Ravenweb Blog

If I'm going to speculate about who I want to play me in a movie , I might as well continue the fiction and provide the soundtrack. Here, then, in no particular order, is My Soundtrack: all the songs listed below were very important to me at some point in my life. I narrowed the list as much as I could, and had to drop many good candidates. Losing My Religion - R.E.M. 1979 - Smashing Pumpkins Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen Home for a Rest - Spirit of the West What's My Age Again? - Blink 18 Message in a Bottle - The Police Closer to Fine - Indigo Girls Bad - U2 The Old Apartment - Barenaked Ladies Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel Black - Pearl Jam Let's Get It On - Marvin Gaye Welcome to the Jungle - Guns N Roses Lauryn Hill - Can't Take My Eyes Of You Hey, You - Pink Floyd London Calling - The Clash No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day What's the Matter Here? - 10,000 Maniacs Suedehead - M...

This is one of those entirely self-indulgent and nonsensical posts, but I was wondering who I would want to play me in a movie. Instead of focusing on actors who look like me or maybe have similar mannerisms, I picked actors who I enjoy, are close to me in age, and who I think in various ways represent my personality. The candidates to play me are: Zach Braff Why? He can likely portray my nerdiness while still being funny. Plus, his star is on the rise, so he would be a big box office draw. John Cusack Why? With The Sure Thing , Better Off Dead , and the classic Say Anything , John Cusack has already played me, or played a version of myself, just as he's no doubt played versions of countless other men who grew up in the 80s. And this was before he did High Fidelity , and anyone who was the lead in that movie would definitely nail the part of me. Joaquin Phoenix Why? The sleeper pick of the bunch, Phoenix brings intangibles and an intensity to his craft that few other actors can mat...

Heart-Shaped Box is a horror novel about an aging rock star who buys a ghost on the Internet. I don't read that much horror or dark fantasy, but, I have to say, I was struck by how fresh and inventive Heart-Shaped Box felt. The book was fast-paced and combined a creepy realism with just the right amount of traditional absurd horror tropes. Gothic elements and strong themes of redemption and the road further helped lift the book from set genre trappings. Highly recommended.

I've posted very little to this blog in the past six months. This has not been due to a lack of ideas, but a failure on my part of follow through. That said, while I haven't and likely won't post anything about any of these topics, I want to at least post about what I would have written about , had I more time, ambition, talent, and will. So, in the spirit of almost posts and ungestated threads, here is my "Unposted" list for 2007: Darwin Martin House - I had planned to write something about a visit my wife and I made earlier in the year to the (Frank Lloyd Wright) Darwin Martin House, currently under restoration in Buffalo, NY. Since I didn't, you can learn more about this major renovation effort here . Paring Down - I have too many books and was going to post about the frightening prospect and process of paring down. Though I wasn't successful in writing about this, I have made progress in paring down my books, mostly through donations and ebay sales. ...