(Image courtesy of Atlanta Jewish Times and PHOTOFEST)
In March 2006, I created a blog called, What’s the Difference. I created it because I loved going to the movies and because I’d read Nobody’s Perfect by Anthony Lane and soon thereafter decided I wanted to be him. They weren’t handing out New Yorker staff writer positions at the corner store though, so I figured the best way to head in that direction was to start writing.
The blog lasted two years and its placement in the annals of blogdom can be inferred from the fact that 1) only five people in the history of humankind ever read it (three friends, a stranger who liked one post but never commented, and a woman who was researching me before our first date to make sure I wasn’t a serial killer.); and 2) you’ve never - until now - heard of it.
I enjoyed the experience though. Once or twice a week (and then once a month, and then once every six months…) I would grab a friend and head to the movies where we’d buy buckets of popcorn, packets of Twizzlers and huge cups of soda. When the movie ended, we’d head to a bar and talk about it or just discuss it on the subway ride home. Once there, I’d open my laptop and write as though a cigar-chomping newspaper editor resembling J.K Simmons was breathing down my neck because my copy was the only thing keeping the paper from going to the goddam presses.
The blog ended just as I embarked on an ambitious project: to watch and write about one Holiday movie a day from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I’d start with The Family Stone and end with It’s a Wonderful Life. (This was the intro to that project.)
I don’t remember why I stopped. Busy-ness probably got in the way. I had three jobs. Then I went to grad school to become a librarian. I also met the aforementioned woman who researched me before our first date and became her husband. Then we had a son and I became a father. I also became a storyteller and storytelling teacher. And after all that, I forgot about it.
Last week though, I walked into our living room to discover my wife and son watching Cars on Disney +. I love Pixar but when I expressed disappointment in that movie, I surprised myself by reaching back into my memory to recite a specific and prepared set of reasons and the source of those reasons was the blog. (Here!) I sent the post to my wife, who told me she liked it. Her compliment made me wistful.
I miss the blog. I miss grabbing friends and seeing movies and pretending I have a deadline and posting the fruits of the imagined deadline for no one to see. I miss the writing: writing soothes a metaphysical itch. And when the itch goes unscratched, the world makes less sense to me. And given life’s constant demands, every crumb helps.
Speaking of demands: I won’t be grabbing friends and going to the movies nearly as often. Age and family and work render that impossible. I will go to as many movies as I can but I’ll likely watch most movies at home with Emily or Connor or by myself on days off or in the wee hours of sleepless nights. So expect Netflix viewings to fill out the posts. Connor and Emily will make appearances too. And Baseball. There will definitely be some posts about baseball. I know most people consider it boring, but they’re wrong. They are really and truly wrong.
A brief note about this blog’s title, What’s the Difference. The phrase comes 26 seconds into this scene from My Favorite Year, a movie I saw at my friend Seth’s 12th birthday party. The line is spoken by Peter O’Toole, playing a drunk movie star named Alan Swann, who is trying to help protégé, Benji Stone, scale from the roof of a building onto the balcony below so Stone can get with the woman he loves.
I will likely change the name of the blog at some point but since I haven’t come up with a better title, I’m using it because I too, sometimes, have a difficult time telling the difference between movies and real life.