Steven Rubio's Online Life

drumroll for my blogroll

Time.com has posted their “First Annual Blog Index”, what they consider the 25 best out there (along with the five most overrated blogs). While I often come across material from those 25 blogs via other links, I do not have any of them in my Google Reader RSS feed, so I guess I’m an outlier. So, using the Reader’s “Trends” function, here are some blogs/websites I actually do read:

• TV Squad (156 posts read over the past 30 days, 11% of the available posts): This is mostly for Maureen Ryan … I still call it “TV Squad” even though it has been taken over by HuffPost.
• Deadspin (135 posts, 20% of available): “Sports News Without Access, Favor, or Discretion”
• SB Nation Bay Area (130 read, 19% of available): Another sports site; “Pro Quality, Fan Perspective.”
• McCovey Chronicles (82 read, 62%): SF Giants site.
• A plain blog about politics (77 read, 82%): Smart political scientist blogging from a centrist Democratic perspective.
• Salon.com (67 read, 17%): I read Salon a lot more than this shows, because I visit the website multiple times each day, and those don’t show up in Reader.
• If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger There’d Be a Whole Lot of Copycats (64 read, 100%): You can tell how much I love this site by the 100% read figures. Everyone should have this in their feed reader.
• Baseball Prospectus (54, 18%): Like with Salon, I visit the BP site several times a day, so the % figures don’t reflect how much time I spend there.
• ESPN.com (48, 35%): This doesn’t count the ESPN baseball and soccer pages, which I visit a billion times a day.
• Feministing (44, 44%): A new-to-me blog that is already climbing my list of good reads; “Young Feminists Blogging, Organizing, Kicking Ass”.

I don’t actually know how Google Reader computes these things, so I’ll add two honorable mentions that turn up on a list titled “Clicked” … not sure what that means, but I read these whenever something is actually posted there, which is frequently in Alan’s case, not-so-frequently in Tim’s case:

• What’s Alan Watching: Alan Sepinwall on TV.
• Bastard Machine: Tim Goodman on TV.

In most cases, I recommend the above dozen sites if you are interested in the subject matter. I think “A plain blog” and “Feministing” are worth reading, even if you don’t think you’d agree with what you’d read … I find myself disagreeing with “A plain blog” on a regular basis, but I love reading it just the same. And one more time, I highly recommend “Gunslinger” … they don’t post every day, but every post is a delight, and it’s almost all photos, so you don’t have to worry about reading too much, if that’s your problem.

blogging

I’m listening to an interview with Bill James, conducted by Bill Simmons. James talks quite a bit about his early years, when he self-published his Abstracts for a limited audience (he sold 75 copies of his first book). He describes what he was doing as “blogging” … he didn’t belong to any institutions, so he was free to write about what interested him (in his case, baseball). I’m not sure he knew when he sold those 75 copies that one day he’d be, well, Bill James. But I can remember him saying more than once that he has always assumed if he was interested in something, there were probably other people who were interested in the same thing. They would be, in effect, his audience, even if they didn’t exist yet (well, they existed as humans, but they didn’t yet exist as his audience).

I am not Bill James. I’ve been writing this blog for ten years, and even now, I don’t suppose I have 75 readers … a dozen regulars if I’m being kind to myself. Ten years after Bill James sold 75 copies of his first book, he had been with a major publishing company for most of the 80s, and had established himself as the biggest name in baseball analysis.

But I really connected with his comparison of his early work to blogging. That’s a standard, overused comparison … it seems like everyone from the pre-Internet era is labeled, at some point, a “blogger before there was blogging”. What connected with me, though, is the way he wrote about whatever interested him. I often think of blogging as the ultimate in navel gazing, all of us blathering away as if we were the center of the world. I’ve never had an answer for anyone who asked me why I bother, especially after a decade. I still don’t have an answer, but I have a connection. I don’t blog because I want to become Bill James, but I blog in a way similar to how Bill James wrote (and writes … he still seeks out things that interest him).

music friday

Today is the 10th anniversary of this blog.

This is post #6237. Last I looked, I’d had 6,789 comments. I don’t get as many comments now … people usually comment on Facebook or Google+ when I cross-post.

Usually on these anniversary posts, I link to the very first post:

OK, here goes. Tried installing MovableType yesterday ... I'm not good enough.

