This SaturdayDreaming installment just so happens to be my very first post on this blog, penned waaaaay back in 2009.  It’s been a fun ride.  Hope you enjoy, and happy Saturday! 

Film is in my blood. When I was a kid, my older brothers and I would literally cycle through the same batch of movies every single day after school. We would craftily rotate between current and old stuff based on the mood. For the hidden singer in us, we had classics like Grease and West Side Story on standby; for the action hero side of our imagination, we watched Excalibur and Total Recall. Here’s the kicker, though – we didn’t just watch these films; we became a part of them. I can recall many light-hearted arguments involving which characters we wanted to be in the movies that we saw (we each wanted to be the coolest character, of course).  

 We didn’t merely watch Bruce Lee annihilate Chuck Norris in the Colosseum; we were Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris duking it out kung-fu style that day. We didn’t just watch the suave Ludlow brothers of Legends of the Fall; we became the brothers (and of course, I was the coolest). So much of our childhood developed around the TV that we can, to this day, readily quote lines from films that clinically intertwine with our day-to- day conversations.
 

Not surprisingly, movies and television became our go to form of comedic self-expression. Our lives lit up watching A Different World, Yo! MTV Raps, and The Cosby Show. Much of our childhood unfolded alongside these larger than life characters doing larger than life activities. Sure, we created our own characters, and re-enacted our own daring adventures, but the television was the catalyst that thrust us into that imaginative void; that realm where dreams become reality, and thoughts and deeds transcend what’s perceived to be real.  

We weren’t couch potatoes either, I might add; our heroic deeds often spilled into the backyard, where we became mighty sporting heroes and dauntless explorers. In a weird way, movies and TV helped to mold and shape me into the man I am today. My artistic endeavors can all somehow be traced back to those freewheeling days huddled in front of the TV, dreaming about the tales and characters that were being projected into my psyche (and of course, I was the coolest one).