1. No, this post is not related to the Glee show choir ensemble, because I'm sure that's the first place your mind went. This is about an entirely different matter, and it stands to impact your readership of this blog in a very dramatic and immediate way.
In a few short months, this blog will turn 2 years old. It's been a long two years, filled with long nights and arduous spell checks. But thanks to my abnormally loyal viewers, this space has flourished. So too has my resume and my repertoire of interests and writing talents. And as I have adapted and changed, this page has not.
Over the past few months, you may have noticed a few subtle (and a couple not-so-subtle) references to an upcoming makeover of this page. That is a lie. This page will not change.
What does stand to change is the forum in which I communicate my thoughts and words to all of you readers. I have far too wide a range of opinions to be running a simple blogspot such as this, and my readers have grown far too large to be subjected to this one black page.
Some of you may have been told by me personally this was coming; many of you probably had no idea. Regardless, this is the official announcement that the C4G blog will soon be closed down.
Don't think of it as a death, but rather, a move. You got a new promotion at work, and you're moving out of the trailer park and into the swanky downtown loft.
I will be bringing in a team of writers, many of whom have already been assembled, that will cover content with me. These are writers who have been hand-selected by me for specific and purposeful reasons. These are not journalists. Rather, they are opinion-givers and commentators, such as myself. While I don't claim that they will have the exact same writing style, or even the same opinions, as I do, they are competent, willing, and more than capable of putting their thoughts into word for the pure sake of entertainment, just as this site has functioned for many of you.
Obviously, this space is too small for such an undertaking, so I have brought two independent web design consultants on to my team. With my guidance and input, they will be building a larger, more tailor-made space off a WordPress template that will functioned as a more organized blog for myself as well as the fellow contributors.
If you're getting excited about the possibilities here, then good. Great. Join the club. I'd be lying if I said I had eyes for only sports writing, and I don't pretend all of you have no other interests either. This new blog will reflect those dynamics in my personality as well as yours. Additionally, other writers stand to keep content fresh and focused when my many responsibilities -- Sports Section Editor at The Breeze, contributing to the new CAAhoops.com (please check it out if your a Colonial basketball fan, we work very hard on it), hosting the WXJM Sports Manifesto radio show with Tony Schaffner, an additional writing project that must remain nameless, a job at Massanutten, and oh yeah, school work, which I should probably mention here lest my mother read this-- stand to interfere with blog writing.
For many months, this blog has served its purpose. While I will continue to update it when I can in this transition period, the new page should be ready in a few weeks. I will meet with one of my web design people next week and hammer out the finalish version of the layout, and it will be set up from there.
This blog entry, in the form of one of my most popular recurring entries, should provide you with some idea of the dimensions that will be present on the new blog. Without further ado:
2. Sports: You didn't seriously think I was going to start with anything else, right? I mean for the love of all things Pat White, you didn't think I was gonna leave out what got me here in the first place, right?
While we're on the subject, how bout them Lakers? D'antoni over Phil? Seriously? OH MY, IT'S SO CONTROVERSIAL!
No, they should hand their team over to a guy whos 80% arthritis and 20% outdated triangle offense. I'm no GM, but any time a coach has to request 42 absences in advance of his hiring, I may consider another candidate.
Mull on this: the Lakers backcourt? Combined, it's 70 years old. The Thunder's backcourt? It's about 45 years old.
I don't see a whole lot of efficient defense being played regardless, so you might as well go with the offensive guy who's gonna maximize what you can do when you actually do have the ball. After all, they're probably going to give up 90 or 100 per game regardless of who's holding the clipboard. Just saying.
3. TV & Movies: What's up with all the Amazing Spiderman hate? I don't get it. When it came out, didn't a bunch of people say it sucked? Feel free to chime in here any time now, 17-year old who couldn't think of anything better to do on a Saturday night than masturbate to Emma Stone in a lab coat.
I've loved Andrew Garfield since 2 minutes after I finished The Social Network. I've liked Emma Stone since Superbad (though I thought she looked too hot in Zombieland, even if it eventually fleshed itself out in her character development). Martin Sheen as Ben Parker? Stroke of MF'ing genius. Casting gets an A plus to infinity, right down to Sally Field.
What I thought it did an excellent job with was picking and choosing what origin strings to pull. Toby McGuire's Spiderman has to explain every facet of the character's birth in two hours, whereas in the Amazing, silver-agey boot, Peter already has a hobby in photography. The Osbourne legacy? It's already in place.
