do-over

So, consider my last post a prologue of sorts. A warm up exercise. Please ignore it. Thanks. Not that it isn’t clever and well-written. Cuz it is. I mean, duh. I wrote it. What else could it be?
It is, however, a bit off-topic. I got a little carried away. Here’s what I meant to say:

Welcome.

Welcome to Not Hein, a forum for the review and discussion of things that are, in the parlance of my peculiar and awesome group of friends, “not hein”.

For the sake of the uninitiated, allow me to define…or, more precisely, expand. “Hein” is short for “heinous”. To a group of professional understaters, labeling something as “not hein” is high praise indeed. Roughly akin to writing a 37-stanza epic in perfect iambic tetrameter in its honor or naming your first child after it. (“Hi, Debbie, so good to see you. Have you met my daughter, Zombie Haiku?”)

For this, my first official posting on Not Hein, I’ve decided to, quite simply, compile a list of things that are worthy of such tributes. Some of them I may expand on at some point in the future. Some of them I may not. All of them are worthy of your consideration. I’m not one to toot my own horn, but all my friends say I have excellent taste. (Imaginary friends do so count. So there.) They do too. Pay attention to their contributions as well.

(Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to compile a list like this. In fact, my memory of my trip to Paris is forever marred by my last attempt. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to keep a travel diary and at the end of each entry I was keeping a running list of things that I had realized I liked. Some of them were directly drawn from my travels, some of them were more…esoteric…in their origins. To this day, I’m not sure what blueberry muffins have to do with the Eiffel Tower. All I do know is that I have the clearest memory of sitting on a wrought-iron bench between the glass pyramid of the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuilleries, inexplicably humming “Santa Baby” (let the record note that it was April, for Pete’s sake), and writing about blueberry muffins and Parisian metro entrances.

Yeah. Hopefully this experience won’t be anything like that. For either you or me.

Best of luck to us both. )

Also, please understand that the following list is not intended to be comprehensive and they are neither arranged in any particular order nor judged by any standardized criteria.

Without further ado…Things That Are Not Hein:

1. Sigur Ros in concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater
2. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
3. The Hound of Rowan (Neff)
4. Prison Break
5. The ‘What is Breakfast? Committee’ Blog
6. Penelope
7. Hairspray
8. Princess Academy (Hale)
9. The Office
10. The Fall
11. View With a Grain of Sand (Szymborska)
12. Pushing Daisies
13. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
14. Firefly
15. The Lightning Thief (Riordan)
16. The Divine Comedy (the band, not the work of literature…although I’m sure it’s great too)
17. The Thursday Next Series (Fforde)
18. Berkeley Square
19. Travis
20. cake with chocolate frosting
21. well, frankly, blueberry muffins
22. The Philadelphia Story
23. Wonderfalls
24. The Strokes
25. The Sherwood Ring (Pope)
26. His Girl Friday
27. Under the Jolly Roger (Meyer)
28. The Dark Knight
29. The Lord of the Rings soundtracks
30. Starbucks’ erstwhile Maple Macchiato
31. Howl’s Moving Castle (Jones)
32. Neverwhere (Gaiman)
33. Bloomability (Creech)
34. Sunshine (McKinley)
35. actual sunshine

That’s it. That’s all you get for now. Feel free to try out any of these and blame me if you don’t like them. And keep in mind, there are many more things in the universe that are not hein. How about you go find some for yourself?