I’m ahead of my time, but only by a week*

I’m probably the worst blogger evah, since every time I think to myself I should update the blog with brilliancy or I should give the Good People of the world a reason to remember that I wrote a book so they may slowly be worn down into purchasing it, I fire up the browser, surf here. . .and then stare blankly at the screen. Brilliance, it turns out, is hard. Hell, I’d settle for minor amusement, if brilliance turns out to not be in my DNA. Which I suspect it may not be.

Part of my trouble is that I am always slightly behind the curve when it comes to any type of culture. Recently I was asked to come up with a list of my favorite books of 2007, which was nice. The problem is that I buy most of my books from used bookstores, pawing through the dusty shelves. Nothing beats coming home triumphantly with a stack of acid-eaten paperbacks clutched in your booze-shaky hands, my friends—but it does mean that most of the books I’m reading are, at best, 2-5 years out of date. At worst I’m reading a forgotten thriller from 1961 that’s been out of print for 40 years.

It’s the same story with just about everything: I’m watching TV shows from 5 years ago, I don’t get around to movies until 1-2 years after they’ve come out (unless it’s a romantic comedy, in which case I’m there at 10AM on a Sunday with my wife The Duchess, who commands me to shut up, pretend to enjoy it, and get her some damn popcorn before she strikes me, and then I’m talking to friends and saying ridiculous things like “Well, Enchanted wasn’t all bad.”) The popular music situation is almost embarrassing; contrary to some people’s beliefs I think there’s a lot of really good music out there, I just don’t find it until at least six months after the wave has swept the nation, you know? Though, thanks to Travis Barker I have heard of “Soulja Boy”, and now wish I had not.

I’m not sure this is a bad thing, entirely. Sure, it means half my witty comments stolen from TV shows are from Simpsons eps that aired in 2003, which means I spend a lot of time standing alone at parties, but it also means that a lot of crap gets filtered out of the air before it reaches my precious, delicate ears and eyeballs. By the time I hear about something, that something has legs, my friends.

Then again, no one is paying me to be Jeff Somers, trend-setter. Or even trend-follower. in fact, now that I think about it, no one is paying me at all, which is shocking.

*From “I Don’t Know” by Too Much Joy, the best rock band evah who never had more than a few thousand fans nationwide at any time. Appropriately, they broke up in like 1999.