Steven Rubio's Online Life

acting!

We miss our friend Arthur, whose acting exploits in the Bay Area were a regular feature on this blog for a few years. Arthur has moved to Los Angeles, where he is in the USC MFA in Acting program. He has begun blogging again after a long absence, and it’s good to read his voice as he describes what it’s like in the program. His life is full enough that I don’t suppose we can count on him being as obsessive with his blog posts as I am with mine, but while they are there, I recommend them: Artfan’s Lair. Here’s a sample:

[I]n the last few months I've experienced moments when I've acted in a way that I've never acted before in my life. In those moments I felt I wasn't standing there saying the words, I was needing to say the words, there was something I was desperate to say and I was saying it. And that something was my text. It was thrilling, bewildering, and exhausting. And watching the ten other people in my class go through the same process? It was the most engaging theatre I've ever been a part of.

(Since I am far more starstruck than Arthur will ever be, I’ll just add that the “Andy” he refers to later in the above post is Andrew Robinson, who is the current director of the program. I’ve been told that for many people, Robinson is best-known for his continuing role in Deep Space Nine, but for people like me, he’ll always be the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry.)

vacation

I'll be on the road until next Sunday. Internet access won't be assured ... my phone should keep me up to date, but I don't know how much I'll post from it. My laptop will also be useful whenever I'm staying at a place with wi-fi.

favorites

TypePad has added a couple of features that I think I’ll try out. They appear at the bottom of every post. The most obvious is “Tweet This!”, which will take you to Twitter with the title and URL of the post already in your status update box.

The other addition is “Favorite.” I’m not sure how useful this is for readers, and you’ll have to sign in via TypePad, Twitter, Facebook, or OpenID to tag a Favorite. But, if I understand it right, I will be able to see what posts, if any, get Favorite tags, which I do imagine could be useful. So feel free to try it out, if I ever post anything good enough.

i read the news today, oh boy

I use the word “news” advisedly here, since I wanted to draw your attention to two blogs of note … they are “news” because I read them in my news reader, how’s that? Google Reader has a “trends” page that offers stats about your reading habits. One thing stood out: most of the subscriptions on my “Top Ten” list (sorted by how many posts I actually read, as opposed to ones I skipped) go unread by me. For instance, I subscribe to Lifehacker, and they crank out a lot of posts each day, but I only read 18% of those posts.

One blog I have mentioned before is “A plain blog about politics” by Jonathan Bernstein. I bring it up again here because while Jonathan doesn’t post as often as Lifehacker (there’s only one of him, and lots of people on Lifehacker), I have read 100% of what he has written. This is, as you can imagine, a record. I mentioned to Jonathan earlier today that when I was listening to some pundits on the radio, I knew more about what they were discussing because I had his blog for background material. His writing on the process of creating a health-care reform measure has been fascinating. I admit that at times I want to pull my hair out as I read him … he understands the process in some detail, and he is always looking several steps down the road, while I want things done now, exactly my way. The result is that I am reading more about mainstream Democratic thought than I have in years, and while I differ at times from Jonathan on philosophies, I have a much better understanding of how someone could come to a reasoned position as a centrist.

I’d also like to mention a site where I have read 97% of what they post. To be honest, I don’t know where that other 3% went, because I love “If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats” and read it religiously. It’s not the kind of site that would end up in these “news” posts of mine … the posts are made up almost entire of pictures (photos, usually) with no comments other than identifiers (although there is a comments section where people can chime in). The folks at this site (five people are listed, but I tend to associate it with “Tom Sutpen”) offer what they call “An Ongoing Series of Cultural and Personal Observations.” The posts fall into a wide variety of categories that are thematic in nature … “Norman Rockwell Saved from Drowning,” “Artists in Action,” or “Tricky: Scenes from a Life.” Sometimes you’ll see something you recognize, other times you’ll find something new-to-you and perfect.