My chair has broken rollers. As I type this, the stereo is playing "Prisoner of Love" by Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra featuring Lena Horne. Robin is in the livingroom reading the Sunday paper and steaming to help her sinuses. Jillian's coming over tonight for dinner and DVD.

I never did figure out MovableType, but I did end up on TypePad, which is MovableType for Dummies. The blog started on Blogger, which at the time had not yet been bought by Google.

The chair I am sitting in today does not have broken rollers. On the other hand, the seat is broken, as is the cover for the left armrest.

I didn’t include a video for the Teddy Wilson track … this blog predates YouTube by more than three years. As I type this, I’m listening to “Prisoner of Love”, this time by James Brown. Not on the stereo, though … that’s reserved mostly for TV and movies. I’m listening to a stream from Spotify.

It’s Thursday, not Sunday, so Robin isn’t reading the Sunday paper. We still get that paper … she reads it in the bedroom now. We don’t get the paper any other day of the week, though, at least, not hard copy. I read it online, she read it on her Kindle until a couple of weeks ago when she switched to a Nook. She still steams for her sinuses on occasion, but we sleep every night with a humidifier running, so it’s not as necessary.

Jillian still comes over for dinner. Doug comes, too … this blog started about 4 1/2 months before he asked her out for the first time. We usually eat out, rather than here, although sometimes we get take out. We hardly ever watch DVDs, but we watch Blu-rays and TV shows from the DVR.

Things haven’t changed much over the last ten years. Will I still be blogging on January 6, 2022?

Since it’s Music Friday, here are some YouTube selections. First, Teddy Wilson doing “Prisoner of Love” featuring Lena Horne:

Now, James Brown with his own “Prisoner of Love”:

Since I started this blog, I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen ten times. In the earlier days, Bruce used to say he was a prisoner of rock ‘n’ roll. If you wait 11 or so minutes, you’ll hear him testify to that fact here. Or, if you wonder why old farts like me still speak wistfully of 1978 … when I say I'm always looking for a moment of transcendence at a concert, I mean I'm always looking for Bruce in '78:

uncle miltie’s appendage

Time for another look at the search terms that bring people to this blog. These come from the last month.

Top Five Search Keywords:

1. grace of my heart
2. magic trip
3. curb
4. marianne faithfull
5. klee irwin

I know Jeff Pike will be glad to see #1 on that list, since he chose it at #39 on the list of 50 Favorite Films he and I and Phil Dellio are creating over on Facebook.

Klee Irwin deserves special commendation. If I combine all of the times he appears in the keyword list (for instance, “klee irwin scam” is tied for 14th on the list), he ties “grace of my heart” at the top.

Some long-time favorites are here:

• “adebisi hat” (9 visits in last month), “how does adebisi’s hat stay on” (4 visits), “oz adebisi hat” (3), and, with one visit each, “adebisi hat oz”, “adebisi oz hat”, “adebisi’s hat”, “adebisi’s hat how to”, “buy adebisi hat”, “hat stay on adebisi’s head”, and “how did the hat stay on adebisi’s head”. (There are also searches for “adabisi” and “adibisi”.)
• “goodbye to love guitar solo” (4), “tony peluso” (4), “tony peluso guitarist” (2), and “tony paluso” (1).
• “fanta de limon en usa” (4), “fanta lemon” (2), “fanta limon usa” (2), and seven other fanta limon searches that were used only once.

But let’s get to what everyone is apparently looking for: naked celebrities. Once again, I remind you that there are no actual pictures of naked celebrities on this site. That doesn’t stop Google from sending folks my way.

Marianne Faithfull made #4 on this list. I’ll pretend those people were interested in her music. But I also got “marianne faithfull tits”, “marianne faithfull hot”, “marianne faithfull photos”,  and “marianne faithfulls’ jugs”.

Here are some others, including many long-time faves:

“helen mirren tits”, “’60s tits”, “60s helen mirren”, “christina hendricks nude”, “christina hendricks sex”, “dirk kuyt’s curly hair” (OK, that’s not really about a naked celebrity), “eiko matsuda actress sex movie online watch full movie”, “helem mirren tits”, “helen mirren 60s”, “helen mirren body of the year”, “kristin proctor topless wire scene,” “kristin proctor video,” “kristen proctor wire scene”, “silas botwin sex”

I think it’s safe to say that Helen(m) Mirren reigns supreme.

