Tuesday, January 18, 2011

My 500th post...a State of the Blog address

It figures that my 500th post would basically be an apology for my lack of posting lately. But here we are...

Real life has really intruded on my blogging time lately...I hate it when that happens. Having your priorities in order really stinks sometimes.

So what's been going on?

- I have never been more happy to see a football season come to an end. Horrible and embarrassing season by the Dawgs. A constant stream of ridiculous, inequitable, and illogical rulings by the NCAA regarding eligibility. Pantywaisted sports announcers wringing their hands and clutching their pearls every time somebody gets hit hard in a football game. The fact that our National Champions are a bunch of filthy cheaters, and everybody just seems to be OK with that. Brett Favre. Michael Vick.

Ugh. Just a barrage of stories that either A) I don't want to hear anything else about, B) Make me sick to my stomach, or C) Both.

So that has actually been one of the reasons I haven't posted as much. I just did not enjoy much about this football season, other than the way the Falcons were playing. So it is fitting that this football season would effectively end for me with the Falcons laying an egg on the national stage last Saturday night.

Not much to say about that game, other than that the better team won. I will make one sour grapes argument, though...how does it make sense that the #1 seed doesn't get to play the team that had the losing record in the regular season? What was the point in getting the #1 seed if we don't get to play the worst team left? We would have been better off tanking the game against the Panthers, as it turned out.

Oh, well...I still have faith in Demitrof and Smith, and I expect that this modest run of success we've had the last few seasons will continue.

Four weeks till pitchers and catchers report.

- Until then, I will spend most of my non-work, non-church-related, non-daddy time on the winter television season, and that will probably be the focus of this blog for the next several months. Apologies in advance for those of you who get here through Dawgbone...I will have some recruiting-centric stuff up over the next couple of weeks, but other than that it will probably be mostly non-sports stuff until the summer.

Here is what's on tap:

- My sincere goal is to do at least a weekly post that will basically be a "What I'm Watching" roundup, probably starting either late this week or early next. Many of the shows that I watch on a regular basis are coming back this week, and some new ones I'm looking forward to will start up not long after that. Not sure exactly what the format will be yet, but I'm looking forward to doing it.

- American Idol returns this week, with TONS of changes...almost complete overhaul of the judges table and MANY tweaks to the format. Last season was an unmitigated disaster, which is what the changes are in response to.

I am not excited about the new judges panel at all, other than that they have at least cut it back down to 3 judges rather than 4. Out of the three, I actually have the highest hopes for J-Lo...and that can't be good. Randy Jackson will continue to be useless for the foreseeable future, and I guess Steven Tyler is the new Paula.

I am more intrigued by the tweaks they have made to the semifinal/final rounds. Apparently we will have an extended Hollywood/Vegas portion of the show that will narrow the field down to 10 guys and 10 ladies, at which point the Top 5 of each will advance plus a few Judges Choice type candidates. They did something similar to this a couple of seasons ago, and I thought we ended up with a much higher quality batch of contestants in the finals. This is obviously a reaction to the fact that the Top 10 from last season was a steaming pile of poo, and I welcome the change.

And, really, the quality of the contestants is what is going to end up making or breaking the show anyway...no matter what the Judge portion of the show turns out to be, if we get another batch of contestants like last season it's not going to matter.

I am still planning on doing my recaps once we get to the Top 20...but that's tentative based on whether the show is still something I want to spend any time talking about by the time we get to that point.

- I have been looking for a show to do long-form "LOST" type recaps for, and I think the one I will be recapping is still three months away...HBO's "Game of Thrones". This show is based on the Song of Ice and Fire series of books by George RR Martin, a series that I have now read multiple times and contains maybe my favorite book of all time (A Storm of Swords, the third book in the series). To say I am excited about what HBO will do with the series is an understatement...I have been VERY happy with everything we have seen so far. I highly recommend the books, and will almost definitely be doing regular recaps once the show starts up in April.

So...for the next few months, this space will likely be mostly TV/Pop Culture stuff, with some occasional sports posts as things come up that I want to talk about. Hopefully, you guys will stick around...I love to talk about everything I will be posting about here, and I hope to have some conversations with all of you in the comments sections, on Twitter, etc. That was probably my favorite part of the LOST and Idol posts I have done in the past, and I hope it continues.

Thanks for reading!

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