Archive | December, 2011

Why We Fight (with apologies to Frank Capra)

20 Dec

December 20, 2011

Not long ago The Editors and Staff of Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride (pretty much just me) posted on The Official Mr. Blog’s Tepid Facebook Page a self-serving and egotistical chart of this blog’s phenomenal growth over the past two years. (See? I’m being self-serving again. I can’t stop!) Anyway, at one end of the chart was this teeny tiny little blip that represented all the views that hit this blog on November 2009, the first month of Mr. Blog on WordPress. The other end of the chart was November 2011. That bar (for it was a bar chart. Sorry pie chart fans.) was about a bazillion times bigger than the first bar. So if you do the math, this blog has about a bazillion times more hits per month now than it had two years ago.

Or something like that. I do my math with strictly irrational numbers.

Below the chart I posted this message: “I worked damn hard for that growth. Now if only I had worked that hard for money.”

HA HA! Mr. Blog is nothing if not self-effacing. (Women have destroyed my ego.)

But getting back to whatever point I may have had (and in fact, I have two of them) this brings up some questions. A (or 1 if you prefer) – Why do I do it? And 2 (B if you prefer) – Why don’t I make any money off of this thing? (It also brings up related questions C- Why don’t I get a life? And D- Shut up.)

Since the answers to both questions are related it won’t matter to anyone but the compulsively anal if I answer B first. (Heh heh, I said “anal.”)

B- (Or 2 if you prefer. Sigh, I am going to milk this. Be prepared.) Why don’t I make any money off this thing?

(Before you continue, ask yourself this question: Would you pay for this stuff?)

It wouldn’t be hard to put a paypal link over on the sidebar above the Pierre D. Duck (World’s Greatest Duck) Facebook Page and a short message begging for some donations to keep this site in crappy Late Night movies and Mikey Teutul jokes.

But that’s opening up a big can of worms. Because what happens if I get no donations? Zero. Not a single cent. That would be a CRUSHING DEATH BLOW to my ego. Why go on? Why write anymore? Why continue to do whatever it is I continue to do if no one likes it enough to give me a couple of bucks?

And if no one was willing to pay for the blog (which I admit is free, so why pay anyway?), who would pay for a hardcover copy of Mr. Blog’s Tepid Book, which would just be best-of (ha!) compilation of my favorite blogs, which I already admitted are free? Oh sure, maybe I could get Mike Monge to illustrate it, but seriously, you’ve already read and not paid for the blogs, it would be a HUGE KILLING STROKE to my already fragile sense of self-worth if you failed to pay me a second time.

But there are two other options.

Let’s say that I put up the paypal link and asked for donations and at the end of the month I got about $3.17. That would be not only crushing but a cruel insult as well. Seriously, $3.17? What kind of an amount is that? Would you tip a waiter $3.17? I like to think I am a bit more entertaining than a waiter, unless of course it is one of those fancy singing waiters. I can’t compete with them. But on the other hand I don’t spit in your food.

And now let’s say I got a lot of money. Could I handle the responsibility? People are paying me! I HAVE to blog! And I have to be interesting and funny! OK, I can pull off interesting about half the time, and funny is hit or miss, but now the pressure is on. I can’t handle the pressure! I’ll crack! I’ll be like Henry Hill in Goodfellas, I might crack under questioning.

Seriously, it is better that I don’t ask for money from you.

So getting back to question A and/or 1, however you prefer to roll, why do I do this?

I dunno. It’s something to do, I guess.

I think my hopes for this blog can be summed up in a short scenario.

Picture this. The year is 2035. It is a taping of a late night talk show hosted by the kid in the Jimmy Fallon Capital One commercial, all grown up. The first guest is a hot comedian, Carrot Top 4.0. Unlike the first Carrot Top, this one is funny.

Baby, all grown up: 4.0, I have to ask, who were your comedic influences growing up?
Carrot Top 4.0: Well, my grandfather, Carrot Top 2.0, of course, and my mother, Chelsea Clinton.
Baby, all grown up: I loved it when Carrot Top 2.0 dyed his genitals blue.
Carrot Top 4.0: It was a great bit.
Baby, all grown up: But what about other comedians? I know you are a fan of classic TV.
Carrot Top 4.0: I never laughed harder than I do at old Chris Matthews MSNBC reruns.
Baby, all grown up: Yeah, it’s a shame he died the way he did. That diaper did nothing to help his image. Who else?
Carrot Top 4.0: Remember the internet?
Baby, all grown up: Vaguely. That was before the Taliban took over the FCC, right?
Carrot Top 4.0: Yeah. Back then when I was growing up I’d read this blog, Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride.
Baby, all grown up: Wait, a “blog”? You read a “blog”? One of those sex things?
Carrot Top 4.0: No, this was one of the non-sex blogs. It was run by some guy who had too much time on his hands and made fun of the news and spent too much time writing about American Chopper. Later on he got really obsessed about 2012 prophecies and his blog just became unreadable. Of course that was in 2023 so I have no idea what was going on there.
Baby, all grown up: Hmm, I wonder if we can track him down. Might be an interesting interview.
Carrot Top 4.0: I think he died and his cats ate him.

