Today’s Internoodle meme is “What books, teams, films, TV, music, food do you like?”
My friend Enola “Fanny” Guay asked, “What surprised you?” She wanted to know, “What makes you laugh and cry?”
I’m an engineer by training and inclination so I write a lot of lists. I write a weekly newspaper column about the arts and entertainment in North Puffin so I write a lot more lists. I don’t really like lists.
Fanny Guay wants a list.
The Five Ws give us the formula for reporting a story, researching a claim, or investigating a crime. According to the principle of the Five Ws, a story is incomplete if it doesn’t answer these questions:
Whodunnit?
What happened?
When did (or will) it happen?
Where did it happen?
Why did it happen?
The first four are data gathering as is the meme. “What list of stuff do you want to share?”
The Why question always sounds more interesting although my cop buddy, South Puffin’s police chief Brockley Mann, says detectives don’t really care about motive. They need evidence.
Half of me agrees. The reporter in me knows the facts have to come first but motive drives my fiction/opinion writing. As Mark Twain told us, “First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.”
If I know what books, films, teams, music, and food you like, I can always make up the lies to match.
For the record:
My favorite book is generally the one I’m reading right now. I prefer turning the pages and the feel of a printed book, but I do have Kindle apps on tablet, iPod, and laptop because they simplify travel. I never want to be without a good book in hand and one in the wings.I’m fairly well-schooled in English and American lit for an engineer but today you’re likely to find a detective story by Robert B. Parker or James Lee Burke on the nightstand. I like regional writers, too, so I just finished Vermonter Chris Bohjalian’s newest novel and would like it if Key West’s Tom Corcoran wrote another.
My first jobs were in movie theaters so I don’t go to all that many now (I was an usher at the old Warner in my hometown and a manager at the Criterion in Times Square when Nicholas and Alexandra premiered; I even survived 13 weeks of Love Story in traffic-snarled Fort Lee). I do like movies with character and story and have gone to three in the last year or so. The marvelous Les Mis. Gravity in 3D with backdrops so real that astronauts called them “true-to-life.” Hubble 3D in IMAX at the space center.
I don’t watch sports although I grew with the Phillies and the Iggles, the Birds and the Colts on the radio. A high school buddy pitched for the Mets so I watched them until I realized that he lost when I watched and won when I didn’t. I still like to drive race cars.
I like most music but claim that the only two forms I don’t like are blue and grass; in fact, I’m not keen on heavy metal but I book an eclectic outdoor concert series every summer that generally includes blues, country, folk, gospel, jazz, opera, pop, rock-n-roll, and, yes, bluegrass.
I like food. Bait isn’t food.