If you’ve read this far, you know how I’ll finish this post. Here are all of the search terms that have led people to my blog looking for information on … well, you know:

“milton berle penis”, “milton berles penis”, “milton berle penis photo”, “milton berle big dick”, “milton berle cock pictures”, “milton berle nude”, “milton berle nude photos”, “milton berle penis images”, “milton berle penis pic”, “milton berle penis pic”, “milton berle penis picture”, “milton berle the legend”, “milton berle’s big cock”, “milton berles dick”, “nude pic milton berle”, “photo of milton berle’s penis”, “pic of milton burl penis,” “picture of milton burrows penis”, “pictures of milton berle’s dick”

Whew. Thanks for visiting!

i am (in)souciant

Some old friends of mine started a new magazine in the last year called Souciant, “a magazine of politics and culture. Or culture and politics. It all depends on your starting point.” With the encouragement of Charlie Bertsch, I have a piece up on the Souciant web site called “Speakers, Cornered” that grew out of something I posted here last week. I think it’s a good piece, and it’s exciting to have it on Souciant, which is worth checking out in any event.

I couldn’t have done it without Charlie, who first got me to write it and then made editorial suggestions that raised it a level or two.

As I told one of my friends at the magazine, a professor once told me I was “insouciant”. Now that is finally true … I am indeed in Souciant.

my own private hyde park

We were at a burger joint yesterday afternoon, waiting for our order. A guy who was also waiting saw my cap and said, “Go Giants!” He quickly added that he didn’t actually know anything about the sport, but he knew to say “Go Giants!” He had an English accent, so I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t much of a sports fan, or if he just lacked knowledge of the American game. He answered my thoughts quickly, kissing a button on his jacket and saying “I love football, and I love Chelsea.”

I mentioned that Liverpool was my favorite English team, and that got him on a roll. As we waited for our food, he gave me a brief history of the game, all as a way of explaining that if you didn’t love Liverpool, you didn’t love football. His point was that Liverpool has a great history, that they are an integral part of the traditions of the game, and that you had to love them, even if Chelsea was your team, even if, he said over my objections, your team was Everton, Liverpool’s great rivals.

His larger point, which he emphasized several times, was that he loved football first, and Chelsea second.

I understand his argument in the abstract. Sure, I root for Liverpool, but they aren’t a part of my heart and soul, and if they lose because the other team plays attractive soccer, I’m not all that upset. Mexico is our great rival on the international stage, and everyone except their fans hates Manchester United, but when the great young Mexican Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez does well for Man U, I admit I am delighted.

But when it comes to the Giants, baseball comes second. There is nothing abstract about it.

Still, it was fun listening to this guy, rather like having an amiable version of Hyde Park show up at the Smokehouse. He had one other story to tell, marginally related, I suppose. He said he had just come from a nearby gay bar, where his role was “token straight guy.” He loved that bar (which Robin and I frequented as well in our drinking days back in the 70s and 80s), because of the conversations he had with women. You see, because the women were gay, it was already understood that he wasn’t trying to pick up on them, and so he could concentrate on being a delightful bar companion. But, as was clear from our own brief chat, he did most of the talking with the women. As he explained it, he’d go on and on about his favorite topic, English football. And when I suggested that perhaps they weren’t exactly enthralled with the topic, he said no, he was very popular, because everyone enjoyed a situation where no one was trying to pick up on anyone else.

I don’t know what the moral is. Maybe this: if you are a straight male American soccer fan, and your friends hate it when you jabber on about the sport, just go to a bar frequented by lesbians. They’ll be happy to talk footy with you all night long. And when you realize that isn’t working, move to London and make Hyde Park into your regular gig.

Or start a blog. According to Wikipedia, “A modern form of the soapbox is a blog: a website on which a user publishes one's thoughts to whomever reads the page.” Finally, I understand what I’ve been doing here the last 8 1/2 years.

five years ago today

From a “friday random ten” post on January 6, 2006:

6. Ice Cube, "Fuck Dying." That's a title I can get behind.

one reason to keep blogging

I’m going to need a lot more than 140 characters when Barry Bonds doesn’t make the Hall of Fame.

happy birthday, steven rubio’s online life

It was nine years ago today that I started this blog. I have no idea why it’s still here. I still don’t know who my audience is, and thus I don’t know for whom I am writing. As I noted in a post a couple of days ago, my readership has increased solely because I cross-post to Facebook, which is the template in 2011 for the Place We Expose Ourselves.

