- The dog doesn’t die. It barely matters what dog or why; I just assume that any canine on my screen or in the pages of the book I’m reading has a large target on its back, and I enjoy being wrong about this.
- Mummies (animate, French-speaking mummies a plus, as I mentioned last Halloween).
- The Loch Ness Monster. I have watched some incredible crap just to see a few seconds of CGI Nessie. The same could be said for dragons.
- A small, informal list of actors I would follow to cinematic hell and back (in some cases literally: are we ever going to get a third Hellboy movie?). When I say informal, I mean even to me: until quite recently I thought Tim Curry was on it, yet my Wiseguy DVDs go unwatched.
- Spy crap. Any spy crap, really.
- Architecture. I didn’t like Numb3rs much at all, but stuck around far longer than I should have just to see the house.
- “They’re romantically involved, and they solve crimes!”
- Owls. There’s no good reason. I just like owls.
- Homages to film noir. Oddly, I often enjoy these more than the bona fide noirs themselves.
- Mythology/folklore: I was going to narrow this down to actual mythology/folklore, but the first season of Sleepy Hollow was so gut-bustingly funny in its zeal to make things up that I’m going to leave this a broad category.
- Any included reference to 1) Sherlock Holmes, 2) The Pirates of Penzance, 3) poetry, preferably Victorian, or 4) art.
So there you have it, just as I realize this list could in most respects be retitled “My Love For Castle Explained, Plus Owls.”
