Chuck

Pockets of Sanity could mean a couple of different things. On one hand it could mean that most of the world is batshit insane and there are only a few safe pockets of normalcy, which I am constantly seeking.

On the other hand you could just consider it one of those totally nonsensical blog titles and take the "pockets" literally. Like, "come see the sanity I have here in my back pocket". That's fun, isn't it?

Mainly though, this blog represents my usually futile attempt to entertain the world with things that probably only three people will find humorous. Will you be one of the three? Let's find out... together.

Now, because I know you want to know, here's my life story...

I've been a lifelong movie junkie. At one stage of my life I could watch 3 or 4 of them a day, and often did. Favorite of all time? Pulp Fiction, which I saw in the movie theater nearly 20 times. You want a bad movie? Forget movies with Ben Affleck (who gets a bad rap, IMO) or anything that came out last weekend. You don't know bad movies until you get deep down into dusty video store muck like Cruising or Silent Night, Deadly Night II or Night Patrol. Seriously, you don't know what pain is.

I'm not much of a reader, although my two favorite books of all time are Alas, Babylon and Stephen King's It. I do tackle the occasional biography or movie related something or other.

But my fictional needs are filled by movies and TV. These are some of my current and all-time favorite TV shows: Lost, Twin Peaks, Mr. Show, Deadwood, 24, The Sopranos, South Park, Get a Life, Upright Citizens Brigade, Friends, Law & Order, Quantum Leap, Late Night with David Letterman (NBC), The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Seinfeld and Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I have an intense love/hate relationship with Saturday Night Live.

Speaking of movies... I've already mentioned my absolute favorite, but I love a WIDE range of movies. From JFK to South Park. From The Big Lebowski to Casualties of War. From Anchorman to Glory. Other favorites include: Back to the Future, Psycho, Patton, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Airplane!, After Hours, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Shawshank Redemption, Carlito's Way, The Hudsucker Proxy, Meet Joe Black, Always and hundreds of other titles.

I have unconditional love for nearly anything the Beatles ever did. The same goes for Tenacious D, even though they've only done one thing. I enjoyed the first albums from Stroke 9 and The Killers. I have every They Might Be Giants album before they became children's entertainment. Every other band is taken merely on a song by song basis. I do have an odd collection of Sir Mix-A-Lot tunes though.

So, if I love movies so much, why didn't I ever do anything with it? Well, I did. I started writing brief capsule reviews for movies back in 1992, as a way to look like I was taking notes in class. I kept a review notebook, and would pass it around to my friends for feedback.

I continued doing this, mainly for my own amusement, up until 1996. A co-worker of mine at the video store I managed introduced me to this wonderous thing called the internet, filled with lots of pages of black text on gray backgrounds, and it wasn't long after that I built my first website, cleverly titled "Chuck's Movie Reviews". It went live in June of 1996.

Getting "in" early was great. At the time there were only a handful of us doing this on the 'net, and as a result, it really felt like a community. There was feedback galore from readers, something that I loved.

As the internet grew, so did the scope of my website. It was retitled The Jacksonville Film Journal, and I brought in a couple of close friends to also write reviews for the site.

Somehow along the way I became a founding member of the Online Film Critics Society, and even served a term or two on the Governing Commitee of that organization.

Feeling the need to grow out of what might be perceived as a "local" website, we redesigned and revamped and added even more reviewers. Daily-Reviews.com was launched.

Unfortunately, after a few years, life started to interfere with my little internet utopia. I'd obtained a position in local radio, doing DVD reviews live every Tuesday morning, and was positioned to be syndicated in Atlanta, GA too when a new news director was hired and decided to "cut the fluff". Later, the television station I was working for decided that my audition for their local morning show was perfectly fine but they'd rather pay someone else with a local tabloid connection instead of letting me doing it for free. And certain directions the OFCS was taking were frustrating me. Long story short, I began to hate the thing I once loved so dearly. So I decided to take a break.

And now I'm blogging about haircuts and dump trucks.

I've never ever considered myself a "great" writer, and would always shy away from reviewing "important" titles because another writer would certainly do justice to them better than I ever could. I'd much rather rip Coyote Ugly to shreds than find a way to write something new about how great Pulp Fiction is. I like to write as if you were having a conversation with me... accessable and hopefully humorous on occasion. I write not only to inform, but hopefully to entertain.

Well, I know this has been rather long winded (trust me though, this is the heavily condensed version). But that's me.