From Day One, I have tried to be true to this blog’s Pauline Kael pull quote, “I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.” If you look at the “category cloud” on the left side of the blog, you’ll see that yes, many of my posts are personal, but the most frequent categories are music and television and sports, and film and current affairs are about as frequent as “personal” as well. In short, I believe this blog is my memoir, not because I write directly about personal things, but because I write about myself when I write about music and television and sport and film and current affairs.

Nine years in, there is no escaping the reality of the situation: Steven Rubio’s Online Life is a vanity-press production. The existence of this blog proves the existence of Steven Rubio. I appreciate all of my readers, even the Carpenters fans who hate me, even the Facebook readers who never get past the first paragraph, even the people who come here via search engines and leave as quickly as they arrive once they find I have no nude pictures of Christina Hendricks or Kristin Proctor. As long as I think one person is reading, then I can imagine an audience. And so I suppose I’ll do this for another year.

blog highlights, 2010, or, adebisi, kristin proctor, and uncle miltie

Time to check out the Google Analytics report for this blog, covering January 1 through today. My favorite thing to check is the search terms people used to find the blog … this doesn’t count people who check in everyday via a bookmark, but is instead for people who come here from a search engine.

The top search term for the year was “klee irwin.” This is more impressive than you might think, for #6 was “klee irwin fraud” and #11 was “klee irwin scam” and #66 was “klee irwin dual action cleanse” … #120 was “klee irwin” in quote marks, #179 was “klee irwin health program,” #231 was “who is klee irwin,” and #352 was “irwin klee.” The primary blog post that attracted folks was “klee irwin piece of shit motherfucking rip-off scam artists,” which was not my most subtle post title.

I love my brother, but I have no idea why the #2 search term of the year was “geoff rubio.” If you include all of the variants, my own name passes his, but still, a tip of the cap to ya, bro.

The inevitable “tony peluso” came in at #4, just behind the first version of my name. Other variants of his name, many related to his unfortunate passing, came in at: 51, 55, 84, 92, 140, 159, 225, 235, 389, 496, and more. All well-deserved … rest in peace, Tony.

#7 (again, some of the gaps are due to multiple variants on the above) was “big love season finale,” which also came in at #29 and #35 in other variants.

One of the most delightful returnees is the wonderful “adebisi hat” at #8. Variants at 17, 59, 96 (“how does adebisi’s hat stay on”), 130, 201, 237, 238, and 312. Oz has been off the air for almost eight years, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has not only been in several movies since that show, but he was also the key figure of Mr. Eko in Lost. Yet to this day, people still want to know about Adebisi’s hat.

At #9 we have “rubicon finale.” Rubicon makes 8 more appearances on the list, which suggests more people read about it on my blog than actually watched the show.

Finally, #10 is “glee autotune,” which needs no explanation.

There are two searches that show up every year. First is what I’d call the “naked lady” search … people looking to see nude photos of their favorite actresses (or, rarely, actors). There are no such pictures on this blog, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. The highest-ranking such search term is Naked Lady Search Hall of Famer Kristin Proctor … here’s a list of everyone who got at least three visits from people looking for nudity:

Kristin Proctor, Christina Hendricks, Robin Weigert, Jenny Agutter, Henry Simmons, Polly Walker, Huey Lewis, Marianne Faithfull, Milton Berle, and Silas Botwin.

A few notes … the list is shorter than usual, there are more men on the list than usual, and despite her, to my knowledge, only nude scene occurring almost 8 years ago (a few seconds in one episode of The Wire), Kristin Proctor totally rules this list, not only as the highest-ranked celebrity, but also because she appears a total of 18 times in various search attempts.

The other annual search term is, of course, Milton Berle and his legendary penis. Uncle Miltie turns up 13 times, as “how big was milton berle,” “milton berle penis,” “milton berle penis photo,” “milton berle legend,” “milton berle big,” “milton berle’s penis,” “milton berle how big,” “milton berle penis pictures,” “pictures of milton berle penis,” “milton berle nude,” “milton berle penis pics,” “milton berle’s cock,” and “pictures of milton berle’s penis.” The man’s been dead since 2002 … clearly, his organ is longer lasting than even Adebisi’s hat or Kristin Proctor’s bosom.