This is Western Homes. Meet the new site, same as the old site. Well, not so much. Several years ago I had a site where I would write about all of the junk that got sent to me in my job as a college paper arts editor that I couldn't fit into the print edition. Mostly that meant rambling on about many indie rock bands that never made it past their first EP, let alone a proper album. But I also wrote about older stuff, some things that I had just discovered and some that had been my friends and companions for years. Why would anyone care what some callow college kid thought about Television or Big Star? Well, perhaps no one really did. But it has always been my philosophy that any good criticism tells us just as much about the critic as it does the work of art being deconstructed. That's why we have so much loyalty to certain music writers, certain film critics, certain video game sites. We feel that we have a good grasp on what their tastes are. We understand not just upon what we agree, but also and equally as importantly where our tastes differ. I can read a negative Roger Ebert review and come away from it dying to see the film. Pretty much anything Pitchfork likes, I know I am going to hate. I will never approach their pure geek credentials, but when the Penny Arcade guys wax lyrical about a particular video game, I go out and play it.

I don't work for a college paper anymore. That means the gravy train is more or less over. Although I'm striving to make a living as a writer, progress has been less rapid than I might have hoped back when I was chugging away at two paying writing jobs at UC Berkeley. Nowadays I don't get big stacks of free CDs, advance copies of books, and preview screening passes. I do book reviews here and there and some local theater stuff but none of it is the kind of art that got me really excited about being a critic back when I was writing album reviews for the freshman/sophomore newspaper at New Trier High School (Winnetka, IL). The kind of stuff that I would write about even if I wasn't getting paid for it, in short.

That's what this is going to be. I'm going to watch my DVDs, listen to my records, game my games, TiVo stuff, and share my thoughts. Some of it will be new stuff. A lot of it will be old. Whatever will keep me occupied, keep my brain working, and justify the alarming amount of money I have spent over the years on "Complete Season X" DVD sets. Every now and then I might go see a local band, but I'm not promising anything. The music scene in Denver is not good, and I don't have much money. I hardly ever go to concerts these days except when Billboard pays me to, and then I owe them my thoughts so I can't really put them here. I wouldn't worry about it, I have plenty of other things about which to write. Maybe in time, people will want to send me things for free again. That would be sweet. I'm going to put my e-mail address up just in case.

This is the first day and I already have a list of like nine things in my head about which I can't wait to write. Hopefully I will be able to get to all of them before I collapse from exhaustion, other even more exciting ideas supplant them, or even more likely, something good comes on TV. Welcome to Western Homes. If you remember the old site (westernhomes.org), good for you. I hope this one lasts even longer, gets me recognized more, and inspires greater and more bitter feuds.

Postscript: I would be most ungracious to not acknowledge the support of the Toaster posse for making the long-discussed possibility of an entertainment-themed spinoff site a reality. Especially Ken Arneson. Ken is so awesome that if he was a TV show, he'd be an instant critical success, get persistently mispromoted and preempted by clueless network execs, get cancelled after 18 episodes, and then emerge several years later as a hugely beloved cult DVD hit.

And yeah, I still have a Colorado Rockies site that seems to keep on rolling no matter how bad the team gets. It's worth a look.