From the A Ward

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Last week UTAH SAVAGE presented me with an award.

Here it is:















Truthfully it was for the Cinema Burlesque site, but that is a one trick pony sort of outlet, which is why I started Stuff + Nonsense. I know Utah is expecting a Cinema Burlesque sort of response, so here that is
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While I don’t understand what it is that the award signifies as laudable, I believe the recipient’s response is to thank those who got him started on his blog, and to pass it on to others whose work he thinks is also praiseworthy.


My first experience reading a blog began early in 2004, when I accidentally read Obsidian Wings. In truth, it was the logo that attracted me — a pussycat looking down the sights of a rifle. That day's entry by Katherine R discussed the strange case of Maher Arar.

It was the first time I heard of the man. Arar was the first person to go public after being the subject of a rendition and torture. That was also the day when I first encountered the term Extreme Rendition.

I began following blogs, discovering stories of common knowledge that I had never heard about on the nightly news.

Last fall, I ran across Tengrain’s Mock, Scissors, Paper, and found a home. Eventually, I was seduced into trying my own blog. Something with a gimmick, which would allow me to make use of my obsession with the cinema, an interest in politics, and my commercially acknowledged sense of humor, from back in the seventies, when I was the comedy specialist in a stable of radio and television commercial writers. (In passing, there is a reason they are called a stable of writers and it has nothing to do with stability.)

Considering how I started out in this life, friends could have been forgiven for expecting that I would become the world’s greatest camouflage expert. I was almost terminally shy, but all that was before I was hospitalized.

Anybody who has spent time in the hospital as a child can attest to the fact that most people should be barred from visiting children. Most visitors – adults, who should know better – step inside their hospital room with the trepidation of a rube entering an unsettling carnival freak's tent. Either that, or with a loud false bonhomie which fools no one. The latter merely shatter eardrums and crushes the spirit, while the former raises the patient’s suspicion that he is lying upon his death bed.

“Er ... um ... how do you ... ah ... feel?”

“Okay.”

“You look pale, are you sure you feel all right?”

“Um ... er ... yeah?

Three minutes silence.

“We came to see how you are.”

The following pause stretches until the visitor realize that the ball hasn’t cleared their conversational court.

“And you said you’re okay, right?”

“Right.”

Sweat begins trickling down their temple. Fingers steal upward to pull at their shirt or blouse, where the collar has gradually tightened around their windpipe.

Meanwhile, I've begun to feel like a mean little kid who tortures puppies.

So, to break the tension, I tell a joke. It's not very good joke. In fact, it rates less than a three in a scale of ten, but my visitors are so relieved, they even laugh at an elephant jokes.

Example:

Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: To stamp out burning forest fires.
Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
A: To stamp out burning ducks,

Well, it was funny to an eight-year-old.

Feeble though it may be, it got a laugh, and I gradually learnt to appreciate getting laughs from my helplessly captive audience.

During that hospital stay, I had my spleen remove, contracted a post operative infection, spent a week in the isolation ward with a fever of over a hundred and three, followed by another three weeks recovering enough to be discharged.

By the time I reached home, I had lost my spleen, but I had developed a sense of humor, and enough self confidence to use it. In fact, there are some who will tell you I developed a bit too much confidence, because I did, after all, have considerable reason to be shy.

In all events, I now have a blog, and Utah Savage has given it an award for some merit she failed to identify. I doubt that I will get more. At least I hope not, but however long the blog lasts, Cinema Burlesque has received far more recognition than I ever expected.

Eventually, President Obama will fix everything that is broken, the Republicans will recognize their perfidy in obstructing him, and the world will start humming along again on greased grooves. Or else, Google will no longer be able to find pertinent movie stills, or finding them, I will be unable to come up with a caption, no matter how obscure, to link the picture to a current event. Until either of thos situations arrise, I will keep riding that poor. benighted, hackneyed, yet award-winning, one trick pony.


Considering the frivolous nature of Cinema Burlesque, I am continuously surprised at the serious, adult themed boggers who have linked to my site. While I seldom make any comment which rises above the sophomoric, I do appreciate their efforts, quality, and talent.

drinking liberally in New Milford by Connecticut Man1 is an always interesting read, plus an excellent source of the often overlooked regional stories from New England.


distributorcap NY by distributorcap has an excellent general political blog, however, this award is especially presented for his regular Thursday series on the Sixties. It is an era which we both passed through on our way to the present. For all old fogeys, or kids who want to check out what their parents got up to before turning into old fogeys, this feature is a weekly delight.


That’s Why by Lisa, because of the engaging way she draws readers into the high drama of everyday life and good times with her family – Mathman and The Spawn: the Dancer, Garbo and the Actor.

For the reasons stated, I present this Neno Award to these blogs, with the instructions I received from Utah Savage, to:

“Answer the award's question by writing the reason why you love blogging.

Tag and distribute the award to as many people as you like.

Don't forget to notify the award receivers and put their links in your post.”