Dear fans of Lost,

So tonight was the big premiere of the last season of Lost. Hard to believe that in a few short months it’ll all be over. When that time comes, you’ll begin looking for a new show as complex, well acted, and interesting as Lost. I can wholeheartedly recommend a show that some of you haven’t watched, but you’re going to resist taking my advice, so let’s go over a few things up front.

Lost is sci-fi. Some of you maybe just threw up in your throat – you’re that resistant to the genre. You maybe didn’t realize it, at least not at first, because the show cleverly spent most of its first two seasons focused on being a mystery and hiding it’s science fiction heart. Now that we’re on Season 6, if you’re still watching, you’ve been exposed to time travel and alternate timeliness, some of the headiest scifi topics out there. Not to mention Smokey. The show has a monster, for Pete’s sake.

Yet you like Lost. Why? Allow me to make a few guesses.

1. You like the mystery: What is the island? Who are these people (one of the key questions from the first couple seasons)? What’s really going on here? Is this all part of some big plan?

There is another show that has similar elements.

2. You like the characters. Because at its heart and often at its best, Lost is a character study. Despite it’s scifi trappings, Lost features complex characters in complex situations portrayed by solid actors.

Check there, too.

3. You like the complexity. You’ve managed to stick with a show that doesn’t insult your intelligence, that nags at the back of your mind between episodes, that rewards and encourages lots of thought and theorizing.

Once again, another show does that, too.

Here’s the recommendation: Battlestar Galactica. WARNING: you will likely be unimpressed with the opening miniseries. It did very little for me, and Jaime gave up on the show. But after the first few regular episodes, and my convincing Jaime she HAD to give it a couple more hours, we were hooked through the show’s full run.

Because here’s the thing: the show isn’t actually about spaceships and robots any more than Lost is really about a smoke monster and a strange island. It’s window dressing. Similar to Lost, Battlestar Galactica really is about bigger issues and mysteries like identity, what it means to be human, what it means to be alive. Like Lost, there are compelling mysteries that last up until the final episode, and maybe even beyond. Like Lost, there is a group of “others” whose motivations are nebulous. And like Lost, there is some darn good acting and storytelling along the way (and yes, a couple minor stumbles on par with the Jack’s tattoos episode).

Hey, it’s not like I get paid for you to watch Battlestar Galactica. Go ahead and pass on it if you insist. But if you still like Lost after all these years and you’re desperate for something to watch in its place, I really think you might love Galactica. I promise you it’s nothing like Star Trek or other nerdy scifi you might still be reluctant to watch.

And when all is said and done, you just might find you end up sharing my opinion that while Lost is a great show, Battlestar Galactica is even better.

inventory is a book of lists put together by the AV Club folks, who are affiliated with The Onion. The AV Club folks, however, are a more serious bunch. Yes, the book has some pretty goofy lists (songs nearly ruined by saxophone solos, movie magic pixie dream girls, disturbing foods, etc.), but the content of these lists is taken seriously. When you see a list with the things Kurt Vonnegut said better than anyone else, you’re going to get a list (with supporting narrative – few of these lists are simply just lists) that seems pretty danger authoritative.

Subjects are fairly broad, though if you know anything about the AV Club, it shouldn’t be too surprising that most of the lists somehow relate to movies, television, music or books. Inventory has solid writing, but there are lists that likely won’t interest you, and the writing isn’t so stellar that every list must be read.

This kind of books also lends itself to short reading sessions. Most lists are in the 3-page range, and I ended up spending around a month reading the book five minutes here, ten minutes there. Longer sessions seemed less enjoyable.

Within those parameters, I found the book enjoyable, and sometimes even informative. Recommended.

Black Hole is a graphic novel that tells the tale of Seattle teens in the 70s who deal with the fallout of contracting an STD that causes strange mutations. One girl grows a tail, another one molten like a snake, one guy grows a second mouth on his neck, some are horribly disfigured – that sort of thing. It’s a weird kind of coming-of-age story with some horror element. Many of the kids run away from home and live in the woods, until creepy dolls start appearing in trees and something starts killing them off.

