I’m too cheap to cough it up for cable TV, so I use a Roku stick and watch a lot of YouTube vids on my TV instead. Or I just don’t watch anything really. Very rarely will you find me sitting in front of the tube. I miss a lot of shows that I would love to see—mostly stuff on Showtime or HBO. But then again, life is more important than passively sucking up entertainment, no matter how artful said entertainment might be. I am of the opinion that is better for one to sit and stare at clouds, and maybe be a little bored than to have to be entertained. That’s just me. I live by that. IMO, our culture suffers much from the need to be entertained. It is actually a sickness.

Yet I do love a ripping yarn. Just stumbled upon two free, yes free, episodes of On Becoming God in Central Florida. Since I live in west Central Florida I could not resist. My verdict is that it is superlative. Kirsten Dunst is correct. She is underrated. The plot is wacky yet somehow accurately reflects the oddity that is Floida.

I am an old Floridian, and come from a long line of Floridians. I suspect this is nothing to brag about, but it does make me a rarity. It also makes me an expert in all things Floridian. So if you want to see a crazy show with the most vivid heroine in recent memory sample these two free episodes. I embed a preview on YouTube here:

The question is sometimes asked: Why is Florida such a paragon of the offbeat? Witness the internet phenom “Florida Man”. (Is there a “Florida Woman”?) I came up with an answer to that. Excuse me while I try to remember what it was. I think it is because most of the people who came here since WW 2 came in search of some kind of paradise. It doesn’t exist. When they awaken to the fact that this state is just like any other except with more humidity and alligators, they kind of freak out. There is nothing magical about Florida. Just a bunch of people who thought their lives were going to be so much better when they got here, but they find out that isn’t going to happen. (When I first thought of this is seemed much more profound. And no, I wasn’t high.)

Side note: I read a comment that complained about the accents in OBGCF—that they were not realistic. Many of the characters speak with a “southern Twang”; having grown up in Tampa, I can tell you that this is realistic. There is plenty of southern influence in Florida. After the Civil War many Confederates settled in Central Florida. Many Southerners migrated here after WW 2 along with everyone else. And although the Southern influence is stronger in north Florida, it is still to be felt in Central Florida. I grew up complaining about Yankees (people from Up North, not the team), and was happy to be called a Florida Cracker since a branch of my ancestral tree is crowned by the first European settler in Hillsborough County (my mother’s father’s father’s father-in-law—name of Levi Coller). All the descendants of the Italian and Spanish immigrants who came to work in the cigar factories of Ybor City (of whom I am one) have that charming Tampa Twang that is unmistakable. So eat my grits if you don’t think Central Florida is southern. You just don’t know Florida.

I have just started reading Immortality by Milan Kundera. I always in awe of anything by him because he touches on themes that are never far from my own thoughts. For example, upon half-awakening in the morning, floating around in the hypnagogic state listening to the radio announcers he finds himself thinking about the fact that Ernest Hemingway was reported to be impotent:

That gets me thinking about that other literary titan, Ernest Hemingway, and the fact that I love the way he put words together. Lately, I have been reminded that I used to be in love with Tennessee Williams. Actually, I still am. I met him once. In an elevator at the University of Florida student union building. More on that in a post yet to come.

So ruminating about my literary heroes, I realize, as I often do, that most are men. But I choose not to care so much about that anymore, although I do agree that the fact that there have been so few females literary titans that I have adored says something about either me, or the culture I grew up in, or both. I put it down mostly to biology. The old-time feminists used to say that biology is not destiny. I beg to differ. But more on that later, or not. (This topic really annoys me.)

I love Iris Murdoch. And recently I became reaquainted with some of Sylvia Plath‘s poetry. I found Plath’s poetry to be very morbid, yet undeniably powerful. I was going to write about her suicide, but I just can’t. It seems too sensationalistic. Iris Murdoch is, to me, a much more interesting writer. Although obviously she is not a poet, and I don’t mean to compare the two since it would be ridiculous to do so. If you a want to get a glimpse of Iris Murdoch as a writer, listen to this wonderful discussion on BBC Radio 4’s “Open Book”.

I challenged myself to just start posting in order to get this website up and running. I want to start publishing chapters of my book here, and so I am building this up as a platform for that.

Feel free to disagree with any of my unpopular, un-politically correct notions.