More importantly for me, McGuire's Peter Parker was shy and passive. When he suddenly got all wry and witty as Spiderman, it was unnatural. Garfield's is basically the same character in and out of the suit.
Sure, there are a few moments of 'wow, that would never happen,' like every 15 minutes when Parker breaks a subway station car or a football goalpost. In real life, people would obviously demand an explanation for the bizarre, superhuman shit that's going on. Duh. Suspend your disbelief. It's a movie about a boy who's half man, half spider. I think you can handle a couple insignificant plot holes in the grander scheme of things.
Overall, solid rentable movie. If I was going on a date with Emma Stone, I'd totally watch it.
4. Video Games: Yeah, act like you didn't see this coming. Sheesh. Have you been living under a bridge my whole life? No small wonder this didn't end up at the top of the list.
Can we talk about how epic the GTA5 trailers look? A friend pointed it out in the Breeze office a couple days ago, and boy... nice work Rockstar. You continue to impress me.
What's brilliant about the launch of Grand Theft Auto is that they stepped away from it for a while. Even though I own GTA4 and played the hell out of San Andreas when I worked at the HOV boy scout camp when I was younger, I was never a huge fan of the series. I thought the plots were too overlooked and the storytelling was generally mediocre. I thought Rockstar was getting off by creating a cheap conflict and surviving off bad publicity among middle-aged moms.
Mom: Don't buy that game where you shoot police and steal cars! I saw it on the news! It sounds bad! You'll turn into a bank robber if you play it!
14-year old boy: Wait, seriously? I get to kill cops and steal cars?
So Rockstar stepped away, actually developed a few plots, and spit out one of the greatest games ever made (Red Dead Redemption) and one of the most diablically sinister endings ever made (LA Noire, whose ending still makes me cringe.) Now they return to the scene of their greatest franchise with grandure in mind, and methinks they're going to get it.
5. Music: Can we talk about how horrificly terrible music has become? There's a time and a place for bass lines, and 10AM on a Wednesday morning where no alcohol has been consumed is not one of them. And as I read what I just wrote, I realize it looks like I am differentiating between Wednesday mornings where I am drunk and Wednesday mornings when I'm not. Which is not the case. I'm gonna stop rambling now.
What the hell is happening to music? Rock seems like it's dying, good artists sell out to hear their shitty singles on the radio, and we live in a world where K3sha is a role model. Can I quit life?
Oh, and Taylor Swift? When you were nationally trash talking that one random dude in a pick up truck, it was kind of cute. Now that you've got a different singer/songwriter boyfriend each week... it's just gotten kind of sad. As far as I'm concerned, you're just another album to burn.
(that's called a triple entendre. top that, rap artists.)
6. Humor: I am, on rare occassion, funny.
Some humorous things I've noticed and jotted down over the past few weeks that could serve as potential material: why do girls think that knowing all the words to Baby got Back automatically grants them a nice ass? Why do black guys let you throw down gang signs with them on the bus without instantly kicking your ass? Why is the number of people that God chooses to save from disease or death directly proportional with the quality of health care in a given country? And other things that are wayyyyyy too inappropriate to put on a blog read by my parents.
(advanced notice: in the future, if you are an older adult and related to me, you may wish to avoid the humor section in the future. believe me, that earlier masturabtion joke is nothing. you have been warned.)
7. Politics- I've always said that I never wanted to get into politics on this side, and I've stuck by that assertion. However, as the site expands, I feel I have a responsibility to the public discourse to lay out political current events in a way that is fair, honest, multi-layered, and straight forward. I'm admittedly still working on the formatting of this, but I plan to have multiple opinions from different political factions on each single post, making it a buffet of opinions, rather than just a simple cafeteria with chocolate vs vanilla ice cream machine.
8-10. SUPER DUPER SECRET- no, this doesn't mean I ran out of content at 7. Some other things are still in the works, some other writers are still in the process of joining my staff, and I'm not ready to reveal just everything quite yet. Rest assured, some of the most entertaining content has yet to be revealed, so you'll just have to wait for the final set of surprises.
If this idea seems a bit like Grantland, then good. Bill Simmons is a personal role model of mine, and while I did not base this idea off Simmon's site-- it's actually been in the works longer than Grantland has existed-- there are some undeniable similarities. If you enjoy the work of Simmons and his writers, it's most likely safe to say you will enjoy the work that my team and I will be bringing forward.
I can't wait to share the final product with all of you. Thanks for being such loyal readers, and I hope you find yourself as satisfied with the content to come as I am dreaming it up. My guess is that you won't be disappointed.