Black Hole was originally written over the course of around a decade. Maybe that’s partially to blame for why the story didn’t end up being as gripping as I initially expected. The art style, however, is very consistent throughout and has a unique look where much of the comic is drawn in negative.

I’ve seen Black Hole on a number of “greatest comics ever” lists, but while I appreciate the artistry and the original subject matter, I was just not that emotionally engaged with the book. It’s worth checking out (be warned it is definitely R-rated), but I’m glad I found it at the library and could read it for the low price of paying off my library fines.

BTW, another post via my Droids phone. Maybe I’m getting the hang of this.

Y, the Last Man: Volume 1 was a pretty quick read, as it collects somewhere around a tenth or so of the total Y, the Last Man series. I was drawn in and inspired to keep flipping pages, but to review the story seems a little problematic as I’d be reviewing only a small fraction of the total story. So what can I say this early into Y, the Last Man? The colorful art is a nice change of pace after reading The Walking Dead, but I’ve realized that many of the graphic novels I’m interested in have very stylized art, Y’s being a notable exception. It’s colorful. It gets the job done. There’s nothing wrong with it. At the same time, it hasn’t blown me away. It looks and feels like a comic book, for better or worse. Thinking about the story and characters, I’m not yet sure what to think about main character Yorick. It’s early in the story, but there’s something vaguely irritating about him, and after reading The Walking Dead, Y’s storytelling seems conventional. I’m hooked on Y, and I plan to keep reading the series – Stephen King apparently loves Y, the Last Man, and that’s a recommendation worth considering – but I have some doubts about where the story is going and how it’s going to get there.

Up next, I’m finally close to finishing a book by The Onion’s A.V. Club, and I’ve just started Stephen King’s Under the Dome. 85 pages in, it’s a page turner, but with around 1,000 pages to go, I’m not sure he’s going to be able to sustain that. More blogging soon (I’m trying to do at least one post a week).

The zombie apocalypse isn’t exactly a new story. It’s been done before. A lot. But The Walking Dead was my first experience with a graphic novel zombie apocalypse, and there’s something about this art form that lends itself well to that kind of genre story. I think it has something to do with there being a visual element, as one of the first things that struck me about The Walking Dead was just how cinematic the experience feels, particularly in that first chapter, which features black and white (and lots of gray) art by Tony Moore.

It’s a pity The Walking Dead doesn’t stay as strong as its first chapter. Chapters 2-8 are drawn by a different artist, and most of the subtle gray tones are lost. There are still moments with strong visuals, but the biggest visual problem is that some characters look a little too similar to each other. There are a couple male characters who I couldn’t tell apart, and the women are even worse. There are too many visually interchangeable blonds. If The Walking Dead were a movie, the casting director would likely have difficulty getting work on future films.

The narrative remains strong, for the most part. There’s a constant sense of foreboding throughout The Walking Dead. You soon come to realize that any sense of calm, any moment when things begin to work out for the characters, only serves as opportunity to ramp things back up. This usually works quite well, and leads to a number of shocking moments. This is the first time a graphic novel has made me audibly gasp.

Most good zombie stories are more about the people who aren’t zombies than they are about the zombies themselves, because if you think about it, zombies aren’t great villains. Zombies in The Walking Dead don’t talk, don’t emote, and don’t plot. They just stand there, waiting for you to make a stupid mistake that allows them to get close enough to take a bite out of you. They’re mostly set dressing that allow us to see how our characters behave under pressure in no-win situations. This is the narrative focus of The Walking Dead, and it spends much of the eight chapters collected in the compendium firing on all cylinders.

The last couple chapters, however, show some signs of the wheels coming off. My first problem was with a 20-page graphic torture scene. It made sense within the narrative, and the character motivations were clear, and maybe I wouldn’t be complaining about it quite so much if it had been 10 pages instead of 20, but it felt to me like a clumsy attempt to shock that instead only resulted in pulling me out of the story. Even worse is a human villain that appears in the end of the compendium. Perhaps it’s a weird complaint considering The Walking Dead is a graphic novel, but when the book is at its best, you are fully engaged with its characters and the world they inhabit, so I think it’s significant criticism that the aforementioned villain comes across as cartoonish.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that Chapter 8 doesn’t give much in the way of resolution. A couple more books have been released beyond Chapter 8, and the author has said that he has no plans to end the series any time soon. It’s also notable that a television series based on The Walking Dead is in development for AMC, though I can’t imagine how they’re going to be true to the graphic novel on basic cable.

