Over the past few weeks there have been several new members signing up for Open Salon. What they all had in common was that they said they were inspired to start a blog by the movie Julie and Julia. Well, I for one was intrigued.

I didn't have any plans to see the movie, it seemed a little to Chick Flick-esque for my tastes, or as a friend of mine put it, "my feminine side left and took my inner child with her." But if a movie could encourage a broad spectrum of people to take the big risk of hanging themselves out there I would put the testosterone on hold for a couple of hours and see what the buzz was all about.

I already knew the basis of the storyline, Julie Powell decides to prepare every recipe in Julia Child's book Mastering The Art of French Cooking and blog about it. At the same time there is the parallel story of Julia Child and how she became The French Chef. Woo woo, a movie about cooking and blogging, sounds like a thrill a minute and I couldn't wait.

OK, so it's a great movie, if you are a guy and trying to score points go ahead and watch it with your special someone. You'll like it and then you can make her let you watch Inglourious Basterds, "C'mon babe, I watched your film." Also Amy Adams was robbed as far as the Golden Globes go, any actress who can stand out in a movie with Meryl Streep deserves the recognition.

I learned a few thing from the movie, you should really try to learn something from everything in life, of course what  I mostly learn is "I'm never going to do that again!" Anyhow here's what I learned. Julia Child was really tall, 6 foot 2. The reason she went into French cooking was because she was bored. And I could never be a chef because my cooking consists of a dash of this a pinch of that, add until you can smell it, mix until it feels right and bake it until it's done. I just check out recipes for the base ingredients and what temperature to set the oven at.

The second thing I learned was that people blog for a reason, Julie Powell did it to maintain her sanity. I realized that I lack purpose, my blog is like a sailing ship with no rudder, I post wherever the wind takes me. Should I set a purpose? Should I set a goal for the year of 2010 and write about it? The problem is that usually my main reason for doing something is a sense of revenge, heck what I consider to be my best drawing was done to show up a fellow artist, and ironically less than a dozen people have ever seen it since I got over my need for revenge. Oh well, so far the shotgun approach has worked out just find, mostly, so I guess I will spend the rest of the week contemplating a purpose. Meanwhile I've been considering watching Men Who Stare At Goats, I don't think that movie has a deeper meaning.

And in case you are interested, Julie Powell's original blog is still available;

The Julie/Julia Project