Hey, folks. I’m back, this time for real. The past few months have been tortuous on the personal side of things, but I’m crawling back to the blog to start pitching in and slowly return it to viability. Time will tell if that happens.
There are two important things I’d like to bring up. 1) I have no clue what’s going on locally, and 2) I have good news.
Regarding #1: the same parts of real life (if you may call it that) that kept me off the blog these past months, also destroyed my ability to keep up with local news. So, I need to get caught up and in a hurry. I know that a some crazy love triangles went horribly awry, my identity was revealed, and an election happened. Beyond that I’m in the dark. Oh, and Virginia Hoge remains the most amazingly batsh** crazy human being I’ve ever encountered online.
In order to facilitate me getting caught up, it would be great to get a couple quick summaries of surrounding cities. To encourage this I’m offering a bounty: you write the best summary for your city, and I’ll give you money. Best summary of the whole FC area dating back to January, gets $100. Best summary of an individual city (Categories: Pasadena, Claremont, Pomona, Arcadia/Monrovia, Sierra Madre, and Everything Else) gets $30. So, there’s potentially hundreds of dollars at stake here, as well as some cloak and dagger action when I try to find some way to deliver the cash without revealing that I’m Todd Ruiz. (Note: I’m not Todd Ruiz any more than I’m Virginia Hoge’s talking rhinoceros).
So, that’s #1. When was the last time any fool ever offered you cold, hard cash to write a comment on a blog. Hell, I remember there were times I would have offered some people money NOT to comment on the blog (*glares at Sierra Madre/Publius*).
#2) Comments. That’s the focus of this blog. I talked to a couple people who were interested in the blog’s revival and were also willing to chip in some shekels so that I could renew hosting and buy my wife enough shoes so that she wouldn’t kill me. Everyone willing to hand over money said the thing they loved about the blog the most was the comments. So, this isn’t going to be the first time that we give away stuff for comments. In fact, I think I’m just going to have giveaways EVERY week. Not always money…I’m not made of gold. But fun stuff, and yes, occasionally I will go the bank, take a small bag of Sacagawea dollars, and use it to pay off an awesome commenter.
Another reason why: Guess what, naysayers who constantly nag in the comments, “OMG YER SO NOT JERNALISTS, YOU R SO BIASED AND SUX AT NEWS.” You’re right. You may be lead paint chip eating mongoloids, but you’re right. This is not a newspaper. It’s a blog published by people who have full-time jobs, but still want to contribute to their community, so they write when they have spare time, to help fill in the gaps that the newspaper can’t (or doesn’t) cover. The day when the newspapers go down will be a grim day, because the FC Blog will NOT be picking up the slack.
What we can do is try to bring back some of the zest that the blog had in its heyday, and the juice was always in the comments (well, that’s not true. Publius’s epic excoriation of Arnold Alvarez-Glasman–which, I should add, has been saved and will be restored…sometime soon–was the best). So, here’s to the comments.
Righto, to review:
- there’s are multiple bounties out for the best comment(s) that reviews what’s been happening in the FC in the past four months.
- this won’t be the last time comments are rewarded.
Anyone can write the comment, including journalists like Dan or Frank or bloggers like Buzz. Hell, Aaron Proctor could do it, but he’d have to come back to the Dena to collect his payment (note: I did meet him before he left, and he can vouch that I’m infinitely better looking than KTodd). We’ll leave the contest open for two weeks, and I’ll pay you at the beginning of May or end of April (give me some time to scrape some cash together people).
Righto. That’s all for now. I’ll be around.