Overall, I really liked The Walking Dead, but having read the first eight chapters in about a week, I find myself not that eager to return to the series. That might just be me, as The Walking Dead is nothing if not bleak, and I found myself ready for a break by the end, despite an ending that would have definitely motivated me to keep turning pages if there had been more pages to turn to.

I recommend The Walking Dead to anyone who is remotely a fan of the zombie genre, and the majority of the compendium does much to fuel the argument that seeks to legitimize the horror genre as a means to comment on the human condition. Read the first couple books, and if you don’t get sucked in, feel free to bail, but my guess is that most people won’t be able to put it down very easily.

This post represents my first attempt to blog via my phone. It’s also the first time I’ve blogged in months. So why now? I decided that this year I’d like to be a little more deliberate about keeping track of the media I consume, particularly books. I’m hoping to read at least 52 books this year, and I feel like I should keep track of them.

This year I’m also planning to focus on reading graphic novels. I maybe just lost some of you there, but I’m talking The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man, I Kill Giants – those are the first three on my radar. Along the way there will be novels and movies, too, but that gives some idea of my focus for the year and for this blog.

And here’s a final disclaimer: my experience with comics is minimal. I didn’t read them as a kid. I’ve read some Batman as an adult, as well as Watchmen, but that’s about it. Like many other comic outsiders, I’m not too interested in trying to comprehend multiverse storylines, so I intend to shy away from superhero stuff that isn’t standalone.

Also, for those curious, blogging from a cell phone, even one as sophisticated as the Droid, isn’t ideal. My thoughts on The Walking Dead are going to have to wait until I’m at a real keyboard.

Today I decided to watch two movies just to see how bad they really were. What follows are the results of my experiment.

High School Musical 3
I went into High School Musical 3 worried that I might be missing out on something having not seen High School Musical and High School Musical 2. Would skipping these earlier films mean I would miss out on the finer subtleties of this latest High School Musical film? Despite this concern, I queued up the movie on Netflix and went where 12-year-old girls happily go, but where angels fear to tread.

HSM3 (as its fans refer to it) starts with a basketball team getting their asses kicked in the state championship. I immediately felt myself caring about the plight of these young lads. This high school basketball game really could be the highlight of their entire lives. They’re right on the brink of realizing they’re never going to go pro and instead they have an empty, shallow life ahead of themselves. I have hopes that HSM3 may address these very issues, but first there must be singing.

Like every other high school basketball game I’ve attended, the basketball players sing as they play the final moments of the game. They go on about “working it out” and “turning it on” and “showing what they’re all about.” It’s a peppy little number until Troy, the male lead, gets fouled and confesses that he’s scared of taking free throws. His girlfriend sings to him from the crowd about growing a pair, and then they end up winning the game. Whew. This almost wasn’t a Disney movie.

At the celebration party, Troy takes his girlfriend to his treehouse. That’s not a euphemism. At the treehouse, there’s a duet about “wishing on a star” and being “right here” and “tomorrow can wait” and “right now there’s you and me.” This seems like it might be a preamble to awkward teen sex, but instead it’s a prelude to awkward teen hugging and swooning and Troy not getting any because his mom shows up and spoils the mood.

The next day at school, Reese Witherspoon shows up all Elle-Woods-style dressed in pink, but it’s not Reese. It’s someone with significantly less acting ability. Some new British student wants to be her personal assistant, and most importantly, I don’t care about any of this. Apparently Pinky, as I had briefly begun to call her, is named Sharpay. According to the song she sings at lunch “she wants it all,” as does her flamboyant brother, Ryan. And by “all,” they mean fame and riches and going on Oprah, because what 18-year-old doesn’t aspire to be on Oprah? Anyway, the cafeteria suddenly has a giant replica of the Statue of Liberty head in it, because there is nothing so American as unwarranted self-confidence, and apparently this public school has a ridiculous budget for lunchroom entertainment. The school I attended didn’t even have hot lunches, so these kids obviously come from a different world than I’m familiar with, what with the full-scale Hollywood musicals happening in the cafeteria.

