPoMo, I want to take a moment to recognize a significant milestone in my life. Now, too often these days, anniversaries are taken lightly – “Hey, we’ve been dating for two weeks!” or “Congrats, Lindsay! You haven’t been in rehab for a month!” I’ll be doing the same thing later this month when I celebrate my blog birthday. But the truly relevant anniversaries need special attention.

On November 1, 1997, I was a sophomore at a Catholic high school. I had the day, a holy day of obligation, off from school. Some guys I had met in school decided to spend the day at the mall. So that afternoon, five or six of us piled into a 1982 Toyota Corolla and headed for Granite Run Mall, were we enjoyed a lunch of Friendly’s and a trip around the mall. Therein started a bond between three of the participants that day – myself, Pat, and Andy – that has lasted to this day. Ten years of hanging out with the same crew. Friends have been added and subtracted from the group, but the three of us have always been a part of it.

Happy ten years, fellas. Here’s to many more.

Moving Right Along

Jeff Martin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:55:09 +0000

So…two months of complete and utter blog inertia. Nine posts in 61 days. That’s about a post a week. And it’s inexcusable. To my tens of readers: sorry.

The conventional action to take when such a poor display of blog attentiveness overtakes a writer is to throw in the towel; nobody reads the site anymore, you tell yourself, so it’s time to shut the virtual doors. But I enjoy this far too much to give up. Thank goodness for NaBloPoMo.

What’s the strangely capitalized and barely pronounceable word, you ask? Well, it’s an alternative to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. This is National Blog Posting Month. While more motivated writers are tackling 50,000 words in November, I’ll be writing a blog post every day this month. Hopefully this will bring back my blogging mojo, just in time for winter film season.