A struggling Academy

Yet another interim week has come and I'm stuck trying to think of something to write about for a column that won't post until next week. Thanks for all the suggestions on what to do on off-column weeks by the way. Your insight is overwhelming.

Blogs are easier than real columns that people actually read. Just trust me on that one.

Did anyone actually watch the entire Academy Awards? Could an evening be any more gaudy and self-promoting? They're almost as bad as architects.


So I guess I'll continue with trivia. It's fun for me at least.


In 1981, the Academy Awards were postponed for one day after what significant event.


It was of course the attempted assassination of none other than Ronald Reagan. Almost got it up by Friday.

The Captain's Blog

So it was about a year and a half ago that I was struck with the stinging urge to keep a weekly log of thoughts and events that occurred in my life. Not too uncommon right?

Journals and diaries have been around for ages; for some reason there has always been that need for folks to get their thoughts down on paper. I’m of course no exception.

But I couldn’t just keep this writing to myself. No, no, I had to publish it to every man, woman, and child from here to the planet Pluto, excuse me, dwarf-planet Pluto (does Wi-Fi travel that far yet?). That’s right, I started writing a blog. Why I started doing this is actually beyond my knowledge. Things like, “Had nothing better to do,” start popping into my head when I’m asked the question. Regardless, the reality of the situation is that a weekly blog posted on the Vail Trail website for over a year has now turned into a bi-monthly column for the Vail Daily. What a wonderful world.

And in case you’ve been unable to see the light of day for the past five years, blogs have taken off faster than the morning after pill - or something like that. But if you are in fact in the dark about what the heck blogs are, they were originally called web logs and then morphed into the term blog as they became more popular. Makes sense right?

It makes perfect sense in fact. But what doesn’t make nearly as much sense is why blogs have become almost as cool as Donald Trump. No seriously, it seems that anyone with a hint of angst or opinionated fire throws up an online rant about whatever may be bothering them on a particular day. And with sites like Blogger.com you can have a site up in less time than it takes to write a woeful bit about your latest bad hair day.

Despite the occasional boring ramblings of bloggers, their place in our World cannot be ignored. One website, which I actually choose to believe, estimates the number of blogs to be around 55 million. Blogs have been deemed as a source of alternative media that can publish anything while escaping the shackles of convention and need to please a target market. While some may consider blogs to be an unreliable source of accurate news, people are certainly reading them.

Personal blogs have captured readers that can’t seem to get enough information about people they don’t even know. This need to please a market that thrives on personal information has caused some to post information to the blogging world, excuse me the “blogosphere”, that unfortunately lands them at the end of the unemployment line. The term “Dooced” was coined after a blogger under the pseudo-name Dooce posted remarks about her employer and was soon fired. This may, however, have been a blessing in disguise for Heather Armstrong, the author of dooce.com, for now her highly personal blog often touching on struggles with depression, pregnancy, parenthood, and religion, is one of the most successful on the web and, through the sale of advertisement, is her primary source of income.

So maybe this undeniable attraction to blogs comes from the shear fact that, like Dooce, they are a gateway into the personal lives of people we don’t even know. Kind of like a soap opera except with real people. Can’t get better than that right? Some folks don’t quite agree.

Blogs have been described by real journalists as being bush-league amateur hack writing that has no place in modern media. How could they? Others (non-bloggers of course), consider blogs to be boring, self-indulgent tales about nothing, that do more ego-feeding of the writer than entertaining of the reader.

I will certainly agree that there are blogs out there that should probably be sent on a one-way trip to the black hole of cyberspace (no comments please), but for the most part they contribute positively to information land. Bloggers have the luxury of sidestepping politics, conventions, and constraints of typical media merely because they are conveniently behind the scenes. Hack writing has it benefits.

