A Blog about....Blogs.

Coming soon....oooooooh.

That was my post when I first set up this site in an attempt at circumventing the order of things. I thought, well, I could just write what I think about blogs first...then I could look for blogs that I find interesting later, perhaps tomorrow, or the next day or the next week... But as I sat and try to write my first "blog about blogs", I couldn't really think of much to say. There was no source material to comment on. So I went back to the original assignment and pursued things in the proper order. I searched out some blogs and tried to find some interesting ones before I actually wrote anything down. However, as a sign of mostly full transparency, I figured I would leave my very first effort at a blogging post up...for posterity sake.

I've never been a big blog guy. I know people who do, for sure; but haven't spent much time visiting anyone's blog and hadn't really dreamed to writing my own. I do have a pseudo blog that functions as a website for my art. But it doesn't work like a blog really works.

In order to really understand what a blog is I first set out to familiar territory. I'm an avid NPR fan and love Wait-Wait, Don't Tell me and Studio 360. "If the radio shows are so good," my brain told me, "their blogs must be brilliantly funny and insightful! (respectively)." Obviously that was set up to emphasize that while they weren't all that bad but they weren't totally amazing either. I was able to dig up this tasty tidbit (bad pun intended in retrospect) from Wait-Wait though and Studio 360's blog did have the following awesome you tube music video link with a song about the BP gulf coast oil spill featuring Mos Def, Trombone Shorty (who I had Never heard of before), Lenny Kravitz, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Tim Robbins:



I love that song/video...
After some more searches that resulted in lukewarm results, I thought that I would check out a couple of blogs by some friends of mine. Radio Free Bannerglad and This is Africa. Both of these are well written and entertaining blogs by professional writers. Ty's, the first one, is about his home and family life and mostly intended as a peek into the life of a stay-at-home dad and his young year son and their trials and joys together. Despite what one may think of the over all subject, he usually weaves in some sweet and often humorous truths into his work. Chris' blog is incredible; not only because he is a gifted writer (he's been published in the NY Times) but because he is leading an enviable life (he has been spending the past 3-5 years traveling to far off exotic places, writing about it, getting recognition for it and making money doing so).

So I got to thinking; "Oh brain of mine, what have I learned from this trek into the blog-o-sphere?" Well, Ty and Chris make their living as writers and their blogs are good because the blogs themselves are their final forms; not derivatives of a brilliant original like those of the Wait-Wait Don't Tell Me and Studio 360 radio programs.

But I think there is something even more compelling to learn about blogs. They offer windows into others' lives and allows us all to connect to the world outside ourselves. They allow any author tell us what is important to her/him and to educate us about something we may never had even heard about. And whether is it a damned cool song and video about the BP oil spill or one featuring a man actually drinking a shot of gin and mayo it is pretty powerful to think that all you have to do get your ideas out is click 'Publish Post'. I think I will.