Google Reader doesn’t lie … these two sites are always worth checking out.

comments bug

Just a quick note that there is a bug in the comments here that prevents TypePad from sending me an email when someone posts a comment. Supposedly a fix is in the works, but in the meantime, if you leave a brilliant comment and I don't respond, it's probably because I didn't see it yet.

new blog of note

Now is as good a time as any to mention Jonathan Bernstein’s “plain blog about politics.” Jonathan comes at his subject from a mostly mainstream Democratic position, but he does it in such a reasonable and intelligent way that he often convinces me to tone down my more extremist rants. Today’s post is a good example. Jonathan is also pretty much the best baseball writer/thinker I know who isn’t working in the field of baseball analysis. His blog is definitely one for the feed reader.

another fifteen minutes, mog edition (bruce content)

As we get pumped up for tomorrow night's Bruce concert, I find that my post about Working on a Dream has been made a "Featured Post" over on MOG. (I cross-post my Random Tens and assorted other music posts.)

return of the keyword analysis

I haven't done this for awhile: looking at the search terms that bring people to my blog. I thought to check it out, see if my recent screed about that vitamin company had an effect. Sure enough, "klee irwin" is the #2 search phrase leading folks here over the past week or so. The #1 is "best shows on tv," which is interesting and not so surprising, I suppose. Irwin's impact was actually greater than you'd think at first glance ... #4 on the list was "klee irwin fraud," and "klee irwin scam" was tied for #5.

Longtime readers will remember that there are always a lot of people coming to my blog hoping to find naked celebrities. Among the recent search keywords that attracted visitors are:

kristin proctor (OK, it doesn't say "nude" but we all know what they were looking for)

robin weigert nude

kristin proctor thread

kristin proctor nude

the rapture mimi rogers (if it just said "the rapture" or "mimi rogers" I wouldn't count it, but put them together and my guess is they're interested in Mimi's boobs)

christina hendricks vital stats

christina hendricks vital statistics

kristin proctor video topless

polly walker's tits

henry simmons penis

And finally, for those of you wondering if The Man is still bringing visitors, I give you the following search strings, all of which brought folks to my blog:

milton berle dick, milton berle penis, pictures of milton berle's penis

Some search terms I found particularly interesting:

adebisi hat (this actually tied for #7), barry gifford asa, i was down in savannah eatin cream, vic mackey vs. dexter, anal leakage oily substance, because the usa is a mother fucking piece of shit not, tony peluso guitarist.

One last note ... none of these individually got enough hits to make the top of the list, but combined they tell you what a certain section of the population is wondering about:

piano doesn't sound like all along the watchtower, all along the watchtower galactica, galactica watchtower tab, watchtower battlestar tab, bsg all along the watchtower, watchtower battlestar galactica

happy birthday online life

Today marks the seven-year anniversary of this blog, which began on Sunday, January 6, 2002. The first post came at 9:35 in the morning, and was a benign look at the nothingness of my life, online or other. By the end of that first day, I'd posted three more times ... a picture of Robin standing next to a cactus (and a "Bruce Song of the Day"), a two-sentence review of A Night with Lou Reed, and a recap of the day's activities (Jillian came over for dinner and we watched American Graffiti).

I assume by the time I'd gotten that first post out of the way, I'd read the Chronicle. The front page had a story on Bush promoting a "spirit of unity." The big story in the sports section was the Giants' signing of Reggie Sanders ... Sanders was a solid contributor to the team that went to the World Series. In the Pink Section, Aidin Vaziri interviewed Rick James, kicking things off with the following question: "On the cover of 'Street Songs' you have braided Masai hair, thigh-high red leather boots and a white Rickenbacker guitar. Were you supposed to be a hooker or pimp or what?"

Happy birthday, Steven Rubio's Online Life!

dr. bob's nightmare

A friend has started a blog, and it's so delightful I immediately added it to my feed reader, where I can enjoy the near-daily postings of a man who has lived an interesting life and has the writing chops to make the tales of his adventures well worth reading on a regular basis. It's called Dr. Bob's Nightmare, and I encourage folks to check it out. It's nothing like my own blog ... rather than spew nonsense about whatever just crossed his mind, Gabby spends his time writing about the past, and his writing is so exquisite that I was startled to find he just cranks 'em out without much revision. I suspect he has enough stories to make this a long-lasting blog writing project. I can't wait to see what's next. Here's the opening to his recent post on odors and memory, which, appropriately enough, has a quote from Proust at the top:

Neurobiologists say that we have more than 1,000 different sensors inside our nose, located at eye level, enabling us to identify more than 10,000 distinct odors. Since the cells in the nose are short-lived and frequently replaced, the researchers claim that olfactory codes must be mapped in the brain to enable us to associate the smells with phenomena. Then the brain attaches linguistic information so that we have words for them. The catalog can be extensive. Wine aficionados probably have a broader memory vocabulary than I have for crushed grapes. While the associations seem instantaneous, they have taken a lifetime to form, and we probably inherit genetic memory from ages ago when we had to sort out meat and berries for spoilage.

My favorite earliest memory is of honeysuckle hedges along the walkways of a motel in San Diego.