A fortuitous discussion about nicknames is the simplest way to explain the birth and purpose of this blog.  I had tried to blog in the past but lost patience with my film review site and any attempts at a personal blog were dashed by the double punch of solipsism and pretension.  The idea of writing for an audience in either case, reviewing film or sharing personal epiphanies, put too much pressure on the whole thing and I just stopped both sites, the latter without even a proper launching.

Jump Cut – After learning that Ryan Howard’s nickname is cleverly, but also shockingly “Big Brown”, I was joking to Emily that I needed a nickname…something fun and unique…like “Pigeons”.  Not quite sure how I landed on that word, but the connotations of the word pigeon was not one that I actually wanted to be tied to.  Dirty, city rat-birds or stool pigeons are not the most friendly items to draw associations with.

Still playing with this idea, however, I decided to look up the definition of pigeon and see if there was anythign in there that might be redeemable.  Here is what I found:

Pigeon noun
1: any of a widely distributed family (Columbidae, order of Columbiformes) of birds with a stout body, rather short legs, and a smooth and compact plumage esp : a member of any of numerous varieties of the rock dove that exist in domestication and in the feral state in cities and towns throughout most of the world
2: a young woman
3: an easy mark : DUPE
4: CLAY PIGEON

So far none of these definitions was very reassuring…feral bird, young woman or dupe.  Then, I found the second meaning of pigeon.  (Now would be a good time to note that I was consulting the Eleventh Edition of  Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.)

Pigeon noun (1826)
an object of special concern : accepted business or interest [alter. of pidgin]

Here is where that aforementioned “moment of inspiration” hit.  Instead of stressing about writing for an (invisible/non-existent) audience, I would write about objects that I found interesting, for no reason what-so-ever, under the wonderful heading “Pigeons”.  In fact, the open arena in which to write about Grant Morrison’s Batman run, symphonic structure in Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, David Foster Wallace’s essays, and Eric Bruntlett’s beard as not only a fantastic specimen, but also an exclamation (By Bruntlett’s Beard!), seemed not only like wild fun, but a nice way to keep my writing up and maybe even share some of my interests. (Those entries forthcoming btw…)

Perhaps that is still solipsistic, but I guess there is no way around that while blogging…