Um ... this is kinda embarrassing. Today is the 8th birthday of this blog. On January 6, 2002, I cranked it up with "snapshot of life at the moment" (I wasn't doing anything, surprise surprise).
I'm writing this a few days in advance, so I can't give exact numbers, but there have been close to 650,000 pageviews, just under 300 a day. There have been more than 5400 posts, and more than 5700 comments.
Sometimes I wonder why I do this ... but the answer is obvious. I never get tired of talking about myself. Blogging strikes deep into the heart of every solipsist with Internet access.
I don't have any big plans for this year's compositions, just more of the same. I often think about writing my own obituary and postdating it by several months, then updating it and changing the "publish on" date just before it goes public. That way, as long as I keep the blog going until I croak, there will be one last post from beyond the grave just when everyone has forgotten me. Maybe I'd quote from Christina Rossetti's poem, "Remember" ... "Remember me when I am gone away" ... followed by a quote from Kiss Me Deadly, which made great use of the poem ... maybe from the scene where Mike Hammer is being questioned, and as soon as they tell him he can leave, someone says with dripping disgust, "Open a window!"
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.)
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006). The final chase scene in The Road Warrior remains one of the great action sequences of all time. Mel Gibson, the star of that movie, who has in the years since become a major international movie star, a director, and an all-around crackpot, works backwards from that scene (he has said he wanted to make a car chase that took place on foot). To get to the chase scene, Gibson has us sit through close to two hours of historical fiction about the Mayan civilization, piling up more gore than you’ve likely ever seen a movie before. Imagine if Spielberg had been serious when he had the goofy religious guy pull out people’s hearts in that Indiana Jones movie … Gibson has several such scenes, not meant to get the kid in us to squeal in delight but to make the grownup in us want to vomit. From the much-remarked-upon scene of a man eating the testicles of a just-killed wild boar, to beheadings that end with the remains bouncing down a long stairway while the masses shout their approval, Apocalypto has a kitchen-sink approach to violence that is impressive, if also revolting and essentially stupid. When the chase scene finally arrives, it’s a doozy … Gibson learned a lot from George Miller, there are some very exciting moments in this movie … but it’s all wrapped in a package that promises far more than it can deliver (even the title is overwrought). Whatever Gibson thinks this movie is about, and it’s not clear even he knows, the result is pornographic, for better or worse.
Gigi (Vincente Minnelli, 1958). There was an interesting mini-discussion of nostalgia in the comments thread for a post last week, and watching this movie felt like an addendum to that conversation. Suffice to say, I rate this higher than most people … they like it, I love it. My love is hard to explain, though, without admitting to a feeling of nostalgia, because Gigi was one of my parents’ favorite movies. They owned the soundtrack album and played it often, and while I was grown and out of the house by the time VCRs made their appearance, I believe Gigi was one of the first movies they owned. The movie, of course, has nostalgia built right into it, culminating in Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold singing “I Remember It Well.” Makes sense that the older I get, the more charmed I am by that song, if “more charmed” is possible when I was totally charmed the first time I heard it as a kid. Here’s the thing, though. Gigi came out in 1958, and I assume my parents saw it in a theater … it wouldn’t have been on TV for some years, there was no tape to buy. And they, like everyone, loved “I Remember It Well,” which so perfectly captures old lovers as they look back. Like I say, I liked the song when I was a little kid … you don’t have to be an old lover to appreciate it … but it clearly carries more resonance the older you are. When I was a kid, my parents loved that song a lot more than I did, and I do recall how much it meant to them, how they loved to sing along. But here’s the thing: in 1958, my dad was 34 years old and my mom was 30. That seems pretty young to be already “remembering when.”
Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009). In the mid-80s, I wrote short fiction for a couple of years as part of a series of creative writing classes. In one story, a hermit-like woman lived in an old house, with no contact with the outside world except for the mail that came each day. Her mail box was a slot in the wall at the front of the house … the mailman would open a flap and drop the mail through the slot onto the floor. One day, a letter got caught in the slot, and as the woman tried to pry it free, she discovered that the mail slot had an opening. She reached in, eventually working her whole body into the crevice. Finally she fell through a hole on some other side, and found a room full of the people whose names appeared on the junk mail she received. The story ended when all of the people filled the room … it became so crowded the woman fell to the ground, where she was trampled to death. In another story, a young boy whose father died found himself in an odd relationship with his widowed mother. She would give him sadomasochistic porn and they would act out the scenes ... she would burn her son with cigarettes, stuff like that. Coraline is arguably a kids’ movie, but if you’re wondering whether to let your own kids watch it, know that the stories I wrote would fit right in to Coraline. It’s an extremely disturbing movie. In the end, I was impressed without really liking it much. It’s quite an achievement, there isn’t much else like it out there, and it’s certainly better than Kung Fu Panda. So I guess I better give it a higher rating than I did for that dud.
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.)
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:
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
