Dry doc’d

If I sit with you for any amount of time these days, we’ll soon determine whether you’re a documentary person or not. I certainly hold no great prejudice if you prefer to spend your time indulging in other guilty pleasures. As a recovering Angry Birds addict (and, man, was that a tough monkey to shake), I cast no stones. Waste your life as you see fit, because I certainly do.

For me, if I have time to kill, my two greatest guiltless pleasures are long form magazine pieces and documentaries. The subject doesn’t matter as long as the work is done well. I have two people I count on for recommendations (I won’t out them here, because the line at their doors would be too long and they are busy men) and they have kept me well-supplied.

If you’re a frequent reader here, you might have recognizes an uncharacteristic lack of movement around the pages of Rapid Eye Reality. This is due to a lot of things that may or may not be explained some day, but also in part to the fact that I’ve been working to put a lot more in my head than I let out. Fast moving streams carry too many stones, and I’ve been feeling a little less than stoney recently.

As it happens, my wife is a sucker for a good doc, too. Since Netflix streaming found its way into our home, our evenings are more often than not spent watching some documentary or other. Last year, I watched more than 40 docs during my off hours (you can find the list in this post. In January, despite having traveled for a couple of weeks, I managed to sneak in nine documentaries. Here they are in the order I watched them.

I would gladly spend the 15-18 hours I spent watching those again rather than be forced to sit through “The Town” for two hours.

So, while I’m not writing as much here as I normally do, I’m not dead (yet). If you need me, look for the warm, red glow of the Netflix home screen. I’ll be somewhere nearby.