The Lists

One thing I've done entirely too often in my life has been to bug people about things - movies they should see, music they should listen to, and so on.

Sometimes, I've done this because the movie or book or song in question provided me with a moment's delight. Given how miserable and deadening the world can be, I think it's important to try and cheer up the people around you, even if it's only for a moment. And if you can find the right work for the right person, you can provide them with some light even when you're not around. It's a thing to do.

Other times, it's because the movie or book or song was in some way important to me, either expanding my understanding of the world around me, or giving me a better sense of myself or of others, or hitting me emotionally, moving me to happiness or sadness, or some combination of the two. Sometimes it hits that emotion of elevation that Ebert's written about recently. Sometimes, it's just something that allowed me to breathe, or to keep breathing when I needed to.

But, y'know, as many folk have pointed out to me, I do this too often, and it gets annoying. People don't have time for these kinds of things. They have the business of living to attend to. And maybe if I'd spent less time gathering things for people, I'd have made it further along in my own life. It's also been pointed out to me several times that, although these things have had an impact on me, they don't on other people. Most of my life, in one way or another, I've been told, "That's just you." And that's true - often it is just me.

So I've been trying to do the "you have to see" thing less. Without success, so to help remedy this, I thought I'd take a one-last-time approach and post a short set of lists, things I thought were good or important or moving or things that shine with a little light. And then try to shut up about these things.

I also wanted to record a sense of "who me was" at the end of the aughts. Just a sense. We're not the stuff we like any more than we are the stuff we own - at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of stuff - but it is a trace of us. And it does reflect who and how we've been.

All of which is a long, dumb way of saying: Here's a bunch of stuff I like that may be worth your while.