What the Hell Is Going on NOW?

I'm attempting to complete NaNoWriMo, against my better judgment. This year, I want to actually "finish" (that is, write a beginning-to-end first draft, no matter how shitty), so I'll probably be lax in my posting to The Anthony Show.

Not that I've been much on top of things lately, anyhow. But let's see how it goes!

What's the Deal With the Lack of Posts Lately?

I was on vacation last week, and returned to the warm embrace of Hurricane Irene, which has knocked out my power for four days and counting. As soon as it returns and I can descend to my depressing cellar, I'll be updating again.

An Assessment of The Anthony Show, Thus Far

It's a Lenten Friday,
and I want a Bistro Burger!

Wow. We've completed a full month's worth of The Anthony Show. We've learned a lot about Anthony and his The Anthony Show, and not just how broadly we like to employ the pronoun "we."

I don't think it's too early to examine some of the accomplishments of The Anthony Show. Here are some highlights:

• I've posted on every weekday since I started, fulfilling my Lenten pledge to do so (unlike the pledge I made to not eat like Walter Hudson)
• I came up with a permanent name and secured the URL
• I recorded a few podcasts
• I posted some of the posts I said I would post in a previous post regarding future posts that I posted the week after the very first post
• I've recorded some very curious stats, which I'll discuss in further detail below
• I haven't be sued yet

Just so you don't think I'm patting myself on the back, I'm also aware of my shortcomings, blog-wise:

• I didn't blog about everything I'd wished to have blogged about by now
• I would been happier if I'd recorded more podcasts
• I still hate lots of people, places, and things
• I didn't receive a jillion dollars from some venture-capital-funded site that was impressed with my blogging, not to mention the cut of my jib

I still haven't decided on a theme/gimmick for my blog. I was hoping that by now the theme would poke its way through the blogger birth canal, but just like Son of The Anthony Show was on his date of birth, it's still stuck, so we might have to yank it out and hope that the forceps-marks on its cheeks fade away as quickly as the ones on my son did.

On the other hand...

Upcoming Updates to The Anthony Show (Updated)

You might be wondering, "Hey, The Anthony Show! What's next?" Well, in case you're interested, this is an assortment of topics I hope to tackle sooner if not later:

• The first time I got drunk
• More works of writing that I never finished, or even started
• The in-progress reports of the stuff I'm actually trying to finish
• What happened at 7-Eleven that time
• What happened at the gynecologist's office that time
• How I discovered the magic in "magic" mushrooms
• Reviews of fashion blogs
• Discussions of famous and once-famous people who died young
• The Unknown Comic and his brief influence on my comedy
• Tales from my days as a custodian while in high school
• The time we almost burned down the woods in our neighborhood
• A discussion of the greatness that is Sam Cooke
• Some sort of rant about certain Facebook ads
• Things that I need to buy but have put off buying because of an increasingly dire lack of funds
• My relationship with seafood
• Complaints about more people I haven't personally met

Welcome to The Anthony Show

This blog isn't even a week old, and I've already changed the name. So, welcome to the grand re-opening of this blog, which is (for now) called The Anthony Show.

Because "Blog" Spelled Backward is "Golb"

Part of the procrastination that held up the release of my blog was deciding on a name. A blog name tells you a lot about what's in front of you. For example, FU Penguin is about a guy who likes to have sex with penguins. The New York Times' Motherlode blog is written by a bunch of know-it-all urban moms whose snooty advice makes you go, "Wow, what a load!" (Spelling it lode is a fancy-schmancy New York Times thing that justifies them charging nine bucks for the Sunday paper.)

It's obvious that I clearly gave up on choosing a blog name that contained any real purpose or meaning, but I'll have you know that several names were under consideration, including:

• Shit My Wife Says
• The Anthony Blog About Anthony Starring Anthony
• Lou Reed Stole My Pants
• FU Empire State Building
• Are You Ready for Some Blogging? [you have to picture Hank Williams, Jr. growling this one]
• The Perils of a Lonely Leon Redbone Fanatic
• The "Up Yours" Express
• Slimboy Fat
• WeLcOmE tO mY bLoG!!1!

I figure that the blog name I finally settled on will eventually change. Or not. So, yeah, there it is.

What the Hell Is an Interrobang?!

