Listen Up, You Bloc-Heads!!!

Rare is the post on this site that doesn't involve a review of some variety regarding an animated film of some vintage. In fact, this is only the third one in over six months that isn't built around a cartoon, but it is a necessary interruption in our normally scheduled program.

Since the beginning of the year, I have kept up this blog as a way of keeping myself in my writing trim, as it were; chiefly to force myself to constantly be at work on something, no matter how busy or lax the particular moment happened to be. It hasn't been easy for the last few months, especially after I worked myself into a certain style of lengthy essay each and every day, after beginning the project with each review sporting a mere two or three short paragraphs on each film. That truncated style has certainly gone the way of the dodo, but I could control this current wordiness if I were a better editor of my own voice. The thing is, I don't want to force brevity on my writing at this time. It is the very spirit of freestyling that I am trying to introduce into my writing, and besides, the bane of my existence has been my too-rigid self-editing reflex. As a matter of very definite fact, the true purpose of this blog was to help do away with that reflex, or at least quash about 75 percent of the hideous monster into the ground with the bootheel of my literary freedom.

So, what am I getting at here? I'm trying to explain that by no means was this blog meant to be an actual "daily" blog. And yet, until Thursday, I have kept it up as such. The blog is solely meant for my own personal growth, and while any visitors to it are welcomed heartily, I must stress that while I have strived thus far for historical accuracy and often do a good deal of research before writing each article, this is merely part of the exercise regimen that the site is meant to provide for me. I certainly write the posts to be read by anybody that is into animation -- after all, why else would a make a very public spectacle of myself? -- and the handful of people who have been so kind to check back every now and then and comment on the reviews, whether in the positive or the negative, and especially those who have provided even more information on each cartoon, I thank you all from the bottoms of my two hearts. (Sorry, a little too much Dr. Who lately...)

I must be making it seem like I am shutting down the blog, and you would only be partially right, but we would then be getting to my ultimate point here. I am stopping the site, but only briefly. Starting today, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc is going to be on hiatus until Sunday, September 6, 2006 when I shall return with a review of Max and Dave Fleischer's Ants in the Plants from 1940. (Ya gotta start somewhere, and it was the next one in line for review...)

The reasons for this much-needed battery-recharging break?

• The busted ankle isn't getting any better with all of my desk-sitting. So, a little time to properly rest the thing is well overdue.
• Other projects have sprung up for which I need to reserve more time.
• Increased temporary duties at work have melted my brain into mush for the past month or so.
  
• And, we are actually planning to take a decent-length vacation at some point in this hiatus.

I will still be posting sporadically on my other blogsite, The Cinema 4 Pylon, with the time that I do have for non-other-project-oriented writing this month. But the Cel Bloc is taking a short intermission, my friends.

Now, for the real reason that I am enacting this hiatus?

Jen read me the riot act regarding her wishes not to be wasting her vacation time waiting for me to finish writing every morning and every night. Very sound logic, that... don't want to wake up in a hotel in the middle of Arizona, New Mexico or Texas abandoned and girlfriendless.

See you in a month...