When the person who nominated me accepted her award, she veered toward modesty.  If you’ve ever read her work or participated in one of her blog-a-thons, you know that Rebecca Deniston from Taking Up Room has little reason to be modest.  She’s got a great blog and always has a fresh take.   Now, she was nominated for this award by Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews. To be honest, Gill also has nominated me in the past for a similar award, and I politely declined… at least I didn’t go full “Marlon Brando.”

The reason was simple. Every other blogger mentioned herein is exclusively a film blogger, and as such, they seem quite willing to participate in these things. While Dubsism has one foot in the film blog community, the other stands in the sports world, and those guys aren’t particularly interested in stuff like this. You would think they would have been just coming out of a spring and summer sans sports, but whatever…to each his own.

To that end, one of the things I told Gill in my declination is the nominee list would be problematic; the bloggers she nominated would be the same I would have chosen. But before I get into that, there’s a bit of housekeeping which needs to be addressed for purposes of keeping things in order. It seems there are some points of etiquette involved in the accepting of and being nominating for this award.

Rule #1: Thank the blogger who nominated you and include a link to their blog.

As I’ve mentioned, it would seem I owe a “thank you” to both Taking Up Room and Realweegiemidget Reviews. After all, fair is fair, I’ve participated in several blog-a-thons on Taking Up Room, and partnered in a few with Realweegiemidget Reviews. They’re both featured in my blogroll, and I’ve nominated for an award by both.  It would seem to be a bit of “dick” move not to thank both of them (in literature, they call this “foreshadowing”…you’ll see why shortly).

Rule #2: Post the award banner on your blog.

Rule #3: Share the reason you started your blog.

It was all about sports and my stratospheric level of sports nerdery. My wife is a sports fan as well, but she also has a perfectly understandable limit for listening to my bullshit. Hence, I started blogging so I had an outlet that didn’t involve straining my marriage before it ever started. If you’ve been a read of Dubsism for any amount of time, you know I’m prone to the rant.

In this case, it was all about the day the Minnesota Vikings signed Brett Favre. I piddled around with blogging before that, and I had been contemplating starting another.  Thar event was such an exercise in mass stupidity that I simply needed an outlet; screaming at my television just wasn’t cutting it.  But the blog launched by spectacle of that day so far has grown into over nearly 1,800 posts and a million and a half site visits into the non-sense it is today.

Despite that growth, you can follow the “Brett Favre” tag on Dubsism for a journey which goes literally from the beginning to his very own installment in the series which brought me into film blog world. Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies.

Rule #4: Share two pieces of advice for new bloggers.

The sports world is far too full of bloggers who keep putting “job at ESPN” on their wish lists. It ain’t gonna happen. If you want to work in main stream media, then do something that will get you a job; get an internship, be ready to work in various media (not just print), and be ready to deal with the competition. Having a blog may help your pursuit, but it won’t define it. Write because you love to write, not because you think it will get you anywhere.

Part of writing what you love is to know who and what you really are. Once you know “you”…do “you.” If you want to be all about the New York Jets, then be all about the New York Jets. If you want to be about humor, then be about humor. Or if you’re like me and just want an outlet, then do that. The trick is once you decide that, stick to it; readers search out blogs expecting a certain type of content, and if you don’t deliver what they expect, they won’t be back.

2) Speak Your Mind, But Be Able To Back It Up

In what is becoming an era in which censorship is on the rise, make the price of silencing your opinions high. In other words, say whatever you want within the bounds of what won’t get you sued. If you are going to censor yourself, make sure there’s value to your silence. Losing a defamation suit is real., and so is losing your credibility, so never say anything you can’t support factually nor offer an opinion you can’t support intellectually.

Rule #5: Nominate a maximum of 15 other bloggers.

Finally, we are at the part where the aforementioned overlapping of bloggers with whom Taking Up Room, RealWeegiemidget Reviews, and I have usual interactions comes into play. So, before I give you my nominees, here’s the bloggers I would have nominated had Taking Up Room not already beat me to the proverbial punch:

• Chris at Blog of the Darned
• Charity at Charity’s Place
• Gabriela at Pale Writer
• Michaela at Love Letters To Old Hollywood
• The Classic Movie Muse
• Crystal at In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood
• Zoe from Hollywood Genes
• Maddy from Maddy Loves Her Classic Films
• Virginie from The Wonderful World of Cinema
• Paddy Lee at Caftan Woman

Obviously, that;s a significant list, and the scope of it means making a list of 15 additional bloggers in the film world that I know who are worthy of nominating pretty much impossible.  But that doesn’t mean that now I can come up with a list of my own, although I can’t make the full fifteen.  But I’m calling this an exercise in quality, not quantity.  Having said that, my nominees are:

