Doug: A couple of days ago I laid my soul bare to all of you, revealing that my family and I like to go to ballparks and historical sites. There... I've said it. What a revelation! Oh, the scandal! But seriously, all of us around here obviously like comics or we wouldn't be here everyday. From the look of things, many of us also like music and movies -- at least the comments we get on those types of posts would seem to bear that out. Today we'd like to hear about your other diversions. What do you dabble in, like to do when you're not reading comics, follow, etc.?Doug: I've mentioned ballparks several times now. My oldest son is just a sports junkie; in fact, he's majoring in broadcast journalism with the career goal of being a sports broadcaster at some level. It is his dream to also see a Major League Baseball game in every stadium. So far, we've been to --
- Wrigley Field in Chicago
- US Cellular Field in Chicago
- Milwaukee County Stadium
- Miller Park in Milwaukee
- old Busch Stadium in St. Louis
- Riverfront Stadium (Cinergy Field, I believe it was called) in Cincinnati
- Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia
- RFK in Washington, DC
- Nationals Park in Washington, DC
- Orioles Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore
- Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City
- Turner Field in Atlanta
- Jacobs Field in Cleveland
- old Yankee Stadium in NYC
- Fenway Park in Boston
- We've also visited Cooperstown, which was awesome!
- Illinois
- Northwestern
- Wisconsin
- Marquette
- Illinois State
- Missouri
- Kansas
- Baylor
- Purdue
- Michigan State
- Penn
- Drexel
- George Washington
- Maryland
- Florida
- Florida State
- Boston College
- Cincinnati
- Louisville
That's not a bad list!
Doug: We also like, as I said, to visit historical sites. We've been to many attractions in and around the cities mentioned above. My work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum can keep me busy from time-to-time, and I enjoy learning about that era -- the human choices/behaviors aspect of it fascinates me.
Doug: Other than that, I'm a sucker for a Tarzan novel, the 1960's Spider-Man and Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons, and I rarely miss an airing of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Jaws. Oh, and I like to mow the lawn with my iPod and noise-cancelling headphones. Forty-five minutes of solace, baby!
Doug: So, how about you?
10 comments:
Where to start? I love history. I haven't visited many historical sites, but I've read enough books on history. I like visiting muesums, but I don't have a huge list of those under my belt (I've hit the big ones in NYC, Washington, and Chicago), either. I read lots of novels, mostly classics, and have a weakness to the Victorian stuff, and for mysteries. I like the sciences as well, especially astronomy, paleonetology, and zoology. I'm a Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings nerd, and I'm also a sports nut, especially baseball and football. Living in a "small" city, the only major league stadium I've visited is Yankee Stadium, and for football, only Rich Stadium, home of the Bills.
Among the other pop culture things I dabble in are horror and monster flicks (30's through 50's mostly with an emphasis on Universal and Toho), adventure stories and movies (Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and Bogart), fantasy novels (Tolkien, Howard, Leiber, and others), and classic sci-fi TV (Star Trek, Prisoner, Space:1999, etc.).
I follow the news media (more interested in the messenger than the message sometimes) and have for years, taking note of how that medium has transformed from a reliable resource to a perverse entertainment. Politics is diverting, and sadly sad these days.
Once upon a time I was a baseball hound too, but the strike so many years ago which wiped out the World Series broke that feeling. Aside from keeping up with the Reds, my local team, I don't much follow that anymore. Football's fun to watch, and basektball is deadly dull. I find college sports largely a wasteland of quiet corruption, and if I were king for a day I'd abolish them.
I'm not much of a traveler, preferring the comforts of home to practically anyplace else.
It's mostly my family and my friends and my work that take up my day otherwise. It's pretty nice.
So as you can see, I'm more shallow and wide than deep.
Rip Off
My work tends to consume a lot of time, but when I'm not on the road I have myriad (probably too many) diversions. I love readinng (always keep a book in my service truck). History, Geology, Palenotology, Electronics, or fantasy ( just finishing Steven King's "Dark Tower" series).
I'm an avid photographer, and do a lot of drawing (had actually intended to be a comic artist but my figure drawing is too weak). I also closely follow current events, enjoy walking and have a weakness for cartoons ( 60's Spiderman, Jonny Quest, Loony Tunes, Simpsons). Oh, I'm also a Reds fan!
I have lots of interests too, too many really!
I'm a history junkie myself. I live in the Capital city of the Confederacy, so I'm surrounded by historical sites for miles around. I've got tons of history books on my shelves at home. I'm reading the memoirs of U.S. Grant right now, fascinating book.
I'm a baseball fan too, just went to an Orioles-Yankees game in B'more a couple weeks back. I've only been to a handful of ballparks, several are no longer standing.
