Mike

i'm a 37-year-old movie and guitar nerd who has spent much of his spare time the last year and a half or so researching and taking notes on a prospective book-length project telling the history of America and the west since World War II through assorted genre and B-movies -- Godzilla and the a-bomb, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and anti-communist paranoia, Destination: Moon and the space race, Wild Angels and Hell's Angels on Wheels vis-a-vis the Vietnam War, Coma and Parts: the Clonus Horror and anxiety about the rise of post-industrialized, dehumanized medical care... the list goes on and on. It might sound a little frivolous but i think it's very interesting, and i'm gonna keep hammering on it till it's done.***I also write lots of songs for this band i play with so the creative impulse is clearly quite important to me, probably the most important thing in my life. i see it as basically why i'm here -- if we're here for specific reasons, an idea i'm not quite convinced of yet.***I'm an exercise gnome these days. (it vacillates -- sometimes i'm very attentive about it, sometimes i just eat pizza and watch t.v.; you're the same way! admit it. i love how in all these profiles, people are endlessly hiking and bikeriding and rock climbing. i just don't buy it.) i favor bikeriding (when it's warmer), endless jogging (which i do now; the wind chill is just too awful on a bike), and weight lifting, which i do pretty low-tech with a bunch of beat up weights and a bench in the basement laundry room. (there's this amazing article in harper's magazine from a few months ago about why we like to use these cable-and-pulley weight machines in gyms -- that it has to do with a nostalgia for the industrial revolution and for plugging our bodies into mechanical devices, something we do much less now that we've entered the "information age"... but, um, i digress...) i DO in fact enjoy camping and hiking when the opportunity presents itself, and the singer in my band used to organize such things with great frequency but it doesn't come up as often as it used to. i HATE skiing (i think it's like picking up a foreign language, you have to learn it as a kid, otherwise, forget it) but i sure like hanging out at the lodge. for sure.***oh, day job: i'm an editor for a consulting firm. it pays the bills and plays to a moderate strength i have with language (which is totally not coming across here!) -- but my philosophy accords with the old saw: work to live, don't live to work.