You do a great job, Ace. I read you every day. Keep it up.

Er, the top of the page is still a mess in Firefox. And comment names seem messed up again...

(someone)

Ace--

One comment I forgot to make the other day. You may like the clean lines, I dunno; but you might want to bump out the margins a bit on the posting text. There's a lot of wasted white space on the screen, on both sides.

You know, really, feel free to "explore the studio space."

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Yeah, the margins bother me. I'm going to have someone fix this bastard.

Ace, haven't commented in awhile, but I've been visiting. As for my two cents I HATE SANS SERIF TYPEFACES. They're harder for me to read, in everything but headlines.

Probably just me.

Put up a link to http://www.suntimes.com/output/laney/cst-edt-laney29.html already, ya mook.

What slaparound of Totten? I missed it.

Ya know, you were kinda draggin' for a bit there, but I can't put my finger on exactly how/why. You're back en fuego today, though.

Thanks. I know I drag sometimes. The thing is, believe it or not, this isn't as easy as it looks.

It's genuinely hard to maintain an interest in this crap day after day after day. I get bored of it. I go through phases where I feel on, and phases where I don't feel like saying a goddamned thing about anything.

The declining traffic adds to this. When audience is building, it's exciting. Suddenly there are hopes of--- well, I don't know. Something bigger. But when traffic slips, it's like, "Eh, maybe I should just pull the plug on this nonresponsive patient."

I mean, this is a stupid fucking blog, and I know that. But even stupid, useless, idiotic activities take some effort and craft.

Like that idiotic "hurling" game we have to watch at the winter Olympics every four years. Yeah, it's a moronsport. But obviously they actually work pretty hard to get that good at something that fucking retarded.

There's no rule you have to post every day, or even every other day. You don't owe us a damn thing. After all, I getting these hoots for free (though I aim to make amends around Xmas . . .) If you're not "on", then don't -- I already have too many blogs to get through each day before I can start doing any useful work around here.

"I'm trying to figure out which parts of the advice to take and which not to."

Well, that's easy. Take MY advice.

Geez, I thought it was obvious.

;)

Later,
bbeck

Dark red and black at top - title barely legible, Mencken quote - totally illegible. Charmless site. Barren. Depressing. Bleak House. Like something an older goth might design or an old, filterless cigarette smoking Hungarian.

After reading your mood, maybe the look is more understandable. You're like David Caruso after "Jade" bombed.

I just read "Our Balanced Media, Redux: . . . " and thought your comments were very clever indeed. I've added you to the top of my list of blogs to check each day.

I rarely comment, but read often and agree that you just need to keep doing what you've been doing. One post that I really remember because the title made me laugh so hard was back in the summer when some media outfit came out with another poll and the spin was all negative, as usual, and your title was something like "Bush's job approval now at negative 66 bazillion."

Just keep doing what you do.

I'll say this: I can tell when your mood has changed. For whatever reason, prior to today, you had seemed a bit...well, sedated for quite some time.

There are a lot of critiques I could offer, as a guy who visits at least twice/three times a day and has kicked some crazy blog money to you, but it mostly falls into the "just be yourself" category.

There's only one specific recommendation I'll make: you SHOULDN'T be afraid to use and continue referring to the great inside jokes that have occupied this site. I noticed that recently you REALLY cut back on it, and even when you would, say, throw in a Paul Anka reference, it would almost be apologetically.

Fuck that, Ace: you're the only important one on this stage and you need to remember that. It was those continuing, ever-building (increasingly absurd!) running gags which MADE this site my favorite blog on the web: the fact that without seeming forced, you created a damn memorable 'vocabulary' of references and inside-baseball jokes that made the reader feel rewarded in some small psychological sense for sticking with you.

You'll probably say I'm overanalyzing this, but I'm really just trying to explain HOW, for example, the inspired run of Anka posts, or More Cowbell, or "On Fucking Fire" Top Tens, have contributed to building a really committed group of fans like us. This stuff was/is not only hilarious (and incisive, and predicated upon a strange sort of bizarro MST3K-like pop-culture geek sensibility that's pleasing to recognize in another Republican), it also makes us feel like we were in on the joke after awhile: it creates a community of sorts without being exclusionary.

Think about a lot of really successful "niche" blogs - Allah (RIP) or Protein Wisdom to name but two - and you notice they all had their running motifs or gags that gave them a personality. (Allah's "Dean-O" or repeated written motifs, Jeff Goldstein's various interviews or PoMo excursions, etc.) They worked, just as your running gags worked, because they sprang naturally from the character of the author and his interests: you're obviously an 80's culture polymath with an eye for the vulgar, the absurd, and the pastiche, and ALL of your best stuff hits those resonances.

So don't be afraid to return to Miami Vice or Paul Anka or Kim Richards jokes if you want, and don't worry about appearing cryptic or insular when you do. Your long-time readers will understand and eat it up, and new ones will most likely be intrigued enough to want to look back in the archives to figure out WTF is going on. (That's what I did.) Think of it, in TV series terms as "contributing to the story arc." Or, in Frank Zappa terms, as "building conceptual continuity."

Well, that was interminable. Anyway, you're doing a great job, and don't burn yourself out. I'd throw some money in the tip jar, but I'm trying to go to U Chicago Law and dammit, that tuition ain't paying for itself.

Son of Nixon's been coming back from hiatus Tuesday/Wednesday for a few weeks now.

Thanks for posting the link to the smackdown of Totten. It was hilarious. I know I read it before, but it was nice to revisit.

Didn't Totten vote for Bush?

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