Bloggy Appraisals

Well, interested in what my friend Lemuel called an “hilarious” movie now in theatres, I have looked on YouTube to find some excerpts of this “Borat” character. I saw him take his pants off in an interview with Jay Leno as Martha Stewart was trying to show him how to make a bed.

At first, I didn’t know if this guy was “for real” or not. Perhaps it could have been a pretty funny thing if he WERE actually from Kazakhstan, and was just simple-minded and got himself into trouble because of cultural differences. It’s pretty obvious, though, at some point, that this was a character played by an actor. Silly me. Chris had to tell me that Ali G plays the character of “Borat” before I realized what was what.

Hmmm. Ok. Knowing that it is not at all real makes it so much less funny. You would think it might even make it funnier (I insist that this is a word.) It doesn’t. But, I feel I may be missing the boat here. Yet another thing that I don’t get. I guess I’ll just stick to my “Are you being served?” reruns with some Peter Sellars on the side, even if that means I am so last week.


On a different note, my blog, if sold is worth $1,693.62, according to http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/. I, at first, thought this a fantastic amount. Imagine that, a thing that I use to vent and for pure fun being worth that! Huh. Then, things steadily went downhill as I learned that almost all of the blogs that I read are worth far more than mine:

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/, a blog that shows pictures of people on the street of various cities of the world, supposedly showing that some people really know how to dress = $757,612.68

http://thekilowatthour.blogspot.com/, a personal blog of an old friend of mine which features lots of mindless memes, silly pictures of dogs, articles of her own clothing and an occasional side comment from her husband. I like to read it to see what she is up to and she DOES live, at least at the moment, in a cool place, NYC. It’s worth $9,032.64. God!

As far as “content” goes, I would have to say that Monica wins out (http://ottavina.livejournal.com/.) Unfortunately, though, the heart to heart style of frankness must not make for good reading for most. Hers is worth $564.54. Sorry, Moni. I’ll keep reading it, though, all the same.

Perhaps the most disgruntling of all are a couple of blogs that I stopped reading long ago because they seemed “too commercial” and “fake”. At some point, when blogs start to take on a real, honest-to-goodness size readership, their writers start to get full of themselves, thinking that they should make their entire living off of their blogs.

http://www.dadgonemad.com/ is written by some middle-aged former fratboy type turned family guy who makes up fictional stories about his own family. It is funny, until you realize that this guy actually sees himself as a “writer” of sorts. Knowing that and reading that almost every entry he makes gets upwards of 500 comments like “way to go dude” and “dude, you’re so funny” turned me off long ago. But, as I had suspected, dadgonemad’s latent desire to quit his job and just blog for a living may be a reality. He’s worth $255,736.62!

Dooce is one that I had to stop reading on some sort of principle I had. She actually DOES make her living from her blog. She’s got all the material in the world, though, living in Salt Lake City and having a family. (The family thing seems to be important for readership...lots of Mormon moms click their empathetic cursors to Dooce everyday to see wheat her cute little daughter is up to...guess their isn’t much of a readership for a gay, obviously cynical, opera singer living in Germany...damn you world.) http://www.dooce.com/ is worth a whopping $3,219,007.08. Can you believe that? Whatever. She IS a good writer, and IS funny, though. She isn’t crabby like me and seems to be original albeit totally commercial in a way that middle-class suburbia can be sometimes. It’s just so fucking vanilla, you know? I just have to remember, vanilla, continues to be the world’s most-popular flavor.