“Are you saving all your newspaper columns?”
That was the question my mother asked me on the phone the other day. I pointed out that, no, I wasn’t, because all of them are online, and saving newsprint is no longer the thing to do. (You can read my latest column, which appeared in hard copy today, online here. List of columns here.)
“Well, I want a copy of them,” she said. “Put them altogether for me and print them up in a book and give it to me for Christmas.”
I decided that was a good idea. But I haven’t written enough of them to constitute a book of any heft. So I thought I would pepper my book of columns with stuff from this blog, which has been running, off and on, for over five years, complete with hundreds of thousands of words that could now fill an encyclopedia, if there were such a thing anymore.
What I realized in doing this, however, is that this blog isn’t very well organized. I’ve never bothered to categorize or tag any of the more than 700 posts that have accumulated like virtual barnacles on the hull of cyberspace. I can search for specific posts and usually find them, but the archive has become quite voluminous, and it would be nice if things therein were more easily accessed. In addition, every time I dig out an old post, I find typos and such that ought to be spruced up. I’m quite proud of the body of work I’ve almost inadvertently created, and it would be nice if I brushed it off and cleaned it up.
Which gave me the idea of Retro Friday.
Every Friday for the next few months, I will revisit ten old blog posts, beginning at the beginning. I will post links, short summaries, and, where possible, pictures that describe these ancient posts. In the process, I will read through the old stuff, clean it up, and tag and categorize it. It will be slow going, but in a couple of years, this blog will be perfectly organized, assuming North Korea doesn’t blow us all up. Who knows? We might even have some fun along the way.
Some ground rules: I will fix broken links and bad punctuation/typos, and maybe even add a few links here and there if necessary, but I’m not going to re-edit for content or make modern editorial comments. I want these posts to be the best posts they can be, but they also need to remain representative of my frame of mind when I wrote them.
Ready? No? Well, tough. Because I even created my own Retro Friday logo!
I didn’t say it was a good logo, mind you.
Anyway, let’s kick off our first Retro Friday by beginning at the beginning.
ON BEING STALLION CORNELL – posted August 15, 2007
HEY, ROVE! DIVIDE THIS! – posted August 16, 2007
WHY? BECAUSE I’M A (D-WORD)! – posted August 17, 2007
Recounting my time as a movie reviewer counting profanities for the Entertainment Research Report. This was also the subject of one of my far-more-recent newspaper columns.
FOR HE IS THE FRUMIOUS BANDERSNATCH – posted August 18, 2007
Twenty-one years after its release, I finally watch and review the movie version of “Dune.” In my defense, I had just finished reading the book. I liked both printed and cinematic version, even though the movie, objectively, is awful.
A RELIGIOUS TREATISE – posted August 19, 2007
A bit of false advertising. For my first Sunday blog post, I wanted to write something profoundly pious, but I end up telling the story of how, as a missionary, I fell asleep in front of a warm Scottish fire and embarrassed myself in the home of a member of the LDS church.
WIST – posted August 20, 2007
A post where I ponder my mortality and life choices after my 39th birthday and recall the counsel of the late, great Charles Macaulay, who played Landru in the original “Star Trek” episode “The Return of the Archons.”
EVOLUTION POISONS EVERYTHING – posted August 21, 2007
My first blogging foray into science I’m not qualified to discuss, although the focus is more on the hysterical reactions of atheists who brand any question about evolution to be a religious heresy. The title comes from atheist Christopher Hitchens’ book “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”
NEVERLAND – posted August 22, 2007
I wrote a musical. Later, I started adapting that musical into a novel. But here’s the post where I provide links to demo recordings to four of the songs. The recordings are really, really good, and, still, I hold out hope that, someday, this show will get the production it deserves. I’ve just reproduced this post as a page that is linked in the top menu bar in the hopes that some Broadway producer stumbles on it and says, “Hey, why not give this thing a shot?”
LANGUATRON’S BOOK: A REVIEW – posted August 23, 2007
Too much of this blog is devoted to my rivalry with one Andrew Fullen of Chicago, AKA Languatron and the author of several vanity publications about Battlestar Galactica. I review one of those books here. You can find a similar review on Amazon.com, and, if you’re a little drunk, you can also pick up a copy of the book in question.
LANGUATRON REVIEWS MY REVIEW – also posted August 23, 2007
No sooner did I post my review than Langy himself posted his incoherent response. That was fine with me – it gave me an excuse to post a second blog post in a single day, which helped me build up my content without having to come up with too much original material. Kind of like this whole Retro Friday dealie.
And that’s that! The first Retro Friday is over, and ten posts have been proofread, edited, tagged, and categorized. Tune in next week for such gems as:
Legislating Morality with Vampire Ladies
Sometimes Langy’s Right
Mormons Aren’t Victims
And seven more!