Meanwhile, Troy gets his girlfriend Gabriella up on the school roof to sing another song, this one about waltzing and “catching lightning” (which is not really that fun, Troy) and “feeling the way they do” and you can almost see the moment when Troy realizes that despite the hormones and sentiments they’re expressing, he’ll be lucky to get a handshake at the end of the song. There’s more singing and dancing, and almost-but-not-quite groping and kissing.

Troy vents his frustration by harassing some non-senior guys with his buddy Chad. We’ve seen Chad before, but this is the first time anybody’s said his name. The movie assumes if you’re along for the third ride, you’ve been on the first two. We’re then treated to a scene where Gabriella tries to get Troy to admit he’d rather be singing than playing basketball. I dunno, Gabriella. He sort of sucks at both. “Don’t discount a career in janitorial services, Troy.” That’s what I’d be telling him.

Chad asks some chick named Taylor to the prom, and apparently this is all freakin’ hilarious and dramatic and not just another lame moment in the life of a high school student. And now the kids are singing about prom – “the night of all nights” – and how excited the girls are and how reluctant the boys are (huh?), and how it’s going to be “a night to remember,” and I’m still having my doubts because this is a G-rated movie.

We’ve now had a song not about Troy and Gabriella’s chaste love, so it’s time for another number as the kids rehearse for the spring musical. Troy and Gabriella “just want to be with you” and by “you” they mean “each other”, and there’s still an hour left of this movie?

Up next, thrill to the scene of Troy and Chad visiting the junkyard to get a part for Troy’s crappy truck. Troy sifts through a pile of junk, and gripes about how his future should be his own future, and not the future of the professional wrestler guy who runs the junkyard and wants Troy to play basketball, not that you can blame the junkyard guy for wanting a different future. Then Troy and Chad sing about how “the boys are back” and dance around in the junkyard in a completely heterosexual way. Apparently this goes on for quite some time, because suddenly it’s the middle of the night and they’re brandishing fake swords at a junkyard car. What did the old car ever do to you, Troy? “No one can stop us now!” they declare to the car, and the car just shrugs like it’s seen this all before. Suddenly Troy and Chad are accompanied by a bunch of Mad Max reject grease monkeys. They all dance together in the junkyard and it is not at all fey. And then the song ends and the backup dancers disappear and Troy and Chad walk off like that whole weird musical thing didn’t just happen. But we know what really happened out there. Did Troy even pick up a part for his old truck? Who knows. I imagine that outside the junkyard, the crusty owner quietly weeps for not being invited to participate in their little dance number.

The next day, Troy finds out Gabriella’s been accepted to some prestigious program at Stanford, which is in a different state, and that means they have to break up and say goodbye and move on from each other, so Gabriella goes to kiss him on the cheek, but then Troy moves his head and she accidentally pecks him on the mouth. That Troy! Troy leaves, and dear God, how can there still be 50 minutes left, but at least we got out of that scene without another song. But no we didn’t. Gabriella starts singing about not wanting to say goodbye but how she needs to “just walk away” and she walks through her house and all the stuff in it starts disappearing, which is supposed to look cool, but just has me thinking that her parents won’t be too happy about her taking the house apart. But whatever. Gabriella is gone and Troy is back up on the school roof again, probably kissing his hand since his “girlfriend” wouldn’t even kiss him goodbye.

