Wow. Have I Been Slacking or What?

"Jim! What the hell? You haven't posted a blog in forever!"

Yes. I hear you. MY BAD. But I've been caught up in this whole thing called Life. I mean living in an apartment with 3 or 4 (depends what day it is,) of your best friends doesn't exactly leave you with a lot of free time to write about nonsensical things... I mean. I turned 21! I'm about to be a senior in college! I don't know how to manage my time! But I guess now that school is done, maybe I'll have more time to write. OH WAIT.

I'm working 40 hours a week at the Garden Center, interning at RunKeeper in Boston, and trying to maintain what little social life I claim to have!

Basically what I'm saying here is; Nerdventures, I love you, but right now, you're on the back burner. Frowny face, I know. But life is coming at me pretty fast right now. I'm getting home from work, and it takes pretty much all of what little energy I have left to not go to bed. On the bright side, I've slept better in the last 2 weeks than I did the last 6 months at school! Aside from that, the only things I've got going for me right now are the Bruins and my sweet, sweet playoff beard. I've been reading a lot of books. Been watching 30 Rock too. As I type even! Radio's been going pretty swell. Kevin and I added our good friend and my former trainee, Noel to our hosting staff, and I got the DJ Training Director gig. All in all, life is pretty good. Busy, fast, dirty, but good. (What I work at the Garden Center, I just scraped dirt out from under my nails!)

So here's to you Nerdventures. Two years old. This was a very unproductive year in terms of blogging, but for writing on the whole, my 58 page screenplay nods it's approval. I'll try and write more, honest.

Much love.

James

I Watched Way Too Much TV As A Kid

Or, How I spent my Saturdays for the Majority of my Life.

So I'm hanging out in Amherst, at our brand spankin' new apartment, fighting the router, and lounging around au naturel, when (via Digg.com) I stumbled upon this neat article, listing the 50 Greatest Saturday Morning Cartoons. So of course, I go into this experience knowing that chances are good that I've seen at least a few of these shows.

Turns out a few of these shows meant 36 out of the 50.

And those were just the ones I had seen a few episodes of. I hadn't heard of 5 of them. 45 outta 50 is an A- last time I checked. So naturally I got to thinking, "Wow, I can't imagine how many hours I put into these shows," which of course just got me trying to imagine how many hours I put into these shows. Television was a huge part of my childhood, and probably for a lot of people in their 20's and 30's, but it's weird to think that it wasn't always this way. Our parents somehow managed to go through school every day, walk through their front doors and not crash on the couch in front of the TV. I don't even know what they did when they woke up early on Saturdays.

My routine would be going to school, coming home, "doing homework," (let's be honest here, prime homework hours were before school started the next morning, and in class), and then Toonami would come on Cartoon Network, and I would tell my Mom I was done, even if I wasn't so I could catch my daily cartoon fix. I can remember more than one occasion where I woke up at 6, or 7 on Saturday morning, and sat 5 inches from the TV watching Steve Irwin or some other Australian animal guy talking about animals until the 'toons came on at 8, where I would then plan out my time between Cartoon Network, Fox and The WB. I also remember more than one occasion where my Dad came out to yell at me because the TV was too loud, even though I was sitting 5 inches away.

I've grown up, and I couldn't get up at 6 or 7 on a Saturday morning if I wanted to now, but all that time with these cartoons really did shape my childhood. Cartoons were what got my imagination going. Watching everything from Pokemon to Thundercats to Ninja Turtles, I was always thinking about "What if?" What if I was a ten year old, who left home, alone, to go travel the world, fighting little monsters against each other in an attempt to trap and fight every species? What if I was an anthromorphic lion, with an extendable sword, that got longer everytime I yelled out my team name, who was a king with a mummy for an arch-enemy? What if I was a normal baby turtle who got splashed with chemicals, so that I became human-esque and was taught by a ninja-master-turned-ambilatory-rodent to patrol the cruel streets of New York and protect the citizens from an evil ninja warlord?

The "What if?"'s really became a big part of my life, and while now I'm more into thinking what if this became a career, or I got a job doing that, in the end cartoons really opened the door into a world of unending possibilities that in generations past had only been opened for the fortunate few by books and then radio. I was watching Cartoons way before I got into video games and comic books. So even though a lot of the big hoopla is about getting kids out to play, and getting them off the couch, all I'm saying is I spent a lot of time heavily immersed between the intergalactic peril on TV and the middle cushions of my couch. Letting kids watch Cartoons is a good thing, in moderation. Don't underestimate the potential of letting your kid get lost in some show about a pretty boy, a rich girl, a nerd girl, a stoner and a dog, because when they eventually do get outside, their only going to want to stay there if they can pretend that they're not just in their own backyard, or at the playground, but on the surface of an alien planet, fighting bad guys for possession of 7 magical stones.

So next time you're trying to shuffle your kid out the door, tell them to think happy thoughts... about cartoons.