Movie Watching by Genre: Video and Theater

On a Saturday night at the end of August, I rented the movie Catfish. It was a film I had wanted to see for a long while that I was waiting to hit the cheaper backlist video section. It threw me into a bit of a funk, so I'm glad I didn't get something more cheery or sexy. I haven't been watching many films lately mostly for that reason, that they remind me how lonely I am. At least I have a number of friends.

Catfish still managed to remind me of such, only it did so not by presenting a world where people find perfect love but where the Internet proves to be a place for deceit and self-deceit. It seems the only type of dating I'm capable of and one that is always fraught with the same lack of success that dogs me in real life, so much so that when something actually seems to be working, I can't help but think there's a catch, because romance simply doesn't happen to me. Does it happen to anyone? It seems to. Friends of mine have girlfriends--and they are gals they actually like.

Anyway, Catfish was the second film I saw in a week, the other being Septian, a film in which a couple of my friends appear (it showed on the big screen one night, so that's when I went). These were the first films I'd seen since February.

I had thought I hadn't seen many movies at all this year, but looking back at my list, I've actually seen quite a few--it's just that most of them have been on video. I've only had access to a DVD/video player since 2005 or so, which means that before then, if I wanted to see a film, I had to go to a theater. I thought it would be interesting to see how home video access has impacted movie watching.

The big movie watching took place in the early 2000s. After I got access to video, it appears that the number of films watched stayed constant for a while but that the video and move theater split the total. In recent years, however, the numbers have gone down for all.

Also of interest is what genres of films I watch. *Catfish* was a documentary. Am I more prone to watch foreign films or documentaries on video than in the theater? Let's see.

Theater

Video

So it appears that the numbers correspond on video and theater somewhat closely, though I am slightly more prone to rent a documentary than see it in the theater. Such makes sense, given the price differential. Even I figure the documentary is going to be visually less impressive and thus something better slated for small-screen pricing.

As for why the numbers drop off. My theory is that I was more motivated to see a film when I had access to movies only in the theater--that is, I had to catch the film before it disappeared forever. Now, I can reason that I'll catch it later on video, but by then, often, my interest has wained.

States I've Been To

I've been to most of the U.S. states. I'm missing, however, a huge chunk right at the top of the country, and another swath in the nation's mid-Atlantic region, as is evidenced in this map of the states to which I've been. The darker highlights represent those states in which I've spent at least twenty-four consecutive hours. The number of states in which I've done this actually surprised me, as I thought there were more states of the type like Oklahoma, where I spent probably just an hour--one Sunday, when I was living in Texas, I drove up and across the border to eat at Carl's Jr., just to be able to say I'd been to the old Indian Territory.



But twenty-four consecutive hours may not even be the best way to describe legitimately large amounts of time--after all, some states I may not have spent a consecutive twenty-four hours in, but I've so often been through them that I probably have spent more than twenty-four hours in total. Another way to think of time spent might be to color those dark the states that I've spent a night in:



To what extent are the states that I've visited a reflection of the places where I've lived? I thought that might present an interesting map in itself, and it does. Notice that I've spent the majority of my life in the band of sunbelt states, and my travels mimic that to a degree. Those states farthest from where I lived are often those I haven't journey to.



If I were to color this map as it would have appeared when I was twenty, before I took a trip by train across the nation, the highlighted states would be almost entirely in the west, like this:



Even after that trip, the other states wouldn't fill in for years, because I was still until age twenty-four a California only resident:



One day, perhaps, I'll get to the other twelve states I'm missing. I hope I don't have to move to North Dakota to do it though.

Second Dates

So after a first date in August, while I was pondering whether there'd be a follow-up, I decided to go review how other first dates had gone and whether there had been follow-ups to those. I'd say my record is pretty good for women not of my religious faith, which is strange--I'd think second dates more likely if we actually share religion, but not the case. What I can say is that pretty much each set of repeated dates has led, ultimately, to a friendship. In fact, sometimes I have difficulty even thinking of these outings as dates, since it was clear we didn't have enough in common in terms of values to make a go at a relationship. But I guess the woman enjoyed my company enough that a mere friendship was fine. Here's the breakdown:

Nonchurch Second Dates

Shared-Faith Second Dates

The statistics grow slightly more interesting with third dates and with friendships developing. With nonchurch women, the level of interest and dropoff stays virtually the same, whereas with women of the same faith, pretty much the third date has been a given if I asked. Meanwhile, friendships with such women, even those who rejected further dates after the first date, stayed in place with about the same percentage as those not of the same faith.

Nonchurch Third Dates

Nonchurch Friendships Resulting Sometime after Second Date

Church Third Dates

Church Friendships Resulting Sometime after Second Date

Online Dating

So back in August I went out on a terrific date with a terrific woman. We met through OKCupid. This came out of nowhere, since I don't really troll the online dating sites anymore, my hope in finding anyone on such a site long since dispersed. The issue is largely that my own values are so out of sync with those of most people that next to no profiles match what I'm looking for. I'm a Christian, but I'm not a mainstream Christian, which means that I'm not really a Christian in the sense that most people are at all. These services always want to set me up with Baptists or someone of that ilk, but there is no way that would work because our beliefs and practices are nowhere near the same. I actually tend to feel more comfortable with nonreligious people, but there, of course, religion is still an issue. One might put me in with the Messianic Jewish camp--it's where I fit in closest with the various "labels" you can find on some of these sites--but if anyone else even fits in that category, they're usually in Romania or some out-of-the-way place like that.