I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, the Beatles, Springsteen, The Big Lebowski, punk/hardcore music of the 80s & 90s, among other things.
I love the 60s Spider-man series as well. When I'm home alone doing housework, I often put on the dvd of the series as "background music".
The only thing I blog about besides comics is Holiday-related movies, specials & episodes, so that counts an "interest":
http://holidayfilmreviews.blogspot.com/
I like reading (bios, mysteries, histories, sports, music, etc..). I like all kinds of music from jazz to rock to gospel to the Beatles, but I love the blues....so much that I blog about it in my spare time and write CD reviews for another site. I don't watch many movies or TV any more, at least new movies or TV, but I love sports (NFL, NBA, College FB & Basketball). I also teach a Sunday School class on the weekends.
Darpy
In my case, while I stopped collecting comics long ago, obviously I'm still a bit of a comics junkie. Otherwise, I'm also a history buff, although in my case I'm not at all interested in the hardware or uniforms but entirely in the reasons that led up to the events, trying to make sense of human behavior, which dovetails with my interests in psychology and philosophy. I belong to the First Coast Freethought Society here in Jacksonville, writing articles for its newsletter since 2005 and putting it together since 2009. I also belong to humanist and philosophy book groups and a film meetup group, which mainly takes in foreign and indy films.
Oh, and I've been a Beatlemaniac since about 1975, getting into them through their many great songs that were still being played on the radio even years after they'd broken up. But I also like a variety of music, from classical to punk.
Probably typical of most "geeks", I've never had any interest in sports. When I was a kid I pretty much loathed sports and when my dad turned on a football or baseball game on tv in the living room, I retreated to my bedroom to read or draw. I'm sure he thought I was peculiar.
I grew up reading in the Bronze Age and wanted to be a comicbook artist, but after an encouraging rejection letter from Marvel I went to college to study illustration. I ended up animating for video games for 6 years and have been a tattoo artist ever since.
I stopped reading marvel and dc once in college, fed up with gimmicks and earth-shattering changes that revert to the status quo after a few months. I believe the first issue of X-men with Jubilee was the last one I wasted my $ on!
But that led to re-discovering underground comics and discovering indy books like Love & Rockets. Some friends got me into Judge Dredd which I still love today. More recently (this century)I discovered Manga... Akira, Black Jack, Lone Wolf & Cub, et.al.
About 2004 I finally gave into the suggestion of a good friend who is an established indy artist to make comics myself, and have been self publishing ever since, which isn't easy in this economy. My comics aren't for most people, but my medium-term goal is to get a book published by a creator-owned house like Image.
OH... I like making art, telling stories, reading (last book I read was "Werewolf of Paris" by Guy Endore, currently reading "Tomb of Dracula" Marvel Essentials), MMA, Japanese films, and the occasional video game.
That's the most I've shared about myself in a comment section...
Lots of history types here! Here are two books I've read recently that I'd highly recommend: Holocaust by Bullets by Father Patrick Desbois, and Becoming Evil by James Waller. Waller addressed the Regional Educators of the USHMM, of which I am a member, in July when I was at the Museum. Fred, you may especially be interested in Waller's book.
This is a pretty deep group here today!
Doug
Sorry I was late to the party.. Spent last few days on military duty, so the firewalls didn't let me get through.
Geez, where to start. Big into Beatles/Stones, playing jazz/blues, working on my slide guitar and Open-G tuning, love political history (especially presidential). Read great Cold War books on Bay of Pigs, the Gary Powers U-2 flight, 'Missiles of October' being one of my all-time favorite presentations, love a good JFK assassination yarn (History Channel, etc.., even the ones with the most bizarre, ludacris ones).
I have an outstanding Watergate 5-part documentary originally shown on the Discovery Channel hosted by Daniel Shore, which COULD NOT be shown until after Nixon's funeral, it was THAT good. Never released on DVD, I had a buddy at my church convert it. Depth interviews with everyone, very cool and fun to watch unfold as the safeguarding of an initial comedy of errors was bungled by posturing Oval Office insiders.
Other interests..? Silver/Bronze Marvel, LOVE Space:1999, love good calc and Algebra problems. And, a secret fascination with Dick Cheney. {don't tell anyone..}
OOh, interesting you should bring up the book Becoming Evil, Doug, because back in January 2009 I wound up hosting a humanist discussion group at my house on that very book! A professor at one of the local colleges moderated the discussion and about 20 people showed up, filling up my all too small living room! Usually we meet at bookstores, but on this occasion due to the holiday season we couldn't meet at our usual haunt and I volunteered my place, forcing me to get it much tidier than typical for an unattached bachelor with 3 cats roaming around.
I hadn't heard of Holocaust by Bullets previously but that sounds like an interesting one too.
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