Home again, just in time for Bullet Sunday!
Today, on a very special episode of Blogography, Bullet Sunday is overtaken by a new meme started by Lewis over at Spirit of St. Lewis called Highlights That Shaped Your Life. Lewis is curious to know about those once-in-a-lifetime moments where you just know that "this is one hell of a special time." Here are ten of mine that come to mind...
1977 • Seeing Star Wars for the first time... Seriously, what geek saw Star Wars back when it was first released and didn't feel as if their life had changed?
1978 • Reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars... Science fiction was a random encounter until I read the first book of ERB's John Carter of Mars novels. After that, I was obsessed. I devoured science fiction in every form I could find it. My obsession would solidify after I read Frank Herbert's Dune, one of the most mind-blowing science fiction epics ever written. Sci-fi is now such a huge part of me, that I cannot imagine my life without it.
1979 • Buying Green Lantern #121 and The Flash #277... While out of my mind with boredom one day, I wandered downtown with $1 and no plans. I ended up buying my very first comic books so I'd have something to read. Thus began my lifelong infatuation with collecting comics, a hobby that has brought much entertainment to my life.
1983 • Visiting New Orleans for the first time... I won a high school DECA competition and got to go to New Orleans... completely unsupervised... for a week before my senior year started. This resulted in many "first" experiences, which very much shaped (mis-shaped?) my life.
1987 • Visiting my first Hard Rock Cafe... While vacationing in Maui with some friends in the late 80's, I happened upon my first Hard Rock Cafe. Needless to say, this had a profound affect on my life, as I've spent a great many of the years which followed visiting Hard Rocks around the world (current count: 106 properties). Though drastically outdated, I keep a journal of my Hard Rock obsession at DaveCafe.
1996 • Visiting Japan for the first time... My first "real" trip outside the country was all by myself to Tokyo, which is about as foreign a culture as you can get from the US. I had already fallen in love with Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime), but it was embracing Japanese culture... even for such a short time... which sparked my love of travel that continues to this day.
1998 • Visiting Thailand for the first time... Of all the places I've been and seen, no one place has had a more profound affect on my life than Thailand. This was the trip that introduced me to Buddhism, a way of thinking which changed
2003 • Starting up Blogography... This is one of those rare events where you don't understand the significance of it until much later. I had been a blogger off-and-on for three years before I finally made a serious attempt at it back in April of 2003 (after a Blogography false-start in March 2002). Who knew?
2005 • Standing on the Great Wall of China... A life-long dream was realized when I, at long last, walked along The Great Wall two years ago. This began a trifecta of visits to ancient engineering wonders, when I visited The Acropolis in Greece and The Great Pyramids in Egypt earlier this year. Pretty special indeed.
2006 • DaveCago... I had met with fellow bloggers before, but the blogger meet-up in Chicago last summer was my first opportunity to hang out with a group of them. I had such a great time that I started meeting up with bloggers every chance I got, culminating with the amazing TequilaCon 2007 event in Portland, Oregon. If you haven't yet experienced the joy of hanging out with your fellow bloggers, there's a new meet-up in Chicago in a mere thirteen days, and TequilaCon 2008 comes to Philadelphia next Spring!
And another Sunday bites the dust...
I love comments! However, all comments are moderated, and won't appear until approved. Are you an abusive troll with nothing to contribute? Don't bother. Selling something? Don't bother. Spam linking? Don't bother.
PLEASE NOTE: My comment-spam protection requires JavaScript... if you have it turned off or are using a mobile device without JavaScript, commenting won't work. Sorry.
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
I read Marvel for the most part as a kid, but Flash and Green Lantern were by far my favorite DC characters. Batman grew on me over the years.
1977 • Seeing Star Wars for the first time…
I was 7 years of age when Star Wars came out but I had to wait till 1990’s before subtitles was on the film.
By then I have lost interest.. so I guess as a Deaf person nothing was life changing till internet came..
I have never read the John Carter stuff, but it’s something that I’d like to buy and sit down and read sometime.
I currently have the local comic shop pull Spider-Man and Daredevil for me. I haven’t read any of them in almost two years but, by God, when I finally have some free time I’ll be well stocked.
One of the great things about you is that you can realize what really matters about your life. A lot of people can’t, and it is really sad. Of course there is the good and the bad in all, but it is finding and realizing the good that makes the journey worth it all.
Wishing I could be at DaveCago, lucky bastard!
In which year will Liz appear?
I guess Toronto TequilaCon 2008 is not going to happen, eh? Ah well. Someday we’ll get to up our Dave Number. Someday.
Wow. 1979… I stopped buying comics in 1969 (‘cuz they bumped the price to 15 cents and started continuing stories from one issue to the next). Which reminds me… I still have a stack of comics with your name on ’em. 😉
Uhm, you forgot how to mention how much DaveFrancisco is going to change your life when you come here. LOL
Ah yes, Cockfest…I miss Portland.
The Great Wall, Acropolis and Pyramids….those are all amazingly powerful things, you lucky ducky!
DECA? My gosh, is that still around? I see that your memories in the late 1970s were long before I was around. (Just let me live in this fantasyland, would you please……).
You’ve got some really cool things on your highlights list. I’m amazed and how people enjoyed this idea. It’s always good to remember the good times!
Please post when ever there are more blogger conventions. I cannot make the chi or phi ones. But hopefully a Portland or SLC one will come about fairly soon.
This comment doesn’t have anything to do with this particular bullet Sunday..though it is interesting and informative as usual…but I just wanted to say that I have a new found empathy for your isomnia. I have just recovered from a 100% sleepless 48 hours because I had to finish my textiles and design major work which is a large chunk of my final mark for that subject…needless to say by midnight of the second day I actually thought I was dying I felt so horrible. Next time you blog about your sleeping habits I will be sending heartfelt sympathies to you…
Ah, sci-fi, where would I be with out you? And you’ve definitely got me interested in ERB now, Dave, I’ll be starting the John Carter of Mars series and Tarzan as well, just as soon as I finish the eighteen other books I seem to have in my reading queue.
Excelsior!
Excellent list Dave2. I’ve been to New Orleans multiple times, and Europe a lot and Australia, and going to Rome for a second time in November.
Yes, I’m thinking of doing a blog and hope it doesn’t take too long to decide. 🙂 Maybe thinking about it for a year or so is OK (?).
You know, I never got the fascination with Hard Rock until reading this and several of your other posts about it. I’ve just finished reviewing the davecafe site and Hard Rock’s own site, and have decided that a visit to the local (Houston) Hard Rock is in order soon. On vacation next year in July I can hit the one in Myrtle Beach. In between I might think about a few other nearby spots. We’ll see if it becomes an addiction for me or not, but I’ve already got the travel bug, and the rationale you site for driving your visits to unexpected destinations is intruiging.
Woo hoo! I was part of one of those!!
How long were you in Japan that time?