So now that I’ve moved on from being a self-indulgent hack writer on the web to a, well, self-indulgent hack writer in print, I can safely say, in my infinite blogger wisdom and spectacular grammar: blogs ain’t goin’ away. So go ahead and join the mainstream - we’d love to have you.


John Poole is an Eagle-Vail resident and after you check out his blog at blurium.blogspot.com you can complain about blogger hacks at poolejohn@gmail.com

A small twist

So get this, I was asked to write a bi-monthly column in a daily paper instead of a sometimes, but not usually printed blog in a weekly paper. So for my first week, I wrote a draft that unfortunately for you won't show up on this site until next week. My plan is to write the column a week ahead of time to work out any kinks before it's time to grind. Pretty ambitious huh?

So I'm left with a situation where I'm only going to have a full post once every two weeks. That's no good. So I'll leave it up to the forty or fifty readers of this blog (Big Brother's watching you know) to sport ideas on what to do on off weeks. I'm into collaboration. These oughtta be good.

In the meantime, I'll throw out some trivia so this visit is at least a little worth while:


Q: Who was Vail ski mountain named after and what was his/her profession?


The use of Google and Wikipedia is of course cheating. Remember Big Brother? Check back on Friday......


Answer: Vail was named after the highway engineer Charles Vail who designed the portion of I-70 that passes through the valley.

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

And yet another Super Bowl has left us with the anticlimactic feeling of the football season being dead and gone - of course until next year. I wish they still had the XFL or something to feed our addiction for sitting on the couch and mindlessly staring at men in armor pounding the living shit out of one another.

The XFL was definitely the best of these wanna-be football leagues that played in the beautiful springtime instead of the dark and dreary fall. It’s not a surprise that it was a miserable failure; baseball is much more fitting for the season of new birth and optimism where you wear a cute little cap instead of a big heavy helmet (yes, I did steal that from George Carlin - that bit is by far his best).

So this year brought us players that somehow forgot to hold on to the ball that they have been handling for every waking hour of their athletic careers. Ok, it was a little rainy, but c’mon it’s the Super Bowl, I have every right in the World to criticize the best athletes on the planet in the pinnacle of physical condition while I’m fist deep in Cheetos and six beers under. Who else would keep the term “Armchair Quarterback” in tact? The responsibility, I tell you, is at times overwhelming. If “Armchair Quarterback” became obsolete (or worse, un-cool) like “clam-baking” or “hookin’ up”, I’d have nothing to call friends and family members that question decisions I make. Calling someone an armchair quarterback shuts ‘em up real fast - everyone knows how annoying it is.

“You know, you really shouldn’t have driven your Miata in the snow after drinking twelve beers and five shots while smoking a lefty.”

“Shut up you armchair quarterback.”

What are they gonna come back with after that?

So I would like to announce that today, the Monday after the Super Bowl, is National Armchair Quarterback Day. It’s a day of psychological liberation. It’s kind of like the Sadie Hawkins dance in High School where the girls asked the boys, or even Mardi Gras, where it’s socially acceptable to behave in ways that would be otherwise unacceptable. And the best part about it is that it doesn’t only apply to the sloppy football game we watched yesterday.

You can storm into your boss’s office and tell him/her that he/she (you have to remain politically correct on Armchair Quarterback Day) is fucking up miserably and running this pathetic company straight into the Astroturf. And then of course you don’t have to give any reasoning for your opinion and certainly not any suggestions on how to right the ship - you’re only an Armchair Quarterback.

You can also call up your sister and tell her that her husband is a free-loading slob that only gives a shit about the weed he’s growing in the basement. And the best part is that this is all totally guilt-free - no repercussions whatsoever.

So once I get the paper-work through on National Armchair Quarterback Day (it takes longer than you think), we’ll all be living lives with much less bottled up animosity, however we will of course be without jobs, friends, and invitations to family reunions. But hey, the Cheetos will always be within reach of the armchair.


Share those Cheetos that are in your couch cusions with John Poole at poolejohn@gmail.com.