• Cary Grant Won’t Eat You – Also nominated me for an award, but I did answer the questions
• Paul S. from Return to the 80’s – Was my partner in the first blog-a-thon I ever hosted
• Quiggy from The Midnite Drive-In – Co-Hosted the most-participated blog-a-thon I ever did
• Pure Entertainment Preservation Society  – A straight-up tribute to the Breen Code
• MovieRob – If you want to read about a movie, you’ll likely find a review here.
• Sally Silverscreen of 18 Cinema Lane – Just a great movie blog, and also just literally as I was writing this nominated me for another award
• Emily from The Flapper Dame – the reason why I someday need to write about my epiphany on Gene Simmons

Rule #6: Tell your nominees

That one should go without saying, but you never know…

And Now For Something Completely Different…

I’ve already referenced Marlon Brando’s declining his Best Actor award; that was when I tossed out the “foreshadowing” thing.  Then I made mention of “dick” moves. Here’s where it all comes together.

Back in 1974, while David Niven was getting ready to announce the nominees for Best Picture, he said the world at the time was having a “nervous breakdown.” The Vietnam War was still a year away from it’s end, the “Cold War” had every opportunity to get red-hot at any minute, and America was in the midst of the “Energy Crisis” spurred by the Arab oil embargo for the United States’ support of Israel in the 1973 “Yom Kippur” war.

Thus, the stage was literally set for the most infamous moment in the history of the Academy Awards…”The Streaker.”

Without skipping a beat, David Niven countered this “dick” move with arguably the most famous “dick” joke in history.

Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?

We have yet to have something like that happen in these awards, but I did find a “dick” move nonetheless.  There was one blogger who was nominated by Taking Up Room with whom I had a limited;level of familiarity.  I did notice this blogger had participated in the “Disaster” blog-a-thon we hosted earlier this summer.  So as I am prone to do, I checked out this blog. It wasn’t the best; it wasn’t the worst.  Frankly, I found it interesting enough as classic film blogs go; I was about to add it to my “reader” list and follow it on Twitter.  There was one problem.

I had already been Twitter-blocked.

Naturally, I found this to be quite a surprise; I had no idea who this person was, so I hadn’t a clue what I could have said to piss them off. After all, the only other time I knew I had been blocked, there was an indicator I had hit a nerve.

Remember the “actor” Ken Jeong? Don’t worry, nobody else does either. Once upon a time, people did know who he was.  I committed the crime of pointing out that he was on his fourteenth minute of his Andy Warholian “fifteen minutes of fame.” This was when his sit-com “Dr. Ken” was circling the drain, and he did a commercial for ESPN touting their New Year’s Eve coverage of the College Football Play-off.  With everybody in tuxedoes and singing, it looked like a wake. So, I made the following comment on Twitter.

Despite the fact I left out the word “commercial,” he clearly got the message.  That lead to this response, which I thought that was pretty funny.  It was actually a lot funnier than anything I’ve seen from his dead sit-com.

A pro wrestler doing the “Ooooh, I’m soooo scared” thing.  Like I said, I thought this was funny…so much so that when I went to re-tweet it, I realized that Jeong had blocked me. WTF?

Believe it or not, Ken Jeong broke my “Twitter-blocked” cherry. The fact that up to that point, I had been a blogger for six years, and this wasthe first time anybody ever blocked me.  Considering some of the stuff I say, that was about as impressive of an accomplishment as remaining a virgin in Arkansas past the age of 11. 

At first, I couldn’t believe this guy gave a shit what some blogger thinks.  Then I realized you can tell “Dr. Ken” was his “baby;” he saved up his cash and established himself in the right spot in the entertainment business to get that show made.  This was his proverbial ”pet project,” and I called his baby “ugly.”  He’s going to end up working in a food truck somewhere on Wilshire Boulevard because he can’t write a network-friendly “butt-hole” joke, and no blogger can change that.

Ken, I was a fan of yours and I did hope you would bounce back from this setback.  After all, I have a rule about trusting people who say they never failed at anything.  It either means they never risked anything or they are lying. As for the blogger who blocked and who I won’t name…I’m not about to give your “plain vanilla” blog any traffic…which it obviously could use.

For both of you, I knew I was going to get blocked, I would have got my money’s worth for it. For the unnamed blocking blogger, there’s really no point in saying anything nasty to you now, because i’ll never see a reaction. Not to mention, who has anything bad to say about vanilla? It’s like your blog…it isn’t good, it isn’t bad; your eight readers just get what they expect from it.  Blocking me was the best thing you could do; it’s the veritable “Pissed you off, I win!” award. So, suck it.

Speaking of suck…as for you Ken, I was wrong to call you baby ugly.  Your “Dr. Ken” was a genetic tragedy which should have been taken to Planned Parenthood and sucked into a bio-hazard bag.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I would like to offer congratulations to both the nominees I would have suggested and those I actually could.  Now you know I don’t think you’re “vanilla.”