It's a symbol that combines the exclamation point and a question mark. Wikipedia has more details. When I was in elementary school, I used to use the combo quite often, and the strength of question-vs.-exclamation was based on the ratio of exclamation points to question marks. In other words:

"Why did you do that?!?" is more of a question than "Why did you do that?!!!!?"

This choice of punctuation was heavily discouraged by the time I reached sixth grade, and I never knew that the interrobang existed. Even if I used it, though, the teachers would have thought I'd made a mistake and created an statement with ambiguous import.

What does all this have to do with my blog?!?! I don't know.

The Obligatory First Post

And so it begins.

I wasn't sure how to start this, so I'll just jump in and see where it goes.

For a long time I'd been planning to do a basic blog, but most successful blogs have a narrow focus or gimmick, like Let's See What Candy I Ate Today or Something Else That's Blue That I Wore To Work, and I didn't want to have one of those meandering blogs that usually fall into the Random Musings Of A Boring Person category.

Though I'm not seeking readers, having some kind of focus will help when it comes to updating this thing: do I write about the sandwich I ate, my views on the political situation in Libya, the upcoming Knicks game, or the arguably amusing stuff my kids said this morning?

I wanted to start some kind of blog, at least to keep my writing going every day (or every other day, or however I plan to update this. I planned to begin on January 1, but the date came and went and I pondered what my focus would be. With Ash Wednesday a couple of days away, I decided to make blogging part of my Lenten sacrifice. Or something.

WHAT I PLAN TO BLOG ABOUT
Well, I'm not sure. I'm guessing that I'll be all over the place for a while, and then something will gel and I'll realize I enjoy writing every day about Different Tap Waters I Have Tried or Pictures Of The Treads Of My Car's Tires. Until then, here are some but not all of the subjects I might graze, in no particular order:

• Excerpts of crap that I'm writing
• Recent and past dreams
• Religion
• History
• Songs I like
• Movies
• Rap songs I have recorded
• Interesting stuff I find on Wikipedia
• YouTube detritus
• Memories from grade/junior/high school
• Things I like
• Things that bother me
• People who bother me
• Fashion blogs (this is not a joke)
• A great number of things that won't initially interest you, but which you might suddenly find interesting...
• ...or not
• Things that probably won't make sense -- to either of us
• Drinking, and being drunk
• Food (so yes, look forward to many a post regarding peanut butter and jelly)
• Self-pitying -- lots of it

WHAT I PROBABLY WON'T BLOG ABOUT
I'm not a believer in using a blog to purge every personal thought, to settle scores, or to reveal too much information about certain subjects. Some of my own personal restrictions will hamper some of the topics that I listed above, too. So, you probably won't get much info about:

• Sex
• Anything that would embarrass or enrage close members of my family
• Anything about what a soul-sucking existence my job can be (whoops!)

WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, ALL BETS ARE OFF
You often read (that is, I often read) about authors who say things like, "I was able to write truthfully about my mother only after she died," despite the possibility of Mom haunting you for eternity in the Great Beyond. Still, I understand the need to omit names and perhaps certain identifying characteristics of people, because:

• I don't want to intentionally embarrass anyone
• This is about me, primarily, not them
• I am honestly not brave enough to face, and then tell, the complete truth

So, I'll be using fake names in most cases, meaning you'll read sentences like, "Then I slapped the table hard and said calmly to my buddy, Jim Smith, 'Jim, I know you're the first black President of the United States and all, but four-of-a-kind beats a full house. You won't ram though your weak cards like you did that nasty health program, JimSmithCare!"

HOW TO EVENTUALLY SIFT THROUGH THIS MESS
This is just the first post, so it's pretty easy to digest the whole thing. But as I continue and cover vastly disparate subjects, you might eventually want to read just my posts on food, not all those wonderful tales about what I like to call Facebook Regret, so I'll probably set up some categories, beyond the labels.

I MIGHT ASSAULT YOUR EARS IN ADDITION TO YOUR EYES, AND NOT JUST WITH THE RAP SONGS
Why annoy people with just one medium? I'm considering providing audio versions of my posts. They won't be straight readings of the text, since I'll probably ramble a bit as well, which is even easier to do in audio format than on the keyboard.

IN CONCLUSION
Good luck! We'll both need it!