With Gabriella gone, Sharpay gets Gabriella’s lead in the musical, and judging by the background music, we are supposed to care about this tragedy. Troy feels sad, so he goes to shoot some hoops with a guy we’ve seen earlier. Either the guy is Troy’s dad, or else the basketball coach is sleeping in Troy’s driveway. Wait, it’s both. Oh, and his dad wants him to play basketball, not sing. But Troy wants to sing! Troy runs off and breaks into the school – or do they just give keys to the basketball team now? He sneaks into the locker room, puts on his jersey, and starts singing to himself. This would only be more pathetic if he were drunk. Then it starts raining basketballs and he starts kicking them and raging about how he ought to be able to do whatever he wants with his life, and the room starts spinning and he slips around on the walls and there are either a lot of strobe lights firing off screen or the school is in a tornado, and Troy is being very emotive and he looks up at big banners of basketball players and he rips them down, and I feel sorry for the janitor who is going to have to clean up after Troy, but maybe the janitor will remember to lock up the school tomorrow night. I think that may be the real story this movie is trying to tell. Perhaps I am missing the point. Anyway, Troy wants his own dreams, and now he’s all sweaty and his hair is mussed and the drama coach happens to be stalking him or something and they have a heart to heart about how she applied to Julliard for Troy, and she takes off her glasses, and I am relieved to see her walk away because Troy looks a little bit like he’d hump anything at this point.

So Gabriella is at Stanford and the musical at school is falling apart because Garbriella isn’t there because she’s off selfishly being smart and taking advantage of an amazing opportunity. Stupid Gabriella for having a future outside of this stupid town! She’s smart and pretty and for that we all hate her. Gabriella makes another adult decision ahead of her years: prom is stupid. She’s right, but when she tells this to Troy, he gets upset because he thought she might accidentally touch him while they danced or something, and Troy’s ready to lie and call that First Base. For some inexplicable reason, Gabrielle calls Troy “Wildcat” and it is awkward. The name of the sports team at the school is the Wildcats, and so while Gabrielle is smart, she’s not that clever with the nicknames.

Troy is now dateless for the prom. Chad (remember Chad?) tries to cheer him up, with little success. Troy goes all stalker crazy and shows up at Stanford wearing a tux and standing in a tree. Gabriella sees him and again calls him “Wildcat,” perhaps because he is in a tree wearing a tux, just like untamed felines tend to do. I wish there were some way to remind me of how these two feel about each other. Oh wait, here’s another song about dancing and how their hearts are wherever the other person is, and now they’re at the prom, except they’re not. I think they’re just imagining, or hallucinating. They may be hallucinating. They keep singing to each other “can I have this dance” over and over, even though they’re already dancing together and nobody else is there and I feel like just being around Troy must be a drain on Gabriella’s IQ.

At the end of the song, they finally kiss. Repeatedly. On the mouth. And what does Troy do? Mr. Smooth takes the opportunity to make Gabriella feel bad about leaving Wildcat town to start her bright future. “Some of us are losers, and we don’t appreciate it when people do better than us,” Troy says, more or less. Troy tries to guilt her into being a loser like he is. What a great guy!

So it’s the big night of the musical, and in addition to Gabriella ruining the musical by running off to Stanford, Troy’s little jaunt to Stanford is also ruining it too. He’s on his way back, but he’s going to be late. I only pray that Troy makes it back before the end of the musical. Wouldn’t that be amazing if it worked out that way?

So the show must go on, with stand-ins for the leads. They start singing about how, unlike this movie, “high school can’t last forever.” And then the cheerleaders are back singing the song from the very beginning of the movie, and my head starts to spin because this might mean the movie now has an excuse to repeat everything we’ve already seen, because it’s a musical within a musical within a musical, and that is not clever. It is vile, but the parents don’t agree with me because they jump to their feet and are way too excited about wasting a Thursday night in a high school auditorium.

Up next, we’re getting the “Want it All” song again, which confirms my fear that the end of this movie is going to be the Cliff Notes version of the beginning of this movie. Anyway, Sharpay has to sing with the Troy stand-in, who is young and dorky and SO not Troy, and the stand-in misses his cue and that shows up on stage dressed like a pimp and it is awkward, BUT THEN OHMYGOD! Troy AND Gabriella show up to save the musical and they redo the song that was just done by the stand-ins, because it’s their song, and because we need to hear this song three times because it’s probably the only song Disney has any shot at turning into a single. But here’s the thing: It’s not that great of a song. And now the crowd is getting into it and there is hugging and everyone wants to be with everyone and the Julliard talent scout people are even getting into it and everyone is having the best night of their lives despite the fact they’re spending it at a high school musical, and that’s a happy little piece of fiction, isn’t it?

