Now I'm not really a fan of "genre fiction" or even the standard "genre film." Anyone who has taken a "genre" class with me will probably know what I'm talking about when I say it's too unfair for so much art to be placed into one simple category. However, I have one huge exception to this rule. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am one heck of a sucker for the classic detective story. I'm talking the true, gritty kind of detective story. The kind where it's never day time, in the city where it's always foggy, the men all wear hats and have at least one gun in their coats and the women love you, then they don't, then they love, then they tell you that they never loved you, but then you find out it was all a ruse, and yes, they always did love you. But they might kill you, if any male in the area doesn't do it first. 

Have you ever read anything by Dashiell Hammet? The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, The Thin Man, all classic books. Normally, I don't jump on board "the author train" as I like to call it, but like I said, I'm a sucker for this stuff. Radio dramas were the stuff my dreams were made of, I wished to live that life. 

I'll tell you a secret. Even today, after the romanticism of this 1940's fedora-wearing, knuckle-bleeding, dive-bar bustin' was put in a safe place in the back of my mind, I still indulge in this world when the mood strikes. How, you may ask? Well I pull out my magnum, and— no, no, no... Actually, I put on my fedora and brass knuckles and slug whoever— no...

Here's the truth, moms and dads, kids and grads, I often have an interior monologue running in my head narrating things that are happening to me in the past tense. Which, you can imagine, is difficult to do while things are happening. But you know what? It's awesome. So if you ever say anything interesting to me and I respond by kind of squinting and going silent, don't interrupt! I'm narrating, and you my friend, have just become a main character. 

But I do kill those who get in my way. Just a heads up.