This was a date unlike any I've had in a while. Generally, when I go out with women, I (1) know them pretty well already and so know what I'm getting into, (2) don't have similar values and so know the date is not going to lead to anything serious, even if we have fun, (3) sense that one or the other of us isn't really into this from the get-go, and/or (4) am out with someone in a city far away where the only possibility for a relationship is a long-distance one that probably won't come to fruition. In the first case, it's not exactly like a date in the same way; it's more like old friends getting together. Most of the time, therefore, my "friend" status has already been established (because one or the other of us--or maybe both--has already declared a desire to be just friends), which cuts down on the potential that the event might turn into more; in fact, it makes me wonder whether what we're doing can even be called a date. (When I was younger, such a thing might have been a date--for there were women I went out with who were friends I'd have considered a relationship with--but now that I'm older and more marriage minded, if I'd found someone who I was interested in who knew me well enough and wanted to date me, um, I think I'd probably be married.)

But here was a woman who was attractive, who seemed interested in getting to know me, who I was interested in getting to know, and who I in fact did not know hardly at all outside of a handful of e-mails and a short phonecall and who could actually one day end up living here in this area. One thing I did know, however: we both had similar religious views. This meant that the date could actually lead to a second one. Wow--to date with potential.

(Alas, since then, she's moved on to other places, and so far I've failed to score a second date. But maybe one day if/when she returns.)

So the August date got me to thinking about how many women I've met from online dating sites over the years and which sites led to the most meetings. The numbers here actually skew toward Yahoo! Personals, which doesn't even exist anymore, because most of my online dating was done back when I was in Texas, new to the Internet, and more hopeful (and perhaps a little more keen on dating with no real goal other than to have a fun time out):
That's not a lot, though I did probably forget to include a couple given how many years ago I started using the Internet to try to find dates. It's been very hard for me to get a date from online, but given my rather reserved temperament, it's been even harder to find dates in real life, unless I happened to know the person from a shared activity like school, work, or church. Back when I was putting forth more effort online, I probably averaged one first date for every one hundred women I contacted. Part of this probably has to do with the fact that it was already fairly clear I wasn't a match--because there were no matches to be had.

If one adds singles sites associated specifically with my church, the number of women I've met through online databases, however, would grow exponentially (and is thus hard to track), but the number I've met locally (as opposed to traveling to a singles activity or specifically to meet the person) and gotten a date with (as opposed to exchanging a couple of e-mails that ended up going nowhere) would be extremely small. In fact, I can think of only two in a local area, and in one of those cases, the woman just didn't seem to want to pursue anything more (believe me, I would have had she let me), and in the other, I wasn't that interested and never got much of a vibe that the woman was that interested either. Most often, though, I already know the local women, when they exist, because I see them at church. In the cases I hadn't known them and thus was out with a near stranger, they were in different organizations or I had just moved.

Acceptances, Rejections, and Submissions by Publication Length

My flash "Biology" appears here now in the latest Emprise Review.

I've long thought that longer stories were harder to publish than shorter ones, but at least for me, that apparently is not true--it's only the second under-500-word story I've published. Now it is true that a shorter story can be written faster, and that may be why so many folks write the shorter pieces, but in terms of publication, not necessarily so. That may well be that at the shorter length one has more competition. That said, when it comes to publication, a print journal can publish substantially more short pieces than long ones, which would offset that. Maybe it's just that my longer work is simply better written that the publications tend not to skew any toward the shorter material.

Anyway, in an attempt to see whether my preconceptions were right, I decided to graph a few items. Here is a chart showing the breakdown of how many stories of each length have seen publication:
Clearly, the length that is working best for me in terms of publication is the 1,001-2,000 range. However, a quick look how many rejections I have gotten for each length of story also reveals that for the same length of stories that have gotten the most acceptances, I have also gotten close to the most rejections. The exception here is 5,001-7,500, which outpaces them all; 4,001-5,000 still manages third, however.
Perhaps, it's just that the stories that I've submitted mostly congregated in these same ranges. Let's see:
Indeed, I do have more stories in the 1,001-2,000 range than in any other, but note also the the 5,001-7,500 and 2,001-3,000 come in third here. In that case, 4,001-5,000 is working really well for me.

Let's look at it on a percentage basis. The black represents the percentage of submissions in each length that have actually been accepted. The gray represents the percent of stories of a given length that I've submitted that have eventually been accepted (that is, I may have sent out five stories in the 4,001-5,000 range a total of sixty times, amounting to a 4.5 percent acceptance rate, even while 60 percent [i.e., three] of the stories were eventually accepted).
Interestingly, pretty much across the board of all lengths, I have about 4 percent to 5 percent acceptance rate (really, not too bad considering). The exceptions are the freaky 501-1,000 range (but note also the comparatively few stories that actually have been submitted in that range, as denoted in the chart above) and anything over 5,000 words. Mind you, most of the stories over 5,000 words gravitate to the south end of that, but long length does seem a factor in percentage rejection.