A Declaration of IMDbendence

Try as I might, I couldn't fight it. 

I struggled mightily against the awesome pull of IMDb and its 46 quadrillion movie entries. (That's where I lost count in doing research last night. I went "46 quadrillion and...," then Conan made his hissing-at-the-cameraman noise and I lost count. Oh, well... there's always tomorrow night...) Was it even possible that I, severely movie-addicted since I was a mere child, could even begin to resist the megaforce that is IMDb? (Though the reverse maxim of "Words, not deeds" proves to be more true in their case.) I have been movie-database mad for much of my life, with a library full of Who's Who books and Encyclopedias of Film, Actors, Science-Fiction, Westerns, etc., etc., etc., what have you. And while it may not be the end-all be-all of movie websites, it has proven, after extensive testing by the Cinema 4 laboratories, to be the closest that I can find right now.

How slowly, how surely I was sucked into its vortex. Little did I know, as I perhaps looked up a couple of movies that I had just seen to see just who played that hot waitress in that throwaway scene 40 minutes into the picture, what lay lurking online, hungrily awaiting me behind its brightly glowing interface. How could I have possibly foreseen the trap laying in wait for me as I went back to the site again and again, reveling in my newfound treasure trove of information, when after a few dozen more lookups, I took it upon myself to become a registered user. This was merely to take part in the polls, but then it proved providential when I decided to write a handful of reviews for some sorely neglected titles. And then began the voting of a couple thousand of movies off and on for about a month, until the day that I asked, "What's this? They have a built-in filing system for personal video collections?" It was the beginning of the end...

It's a year later, and after entering over 5,000 titles, meticulously categorizing them into sections that will only make sense to the deranged, and injecting laboriously detailed notes into each one, I am now a full-on IMDB junkie. I know that it is not perfect, and there are many features that I would alter or excise, and others that I would add, but that is a discussion for another time. For the moment, it is most important that I have admitted that I have a problem. Still, beats heroin as a monkey on your back...

Such is the same with this blog. It seems that I am yet again trapped in another whirlpool built of endless keyboard clattering and very little sleep (though they are two items that I am completely used to already). As for blogs: I knew about them, resisted them, read a few, resisted them, read a couple of them that intrigued me, begrudgingly resisted them, read many that made me shake my head in disbelief that anyone could be that idiotic from day to day, happily resisted them, then a number of friends began some...

Blogger begin to speak to me like the shady letter "O" salesman off of Sesame Street: "Psssst... Hey, Bud! C'mere! Why not get a membership, and then you can comment on your friend's blogs, and, OH! By the way...in case you might be interested... you can start, you know, your own... blog... if you want to... it won't even cost you a nickel..."

"A nickel?!!"

"Rigggghhhhttttt...!"

So I bought the "O" and took it home that night...

And here I am.