Jetpacks, Time Travel, and a Twenty-Year Ambition

Welcome to the first post of My Own Jetpack! I'm Dan, and I'll be your blogger for this evening. First of all, a little background on the name.

When I was six years old, I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant (I believe it was Mijare's in Pasadena, CA, though I could be mistaken. Whatever, if it wasn't, that place is still awesome,) and I was thinking about movies. I've always loved movies - my parents had a vast collection of VHS and Laser Discs (yes, we had a laser disc player) and I remember seeing classics like Gone With the Wind and even a lot of Charlie Chaplin movies, as well as being lucky enough to grow up in a veritable golden age of Disney animated musicals (Aladdin is my favorite, largely due to Robin Williams, though I also always loved the Arabian Nights.) Jurassic Park was the first movie I saw on its opening day (my mother had read the book and helped drum up excitement for it.)

Anyway, I'm sitting in this Mexican restaurant, and I had this thought: Movies are great, but you know what would be even greater? To come up with my own movie, and have people make that. If I did that, it would be the perfect movie, because it would be catered exactly to my tastes.

Now, as a six-year-old who grew up in a household that placed a high value on science fiction (as you'll notice, my first real post is going to be about a Star Trek series) and also someone who loved Peter Pan (both the Disney animated movie and the recorded stage production starring Mary Martin, which at the time I did not think of as anything other than an ordinary movie) I was obsessed with the idea of flying.

So, the story of My Own Jetpack arose: a kid, let's call him Dan, about six years old, who lived in the future (because if you're going to live anywhere, the future seems like a pretty awesome place to do it) is met by another, more mysterious kid who gives him a special jetpack (these things are pretty common in this era, but this one's special) that, when he takes off, sends him back in time.

The rest of the details are pretty foggy, though Dan (totally not me) goes through many different eras, like Medieval Europe or the time of the dinosaurs, and there's a running joke about people asking him for a credit card (wow, even at six I was writing satire about the rampant commercialization of everyday life,) until finally, he winds up back in the present (the future) and gives the jetpack to his pre-adventure self (where did it come from?!)

With this bullet-proof concept, I decided to become a film director when I grew up. I later found out that the director, while very important, wasn't really the person who came up with the initial idea for a story, and so I eventually revised that ambition to be a writer. And dear god, here I am, twenty years later, trying to do exactly that.

In my years, I've done a lot of "research" on writing, and one thing I've discovered is that I really like to write about that research (which involves consuming vast quantities of novels, films, and television - and video games, though there's a whole other blog for that.) So, here, you're going to find a lot of said writing.

I hope you enjoy it, and oh hey, happy almost New Year!