Who am I anyway? And what’s with the eagles on pogo sticks?
Well, who I am (at least superficially speaking) will be expressed most clearly by my interests. I love films and I love books. In fact, I even spent several years of my life studying literature (English and American) at university, and I taught literature at an English Department in Switzerland. While I enjoy a good novel or short story, in my teaching I always leaned towards drama and poetry. Prose is something I find more scary as an area of studies, mainly because some novels are just so friggin’ long! (That didn’t keep me from writing a PhD thesis on an author whose books have been described as “loose, baggy monsters”… If you want to know who, check this out.)
I’ve got a fair collection of comics, mainly by Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore. I only really got into comics in 2000; I was spending summer in Glasgow, and when I was bored and short of money I’d go to Waterstone’s and read books on one of their comfy sofas. One of the books I decided I’d check out was The Sandman vol. I: Preludes and Nocturnes. I never looked back. Unfortunately I’ve come to think that Neil Gaiman’s already done his best work, because I haven’t really liked anything he’s done in the last five years or so. Some of it was okay, but not up to his earlier stuff – especially Mr Punch or Signal to Noise or indeed his masterpiece, Sandman. Ah well… Still, thanks to Gaiman I’ve discovered that there’s some great, fascinating work in the comicbook medium.
Now, when it comes to movies… I’ve got roughly 450 DVDs (and quite a few of those are actually series episode sets, i.e. several DVDs). I have posters of Kill Bill, 12 Monkeys and La Fille Sur Le Pont hanging in my flat. I used to play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with a friend of mine all the time, for fun.
To complete my nerd credentials, I’ve been playing computer games since, oh, ’82 or ’83? That’s when my parents got a C-64. In the meantime I’ve been playing on Amiga, PC, and lately also on a second-hand Playstation 2. Can’t say I’m too good with the controller, but some of the artistically most interesting games (e.g. ICO, Shadow of the Colossus) never came out on PC. And since I was writing an academic paper on game narratives at the time (I kid you not…), well, I had to have a PS2, hadn’t I?
What else do I do when I’m not being nerdy? I used to do a fair bit of theatre: some acting, some music, but mainly directing. I’d love to get back to it, but right now it’s not feasible, unfortunately. Nevertheless, one of these days I’m going to think seriously about putting on a production of Macbeth, and if it kills me… I also play the keyboard in a rock/blues band with some very cool instrumentalists. And I cook one mean lasagne!
And what about those eagles on pogo sticks? That’s for me to know and you to find out…
Oh, okay. Here’s a hint.
