Tag Archives: blogging

Andy Rooney: Original Blogger

28 Sep

September 28, 2010

The Urban Dictionary defines “blogger” as a term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives.

It does not, however, speculate on who the first blogger was. For that honor, I nominate CBS 60 Minutes contributor Andy Rooney.

Since 1978, every week near the end of the show, they give Andy a few minutes to talk about whatever is on his mind. Typically, there doesn’t seem to be much going on up there. One week he blathered on about all the plastic bags he has laying around. He didn’t talk about recycling them, he didn’t suggest uses for them, he merely pulled them out of his desk drawers and from various places around his office and showed them to the camera.

“This one is from Waldbaum’s.”
“This bag says ‘I Love New York’ on it. Good thing I do.”
“I seem to have gotten this bag at a Waldenbooks, but I can’t seem to recall when I ever shopped there.”

It went on and on like that.

Here is a typical example of his segments.

ANDY ROONEY ON CARRYING THINGS:

I hope you caught this bit of insight: “When they left the house that morning they planned to drink water, I guess…”

I think that Andy Rooney clearly inspired a whole generation of observational comedians. Listen to Andy Rooney and you can plainly hear the genesis of Jerry Seinfeld: “What’s the deal with carrying things? What’s the deal with plastic bags?”

And “What’s the deal with modern music”?

ANDY ROONEY LOSSES TOUCH WITH MODERN MUSIC:

I suspect that the real reason he has lost touch with modern music is that he is 91 years old!

According to CBS News’s biography of him, “Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on 60 Minutes, in 1964, ‘An Essay on Doors.’ From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner – Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating -on such notable CBS News specials as ‘An Essay on Bridges’ (1965), ‘An Essay on Hotels’ (1966), ‘An Essay on Women’ (1967), and ‘The Strange Case of the English Language’ (1968).

Give the man credit for consistency- he hasn’t changed a bit in over 40 years. As the man himself wrote in a letter, “Let’s face it, even on the nights when I’m good, I’m not that good.”

I’ll end now with a question I’m sure we all want answered:

WHAT’S IN ANDY’S DRAWERS?

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My Daring Social Experiment / MySpace Is Full Of Creeps

13 Nov

from November 13, 2007

For two days (and nights, naturally) I left my MySpace page open for all. A couple of friends of friends had wanted to read my stuff and they couldn’t because I keep my page open to my friends only. (Awkwardly constructed run-on-ish sentence there, but I’ll leave it. Nyah.) So I announced, with great lack of fanfare, that I would open the page to all for a couple of days. Anyone who wanted to read could, and anyone who wanted to send a friend request could too.  This was really hard for me because I know how my stuff reads and anyone who doesn’t know me will get the wrong impression of me. Worse still, they may get the right impression of me. (And yet Jennifer still talks to me. Go figure.)

I looked at is as sort of an experiment. “Let’s see what happens,” I said to myself.

“Yes, let’s do it,” I responded.

“Am I really talking to myself?” I asked.

“Yes I am,” I replied

“That’s weird.”

“What’s even weirder is that I’m typing it.”

I’ll stop now. I’m beginning to worry.

So what happened? Well, and this is the important part, nobody read my blog. Not a single view, other than the people whom I already know read my blog. But my profile? A few dozen views in two days. And my mail? Full of shit. Here are a few samples:

INBOX MESSAGE 1

FROM: BETH from UPSTATE NY, 28

MESSAGE: I like your profile.

That’s it, followed by a friend request. Well, since I am tolerant and so damn nice, I went to her profile but it was set to private. Still being stupidly sweet, I checked my friends to see if any of them knew her. Nope. So this was just a stranger who saw my face, which was hidden by a camera in that pic, and clicked on my profile. She (I assume it was a she, the picture was kind of fugly) saw my profile of all the comments she could have made about all the bullshit I put there, she took the time to write “I like your profile” and hoped I would be her friend. Now a different me, one who was not nearly so enlightened, would have replied with a curse filled screed about her mother, but not the compassionate me. I replied “Sorry, no thanks (scud)” and blocked her before I deleted her request.

If you want to be my friend on MySpace- and who wouldn’t? – at least let me see your profile.

INBOX MESSAGE 2

FROM: JSA

Wow! This was it! I had long been waiting for this, and now here was my shot- a chance to join the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! I had long read about the adventures of Green Lantern, Wildcat, The Flash, Dr. Fate, and Hawkman, and now I was going to join their ranks! I have never been so excited!!!!!!!! See how excited I was? I used eight exclamation points! My costume has been ready for years- Captain Amazing Man was about to debut!

Boy, was I wrong. JSA stood for Jewish Singles Association. Bummer. According to JSA, they had better boards than JDate and were cheaper too. WHO CARES? I thought I was going to be a superhero! I am not going to go on any site that impersonates a super hero team. (And the Teen Titans? I am staying far away from that jailbait.)

INBOX MESSAGE 3

FROM: PROFILE DELETED

This was very popular. I got a lot of mail from this person. Who would make a profile with just a gray outline as a picture? And the “X” over it? Hardly original. Anyway, this person seemed to really want to be my friend. He sent me over 38 messages.

INBOX MESSAGE 4

FROM: HoT CHocoLAte 4 U

This was another scam. Sure, I like a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows on a cold winter morning. But this was not a beverage site. Nor was it a hot drink fan. All I’ll say is “not interested.”

INBOX MESSAGE 5

FROM: PAULA FROM NEW PALTZ

MESSAGE: Want to be bigger?

By now I had an idea of what was going on. I was slowly realizing that MySpace is full of weirdoes and pervs.

INBOX MESSAGE 6

FROM: RICK

Rick had seen my pic on the message I left on The Onion’s page. So I guess he figured that we would have some things in common.

Here are some of Rick’s interests: Fairy Tales, Full Metal Alchemist, tattoos, his girlfriend, Pimpin’ Out Brittney, and G-Unit.

Here are some of my interests: Not any of his.

Rick scared me a little. His pics were of him and some people who looked like Hell’s Angels but with less street cred. But what scared me the most is that his first interest, before of all of the socially maladjusted stuff, was Fairy Tales. I would love to see the reports from his parole officers.

INBOX MESSAGE 7

FROM: MARIAH

Mariah wanted me to see her pics. How friendly! But I had to pay for them. Boo! Turns out she doesn’t really want to be my friend either, she just wants to make some money by selling me some naked pics. Would you believe it? Is there no truth left in this world?

So my social experiment proved a couple of things.

1- I don’t want to have 1086 friends if they are anything like those feebs and dweebs.

2- MySpace is a good place if you want porn, drugs, or to troll for kids. No wonder it is so popular.

3- Liz’s new pic makes her look bustier. (Sorry to embarrass you Liz, but I call it like I see it.)

4- MySpace is full of strange people, so I fit right in.

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