Welcome to Nerdly Manor. Please Wipe Your Feet Before Entering.

Manor is a metaphor, obviously.

Although I fully expect the vast majority of the people who'll trickle by here will be folks who already know me, for the scant few who might drop in by chance, a few words about this blog, and I guess about me as well.

Nerdly Manor is, for lack of a better description, my place to scribe my thoughts on popular culture, including movies, books, television, comics, memes, and possibly web sites.  It was birthed from my Facebook postings on such topics.  As time went on, these postings kept growing in length and range of topic to the point where I was often abusing the status format severely with essay-length writing.  Still, I enjoy expressing and discussing my views, and several friends have expressed interest in my opinions, so I finally decided to use the right tool for the job.  I'd recently referred to my own humble abode as Nerdly Manor in recognition of its distinctly nerdly decor, and the name seemed to fit the kind of online home I wanted to create.  So here we are.

I'd have to say my nerdliness began with comic books, as it did for so many of us.  I'm a life-long comic book reader.  My first conscious realization of being able to read occurred while I held a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man in my hands as a young tyke.

This one, in fact.  How did I avoid becoming dependent on exclamation points?!?

Being a comic book reader will often seque into related interests, such as art, history, or other genres of writing.  For me, all three were true to some extent.  I'd always been interested in science, so science fiction, in particular hard sci-fi, was a natural fit.  I'd been resistant to fantasy for years because so much of it seemed to flow without rules -- things just seemed to work because it needed to for the story -- and that violated the sense of order that I loved about science.  However, over the years I've come to enjoy the standout works of fantasy that follow coherent internal logic.

Logic like "Everyone dies horribly eventually."

Similarly, my taste in movies and television has evolved over time.  Originally, if you wanted me to see a movie, it needed to be a fast-paced action flick, a ribald comedy, or some really good sci-fi.  That's changed over the years to the point where I've become a fan of cinema in general.  I now care deeply about nuanced performance, clever scripting, and breathtaking cinematography.  With experience comes sophistication.  The weeks leading up to Oscar Night now are a festival for me.

A black tie affair, of sorts.

So that's this blog in a nutshell.  Me spouting off about what I like about different pop culture items and making fun of the things that are bad or silly about them.  Pretty much like 97% of the other blogs out there.  But this one's by me.  Welcome!