And then Sharpay and her assistant have a big on-stage fight that is, like, both super dramatic and very funny, yet also super awesome and like, oh my god. Then the seniors come out and get their names announced even though this isn’t a graduation ceremony and it is, like, emotional! And Troy announces he’s going to play basketball AND he’s going to be in theatre, and he’s going to go to school 37 miles away from Gabriella, who doesn’t even get her own shout out because now she will never have her own identity apart from Troy and she smiles likes she happy about it even though on the inside her soul is withering. At least that’s what I read into it.

But stop the musical! Chad (remember Chad?) has gone missing. He’s hiding in the gym because he’s mad that Troy chose his girlfriend over him. Chad has to deal and go graduate, and speaking of resolving issues, Troy and his dad hug it out and then we get what I hope is the final song, because now they’re actually at graduation. For some reason, Troy is the class speaker, and I wouldn’t have signed off on that. Troy strings three sentences together, sort of, then gets his diploma, and everyone runs and screams and hugs and cheers, yet still, nobody wants to touch Troy. Now Chad isn’t even interested.

There is yet another song about “high school musical” and “stepping into the future” and “celebrating where we come from” because this movie does not know when to roll over and die. But perhaps the very best part of this entire move is the final line of the final song, where everyone sings about how they want the rest of their lives to be just like a high school musical. So high aspirations for everyone!

10,000 B.C.
10,000 B.C. is the kind of movie that has a 2-hour runtime that you can watch in just an hour solely by fastforward through all the sweeping vista shots. Yes, people are walking. On mountains. And now they are in Egypt. Or something. But first they must walk through a jungle inhabited by giant, poorly-rendered CGI ostriches, because the director really wanted velociraptors in his movie, but thought fierce predatory ostriches would be more believable.

And that’s really all you need to know about 10,000 B.C. You WILL be bored. You WILL be annoyed. You WILL ponder the vaguely British accents. There’s a bit of high drama in the end when the female lead dies. But then she isn’t dead and we get a full-on happy ending. Oh, and the male lead? He’s friends with a sabertoothed tiger, but that isn’t that remarkable, because the tiger is even more CGI-looking than the 14-foot ostriches.

10,000 B.C. is not, however, what I would call a movie that makes me wish I were back to watching High School Musical 3. In fact, I would say that 10,000 B.C. is the better of the two movies, solely because it’s possible to fast-forward through so much of 10,000 B.C. without missing anything. After watching these two cinematic disasters, I’m left wishing these movies had somehow been combined. They were not, but I really think that in College Musical 1, Troy’s head should be ripped off by a giant feral ostrich. I might pay to see that.

Spring Semester 2009 is over. As I wait for grades to come in later this week, I’ve begun plotting out my summer. I’m taking a week or two to focus on landscaping our yard. Outdoor physical labor seems like a nice way to detox from being stuck inside at a computer, which is where most of my life has been lived the past 3 1/2 month, but it’s also a reminder of just how out of shape I am. The landscaping project should lead to a less-embarrassing, more enjoyable yard with the bonus of having a smaller area to mow. But that outdoor project doesn’t mean I’m giving up reading and writing for the next three months.

I’m currently re-reading Mike Nelson’s Death Rat and am mid-way through Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a fun little futuristic novella. I have a few Kurt Vonnegut books checked out, as well. I’m not planning for much heavy reading this summer, but I feel like Slaughterhouse Five is something I should be able to say I’ve read. I’m hoping to read Earth Abides by George Stewart and maybe check out the Planetary comic series by Warren Ellis, but neither are in the local library system. I may have to resort to (gasp!) buying them.

As for writing, I currently have a couple people looking over my first novel, and am still giving serious consideration to self-publishing. I’m hoping to get some final feedback this summer, make some final revisions, and then figure out the best way to self-publish. This isn’t my attempt to make it rich. I’ll probably have a paper copy available for sale through Lulu or something, but I might just publish the whole thing as a blog. We’ll see. Once school starts up again in the fall, this project will probably be on hold until I finish school next May.

