As some of you may have noticed, there was no column last week. I tried to write one, however the words just rang hollow. There was no sense, I felt, in writing about movies at a time when things such as that seemed so trivial. After putting away my keyboard, so to speak, I decided that, hey, I’m one of the few Americans out there that has a public forum in which to express my opinions on matters worldly or otherwise, and damnit, I should take advantage of it! So I stared at the white of my computer screen, trying to synthesize my emotions into a column that would sum up how I felt about the terrible events of September 11th. I was, for once in my life, left speechless. Even as I write this now, two weeks after the fact, I am still struck dumb by the enormity of what has transpired. We now live in a different world. We live in a place with unsteady floors; with walls that might not hold. The word “war” is now heard daily in the news, and for a 21-year-old, able-bodied male such as myself, it’s a word that chills me to the core. But beyond that, the thing that is the most different… from now on, every single person in America knows what a plane flying into the side of a building looks like. This, people, is not an image we are supposed to have in our heads.
So I guess the thing that we do now is move on. Start up with our films and TV shows. Begin talking about other aspects of life. We must take baby-steps into a too-bright room that contains the future. The question is: How do we do that? I don’t know about you folks, but I, personally, have been submerging myself into movies and TV, renting videos like a crazy man; watching television with a near-religious fervor. Not that I didn’t do these things anyways, but now it seems that I’m doing it to forget about life as opposed to “just for fun.” And to tell you the truth, I really don’t like that. Movies and TV have always been a big, enjoyable part of my daily routine and now their becoming something akin to medicine. But that’s really not the point of this column. The point is, in lieu of review a movie this week, I’m going to give you my list of things that have helped me take my mind off of the world blowing up. I hope that you’ll use these in your own life help you forget, at least for awhile, the madness that surrounds us. Herewith, the list:
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