Someone once said that being a writer is like having homework to do for the rest of your life. Being a blogger is the same but you add the knowledge (more like the hope) that someone, somewhere is logging into your site and being dissapointed you haven’t posted anything.

It’s not this really constitutes anything like a lot of pressure, and I love doing this, but I’m starting to feel the need to take a break over the holidays. For one thing, it’d be nice to actually have time to clear my head and read a book (like with actual pages and stuff). I also want to learn how to post pictures and YouTube stuff and maybe do some other cool stuff without causing all the Internet tubes to explode.

Having a day job, doing this and preventing myself from becoming a Jay Sherman-like glob doesn’t really seem to allow much time for anything else.

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One other reason I haven’t written all that much over the last few days is I’ve been reading Andy Horbal’s genuinely impressive film-criticism blogathon.

I’ve still only scratched the surface, but I particularly reccomend young Horbal’s own contributions (here and here), as well as a very funny and thoughtful (and possibly typo-free!) piece over at Burbanked, which posits a conversation I spent many years trying to avoid.

Truthfully I’ve learned, or at least re-learned, something from every post I’ve looked at so far, and that’s freakish.

I should also admit that my own contribution (just below this post) was partly inspired by Peet at Lost in Negative Space.

Peet’s post nails down a lot of my problems with a certain species of critic and also manages an extended superhero metaphor. If you want to know who in the film geek blogosphere is Magneto and who is Professor Xavier click here now.

And if you want to feel inadequate, read Peet’s bio and then consider what’s he’s managed to accomplish while living in Amsterdam. If I lived in Amsterdam, I’d be broke and accomplish little besides eating delicious pastries and giggling way too much while watching Warner Brothers cartoons. Self discipline; must be nice.

That’s all for tonight and couple of nights before you’ll hear from me again. You see, I’m going to Disneyland tomorrow night. It’s kind of like Amsterdam, but decadent.

Stay tuned….