my inner nerd

I took Jodi's Nerd Test and only scored 36%, but I'm thinking it might be a little off. I have this newer habit of learning about something, getting excited, and then immersing myself in it until I find out everything I possibly can. I did that with various DJs and electronic music, and most recently Ryan Adams, I'll actually still get hung up on listening to him for days on end.

My latest obsession has to do with Neil Gaiman. Seth told me about a movie a couple years ago that he had written, and we went to go see it - Mirrormask. It's one of those little known independent-ish films that only got shown at the Lagoon or Uptown theaters. So I loved it. But didn't think too much more about it after that. Seth told me he had written some comic books, etc, and I thought that was very nice for him.

Then I was at the library a couple months back, just perusing random shelves, and came across a book that described an entire series that Gaiman had written for Vertigo comics back in the day, called Sandman. It looked interesting enough, so I borrowed it, and became so intrigued that I've been borrowing the whole trade paperback series and just about anything else by Neil Gaiman that I could get my hands on. I even bought Seth a novel he had written as a Christmas present...and then proceeded to read in before he had a chance to!

So now I can say with certainty that I have a favorite author, something I really haven't had since I was a kid, probably. I do feel somewhat nerdy because his writing is firmly grounded in the fantasy genre, I now am regularly taking home comic books from the library, along with BBC DVDs of a sci-fi tv show that he had done. I used to tease Seth because he was so into comics and superheroes and here I am, right in the same boat.

I have always enjoyed a good fantasy story (The Chronicles of Narnia have been favorites of mine since I was too young to see all the Christian allegory in them), but since "growing up" I've had a hard time really getting too much into it. I can only take so many dragons and unicorns, after all. But Gaiman tells stories that are fairly well grounded in real life, just with a bit of a twist. It's obviously fantasy, but not so overwhelmingly over-the-top. And it's all pretty funny, also a good thing.