I’d also like to do some new writing this summer. I fear the possible results of all the scholarly BS writing I’ve done the past year. I’m hoping it hasn’t yet ruined my ability to write fiction. My second novel has sat on the back burner for a long time now. I have a full, completed draft. I think parts of the book are some of the best writing I’ve ever done, but there are also parts that don’t work yet. I’m thinking I should set aside some time this summer to revisit this novel and see what I can do with it.

It’s also tempting to set aside all the previous work and see what I might be able to come up with between Memorial Day and Labor Day. If I averaged 1,000 words a day, I could easily crank out a novel in two or three months (I tend to write short). I’m just not quite sure if I have a full-length story in me right now, or the energy to commit to that kind of intellectual endeavor.

More than anything else, this summer needs to be a time to recharge before another academic year begins. To that end, what I’m most looking forward to this summer is spending a lot of time with Jaime. There were a few weeks this semester where I was so buried in homework that I barely saw her. I’m glad to have a few months where I don’t have to worry about that happening.

School has been seriously cutting into my blogging over the past year, and Spring semester has been even busier than fall. I have little time right now to write non-school-related thoughts longer than the 140 character limit that Twitter accepts. I’m hoping to have time and motivation to do more blogging between May and September when I only have one summer class and thus more free time. I’m also hoping to use that time to update my portfolio blog, work on fiction writing, and do a lot of yard work. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, Jaime and I toured the Advertising and Design Museum in Milwaukee. The highlight was the Fossil display, which showed all of the company’s marketing and the designs of their famous watch tins. It got me thinking that I should get a watch (effective advertising, huh?), and so I looked around while we were out shopping yesterday, but I decided to hold out and see what I could find on the internet. I’m glad I did. I went on Fossil’s website (which is currently down for maintenance) and found watches I hadn’t seen in stores. Then I went on Amazon and found them at discounted prices.

I have it narrowed down to fewer than 10 choices, but I’m having trouble deciding. I feel like it’s something I have to decide myself, but thought I’d blog these because I got tired of flipping between tabs to look at all of them. Also, I think they’re all cool, so if you’re in the market for a men’s watch, here are a few you could consider. I’m looking for something that’s fun and reflects my design aesthetic. I could probably spend thousands of dollars on that, which is another reason I’ve decided on the Fossil brand. Amazon has most of these marked down to one degree or another. They range in price from $55-$175, which makes them all within my price range. Without further ado, here are the ones I’m considering:

1. S+arck gray on black. S+arck is the name of a designer who is so cool, he spells his name with a plus sign instead of a T like mere humans would do. The watch displays the number for the hour that it is, and fills in the ring to illustrate the minutes. So on the picture, it’s 3:15. I look at this and the next watch on my list and I think that if I had them on my wrist, I would look at the watch and feel like I was living in the future. It becomes a question of not what time is it, but what time will it be….in the future!

2. S+arck green on black. Because maybe a glowing green circle on your arm is even MORE futuristic.

3. The next few appeal to me because the faces remind me of automotive gauges. Up first is this one. It’s a more traditional watch face, but I love the silver-on-black simplicity and readability. I’m not sure, however, that I love the strap. The face whispers “Mercedes” but the strap screams “Kia”.

4. What if I want to keep track of what time it is here in Wisconsin and what time it is where I’d rather be, like, say, Hawaii? Enter the dual dial watch. Again, I like how these look like automotive gauges – aided by the fact that the large face has numbers in 5 minute increments from 05 to 55, instead of 1-12. This and the following watch are the same, except for color variations.

5. Here’s the other color variation.

6. This watch is an automatic, which means it uses the movement of your wrist to charge itself – no battery. The face looks like a huge throwback, but I love the full/empty gauge for the charge, and the teardrop gauge with the giant “60″.

7. I like the beige and browns color scheme, and I like how the bottom dual-tone gauge looks like it might be from an airplane. Compared to the other watches, though, it feels a little boring and cluttered.

8. Brown, orange, and stainless steel give this one an interesting modern/vintage look.

9. Finally, here’s a very strong contender. It’s simple AND unique. Analog AND digital. It has a very strong design element, but it’s one of the most inexpensive items on my list (and it still comes with an 11-year warranty).