Salvete!

Paul: Keenly aware of the clanking chains of my own mortality, I have a great love of and propensity for long-term, intellectually-broadening projects.  Currently, on my other blog, I am reading and writing about Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and the entire Harvard Classics Library.  I am writing a poem in every form covered in Ron Padgett's Handbook of Poetic Forms.  I am studying Latin because I like it.  I am writing a play.

Laurie and I love to write, however the major obstacle in blogging is in having a steady stream of topics to discuss.

I also have a strong interest in fashion, as well as the visual arts in general.  I feel that one ought to fill one's senses with beauty and greatness in hopes that beauty and greatness is what will come spilling back out of one, out of the abundance of one's heart.

Laurie and I are not people who go around saying "We don't watch television."  We are two people who simply don't.  We listen to a lot of NPR.  We watch movies and surf about the internet.  We have full time jobs and are baffled that other people have time for things like television in their lives.  The television, with its archaic advertisement structure, is not something that I loathe.  It is something that I generally forget even exists.

I joined Twitter several years ago on a lark (which I think is the bird in the Twitter logo) and remember so many arguments from the Hater community contending that Twitter was vapid and shallow.  Very soon after joining and giving ear to those arguments, I had a time when a loved one went to the hospital with a severe medical emergency.  Through Twitter I was able to post to everyone I knew instant updates on what was happening with my loved one and I in that situation.  I suddenly became aware that it is not the medium, it is the people who use it that make it vapid or deep or beautiful or terrible or boring or, as is so often the case, insufferable.

So, Laurie and I were on vacation and visiting my parents.  They were watching a television show called Project Runway.  I had heard of same, but, again, it was only nestled deep in a temporal lobe crenelation, not intended for instant recall.  We enjoyed it tremendously and I had a moment of what I feel was divine (and I hope was celestial) inspiration.  We have Netflix.  We like to write.  We like to have long term projects.  Project Runway  is currently in its 9th season.

This project will not be so tawdry as simply recapping episodes which we've just watched.  In fact, it is my hope that you can profit from (and be amused by) this project without ever watching the show.  This is an art project, an intellectual exercise, with a dash of social commentary, the catalyst of which is a major television show. The matter of the project is that Laurie and I shall watch every episode of Project Runway and then write.  I expect it to be a blog about life, existence, and a grand unified theory through the lens of a popular "reality" television show. 

Beauty, truth, human value, perception, economic theory, entropy, philosophy, theology, art, skill, addiction, conflict, history, ignorance, grief, fear, and joy are just a few of the topics I expect the project to open for unique exploration in this format.  Part of the appeal is to have a constant stream of topics to write about.  Another appeal is to attempt to mine depth from an unusual source in an attempt to help ourselves (and I may dare even be pretentious enough to suggest others) look at the world around us in different ways.

Again, you do not need to watch the show in order to understand what we are intending to do here.  It is our intention to make this project interesting, accessible, and fun for all.  But we have already ordered Season One.  It is in the mail and we shall commence in a matter of a few days.

Still in my ignorance of the series, I am unsure if there's a kicky closer that they employ on the show which I might steal to close this blog like "Designers, DESIGN!"

More soon.