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Saturday, November 24, 2007

How to blog?

I've read many articles and blogs on the best way to maintain a readable blog. The most common recommendations are:

Write about what you are passionate about.

Write about what you know.

Keep the blog focused on a certain topic or subject.


This last one is extremely common, highly recommended for bloggers wanting to hit a niche market. For some reason I just can't seem to muster any interest into focusing my blog into one area of interest/expertise. I am the type of person who would announce that I am running the world's first blog devoted entirely to sexual undertones in Christian children's songs, then grow tired of it in about a month. Or I'd start a contemporary music blog and post sporadically, whenever the stress of being a contemporary musician didn't get in the way.

The thing is, I am passionate about a whole bunch of things. I can speak on at least above-laman's terms about many different topics and with expertise on a few. The most focus I can offer you is a concentrated exuberance about several topics.

Here are the subjects you will read about the most on this blog:

1. Politics and social issues - If you are a reader of this blog you are familiar with my high degree of cynicism toward those on the right and left end of the political spectrum. I live in New York City, so railing against the right, although it is an easy and worthy target, can often feel like you are preaching to the choir, shouting into an echo-chamber. Thus, often you might often find me valuing the criticism of the left over the right, because it isn't often offered by people who also think the right is equally full of shit.

2. Movies - I am definitely an armchair film buff, specifically extreme cinema. I am not specifically interested in art house or foreign cinema - as in I won't just go to the local indy theater and say, "lay one on me". I love certain art house and foreign films, specifically Japanese, but I'll usually seek it out because of the director. In the last few years I've began seeking out movies by director and it has changed how I view, and mentally catalog, films. Here are the most common directors you will find me writing about: Kubrick, Kurosawa, Miike, Tarantino, Cronenberg, Solondz, Scorcese, Lumet, Lynch, Miyazaki, Scott, Korine.

3. The Family Guy - It's no secret I think FG is currently the best comedy on TV. I know there are plenty who disagree with me on this one, but I hold to it! It's humor is a new type of intense irony and sarcasm that is only really understandable by members of my generation, we who were raised by our TVs, who learned to voice our praise and scorn using elaborate folds of sarcastic metaisms. Each episode of FG reaches new realms of absurdity, employing new methods of tedium, shock, and the macabre to achieve this. There are always jokes that fail in every episode, but that doesn't make the successful jokes any less so. Btw, here is a description on Wikipedia of the plot of an upcoming episode:
Peter believes he's a pirate; this episode will include a five-minute scene involving Peter trying to pick something up.

Hell yes.

4. TV - I am a fan of good TV in general. I do not think it necessarily rots your brain. It can, if you choose to watch mind-numbingly bad shows, pure and simple. There are shows that are smart and beautiful expressions of art. You just have to find them. My favorite shows, currently on, are Lost, The Family Guy, Battlestar Galactica, South Park, The Office, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and The Wire.

5. Music - Yeah, under a very broad umbrella. I am a professional musician, so often this is my escape and you won't find me writing too much about music. Of course, many things are too tempting to tell, so you'll sometimes find me posting about: contemporary classical music; electronic music and technology; bands and acts I dig; shows I've played, seen, heard about, and/or want to attend.

6. Random Crap - Sometimes the stories I find on my Misc Blogs will prove too irresistible to repeat. That is why you will often find stories about musical roads, videos about wacky children's shows, and gross food I secretly want to try.

1 comment:

suzannemarques said...

i feel ya.
i started mine as a design blog.. but grew tired of doing just that.
when forced to choose on a listing service, i chose "stylish living" because i love to look at and buy beautiful things.
should it be under consumerism instead? :)