This sounds familiar

Have you ever noticed that certain things are all popular around the same time. Like two people with all-too similar ideas. It appears in most popular mediums. I think I first noticed when two rivaling animation studios came up with very similar films. Anybody remember Pixar's A Bug's Life and Dreamworks' Antz? I thought it was just so odd that the two largest animation studios at the time would come up with the exact same idea. Sure the style and story details were different, as different as they could be when dealing with anthropomorphic insects dealing with size issues. I'm sure there was a good reason for this, maybe a script leak of some sort.

The next one I remember was Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. Two undersea adventures by, again, the two biggest studios. Then Flushed Away and Ratatouille which both feature rodents as their main characters. Again the story my not be all that similar but just too odd not to notice.
Then there are just general swings of popular themes like dystopian-future based movies based off of books aimed towards teens. Hunger Games and Divergent. Not that dystopian futures are anything new but added to them both staring young adults and both from books. This may be attributed to the Hollywood machine jumping on the bandwagon of whatever trend is making money or maybe it's something more Jungian in nature. Also, I know I'm kind of stuck on movie trends but it's what I know, is it me or is it every time there's a new Bond movie it's around the same time as a Mission Impossible movie?

Comics would probably be my other main source of consumerism and they've always had similar trends as well not to mention similar characters. Aquaman and Namor, Thanos and Darkseid. Martian Manhunter and the Vision.

Characters aside their stories aren't all that different either. How about an event where the villians take over the universe? Dark Avengers and Forever Evil (granted those were years apart). Maybe something more recent like DC's Convergence storyline where the multi-verse collapse on each other and Marvel's Secret Wars where ... the multi-verse collapse on each other. Don't even get me started with the re-numbering, although I think Marvel has outdone DC with this one. All-New, All-Different anyone?

Now, as I said, I'm not sure if these similarities are more due to the large groups of people all being on the same wave-length or more the fact that it's where the money is at at the time but it does seem weird sometimes. Then there are the trends that make a return like the Zombie trend from the 50's along with the giant monster movies as well. Maybe it's just a sign that certain trends will never die or maybe it's that you can never have too much of a good thing. Either way color me interested.

Been a While but...

Hey All,

Been a while since I had a chance to blog. Thought I should get back into the game. To recap my life, there's been an addition to my family. My son Sebastian was born on April 16, 2014. Being a father is easily the best thing I've ever done. I feel like I could write novels on this past year's experiences. Maybe someday I will.

So many things to talk about and I'll probably try and touch on them in later posts. And since I don't want to cheapen the news of my son's birth I'll have to do just that. But I'm excited about what the future will bring and all the experiences of being a new dad. I feel truly blessed.