Eventually a reporter for TMZ tracked me down and luckily for me, I was not dead and made a funny 30 second clip on the show.

And that is my hope for this blog. That someday somebody funny may say they liked my blog.

Is that too much to ask?

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A New York Minute (7)

19 Dec

December 19, 2011

Welcome to your New York Minute.

While I do ride the subway everyday, I don’t usually take the F train. But on this particular day I was meeting a friend after work and she lives right by the F station so there I was. The F train isn’t one of the cleaner subway rides but is one of the more visible. For much of its run the F line is elevated and it is hard to miss, for reasons I’ll soon explain.

I am willing to bet that most of you know this train line, actually, I bet most of you know one little piece of it as it figures into a scene in one of my favorite movies. No, no Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. My favorite movie is Goodfellas.

Towards the end of the film, mobster Henry Hill was caught by the feds and Jimmy the Gent, played by an amazing Robert DeNiro, was getting ready to whack him. Henry’s wife Karen had gotten a call from Jimmy and went to see him in one of his warehouses. They talked a little and Jimmy offered to give Karen some swag dresses. All she had to do was walk down the block and into a sketchy warehouse. Karen got cold feet, thinking that Jimmy was going to whack her – I love all this mob talk- and jumped in her car and zoomed off. That whole scene was filmed right by the Gowanus canal under the F train. You can’t miss it, the girders and beams of the elevated line frame the whole outdoor part of the scene. In fact, the warehouse is right below the Smith/9th Street station. Since Goodfellas is on the AFI Top 100 list I am willing to bet you’ve seen it.

One interesting note is at that point, if you are riding the train, you are on the highest point of anywhere on the NYC transit system. The Smith/9th Street station rises 87 ½ feet over the city. Opened in 1933, there was actually shipping on the Gowanus canal and the train line had to be that tall to let the ships pass below. If you’ve seen the Gowanus today, the idea of major commerce on that clogged piece of water seems ridiculous, but things have changed quite a bit in the last century.

You can get a really nice view of South Brooklyn and lower Manhattan from this part of the subway (and yes, we still call it the subway even when it is high in the air) but don’t try to visit that station just yet- it is being renovated until 2012, and knowing how NYC operates, probably the year after that.

But if you are interested in getting high- I mean height, hop off the train and go over the historic Greenwood Cemetery, right   near Park Slope. Many notable people are buried there; from Abner Doubleday, the man  who invented baseball, to more Southern Civil War generals than you expect this far north. It is a sprawling place, over 478 acres, and if you want to find the highest point above sea level in Brooklyn, this is it.

Battle Hill is found inside Greenwood Cemeteryand it was the sight of a major battle of the Civil War, part of the Battle of Long Island. You don’t hear much about it outside of history books but this was a big one. To commemorate it, a statue of the goddess Minerva was built there and from that height it has a direct line of sight to the Statue of Liberty, to whom it’s raised hand seems to be waving.

I could go on and on  about Greenwood Cemetery, and with some authority, since I graduated from Greenwood Cemetery.

I’ll pause to let that sink in. I graduated from a cemetery.Greenwoodruns a series of tours and some years back, in one of the hottest summers I can remember, I spent a series of three weekends tramping over the hills taking a guided tour of the place that culminated in a graduation ceremony and yes, I got a certificate at the end. So take your Wharton School of Business MBA and your Harvard diploma, who needs them? I am a proud alumnus of Greenwood Cemetery.

And as a proud alumnus, I have to tell you about the parakeets. Those of you who have never seen them may not believe this given the cold climate, but Brooklyn boasts a thriving population of wild parrots. One major colony nests in the main arches of the cemetery, and another lives at Brooklyn College, from which I also graduated. I think those parakeets are following me. And even though those are their main grounds, the colorful birds can often be seen- and especially heard- in many parts of Brooklyn.

The accepted story is that in the 1960’s, a shipment of the birds escaped from their containers at Idlewild airport and made their way to the cemetery, where their descendants still live today. No one at the time expected them to live through their first New York winter, but we New Yorkers are a hearty breed.

Idlewild is the original name of Kennedy Airport, and if you saw Goodfellas you’d know that, bringing us back full circle.

This has been your New York Minute with a Robert DeNiro cameo.

An audio version of this legend first appeared just last week in the amazing FlashPulp website. Check them out for awesomeness and goodies!

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