The Secret of My Blogging Success

Welcome  to Perry's Blog!  

And tell 'em Groucho sent ya!

You've read all the recommendations all across the Internet and elsewhere as to how to drive traffic to your blog like they drove cattle across the Old West in the TV show Rawhide, and you feel you know it all.

Content is king, write about what you know, blog regularly but not too often, write about boobs (not that I would ever stoop to that!), and schmooze regularly on social media. But this is one  sure-fire secret that only I  and I alone know!

It's written right above:   tell 'em Groucho sent ya!

Back in June during the midst of the presidential campaign, I wrote a luke-warm political post called Whatever It Is, I'm Against It. the premise of which was that Mitt Romney --- whom some of you might remember ---  managed to criticize all of President Obama's  policies without offering any of his own. In the post, Mitt sings the famous Groucho Marx song from the movie Horse Feathers to interviewer Bob Schiefer in response to any question he's asked about anything remotely substantive.

I thought the post was mildly mirthful but apparently others did not.  It garnered little interest and no comments,  although that is certainly not unusual for a blog so comment deprived that even derogatory comments with personal and ethnic slurs are highly prized. So I gave it no mind and pressed on to further blogging disasters.

Then a curious thing happened.  While checking stats on Blogger, I noticed that Whatever It Is, I'm Against It was garnering more clicks than a tap dancing troupe in a hurricane. Clocking in at as many as 100 or more a day, it was getting more daily hits than most of my posts get in their entire meager and pathetic lifetimes.

How'd all those folks get there?  To paraphrase the catchphrase of Groucho's 1950's TV show You Bet Your Life ... 

Groucho Sent 'Em! 

All those making apparent pilgrimage to Perry were coming via Google in a search for the song and mustachioed comedian who warbled it. I had hit upon a niche area in the career of the fabled Marx Brother in which many people were interested but which had such sufficiently few search entries that mine prominently showed up.

Here's your Takeaway, Class:   Write about something  or someone that's popular but zero in on a relatively limited aspect of your subject.  For example:

Don't just write about  "Nicholas Cage."  Write about "Great Performances by Nicholas Cage." 

Don't just write about "ABBA." Write about  "Songs that don't suck by ABBA."

      Don't just write about the "NRA." Write about the "NRA and ideas that are not batshit!"

There's only one problem.  None of those people clicking onto Whatever it is, I'm Against It has the slightest interest in my post. No one has yet to leave a  comment or is likely to even read far enough to get the premise, much less like it. They want Groucho, not Blocko!

That's 16,437 people to date clicking into a site they had no intention of going to, yelling "shit, who is this asshole?!!" and promptly clicking out.  

Ooops, make that 16,632!  Anyway, give the secret of my blogging success a try.

And tell 'em Perry sent ya! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let's see how today's post fares in the faux Groucho clicks category.  Pretty soon, Blocko may be the fifth Marx Brother!

You Can Drink All the Liquor, Part III

Are you ready for the country?

Just one more day and I'm off with son Brandon to the Central American nation paradise known as Costa Rica!

Am I ready in body, mind, and spirit? Well,  frankly I'm about as ready as Snooki is to star in a West End production of Coriolanus. 

I've not been on vacation for five years.  My bathing suits have cuffs.  My suitcase is so old it doesn't even have wheels despite the fact that wheels had already been invented when I bought it.  I haven't been on a plane since the movie they were showing was National Treasure.   Even Nicholas Cage makes fun of that.

So it's time at last to get my act together because I'm taking it on the road. And it's a  pretty long road, with a stopover in Charlotte North Carolina to boot.

First, I need to attend to my toiletries. I require medication for nausea, constipation, diarrhea, malaria, weltschmerz,  performance anxiety (in my case, anxiety that I'll never get the opportunity to perform), and fear of being seated next to Ted Nugent. 

I must also pack an extra pair of contact lenses and all the various shampoos, conditioners,  root lifters, and other Hair Helper products I use to create the illusion of hair in gullible people. Through a mix of prescription and over-the-counter drugs and various and sundry sundries, I will become a flying Rite-Aid.  All that's missing is a flying pharmacist. 

Then, there's the matter of clothing.  Virtually everything you wear has to be sprayed with something called DEET to protect it from being dive-bombed by Costa Rican insects the size of Kirstie Alley.  It is important to follow the instructions on the can label which warn you to never EVER let the spray contact your skin or you will rapidly dissolve like Nosferatu touched by the first rays of early morning sunlight.  Curiously enough, nothing on the label promises that it will work half as well on the big ass bugs seeking to establish military beachheads on your butt.

To protect the top of my head from burning like the most resolute and unrepentant  sinner in a painting by Hieronymous Bosch, I'll also need a floppy broad-brimmed hat and a boldly colorful bandanna. Coupled with the new sunglasses I bought several weeks ago, I'm sure to strike the image of the far and away least cool 60 plus year old rock star ever to be written up in Wikipedia.

Finally there's the experience of a Central America sojourn itself.  Just imagine:  Me - someone who feels like he's returned to the state of nature whenever I have to fetch a wiffle ball out of the neighbor's azaleas - communing with over 10,000 indigenous species of flora and fauna  in the rain forests of Costa Rica.

I'm actually pretty cool with respect to virtually all of that flora and fauna except for two types of fauna you may have heard something less than favorable about over the years known as crocodiles and snakes.  Fortunately the guidebooks all say that visitors to Costa Rica should be just fine as long as they avoid those areas in Costa Rica in which crocodiles and snakes are known to congregate, those areas being more specifically described as Costa Rica.

Luckily my friend Carrie Bailey,  a wise and experienced world traveler, has been helping me to overcome these anxieties. Carrie provides the kind of tough love that makes me want to work diligently to oust my fears despite the fact that my efforts to use our time together towards maneuvering her into bed have proven totally fruitless. Thanks to Carrie's wise ministrations, crocodiles and snakes will not give me to dread just as long as screaming aloud remains prominent on the itinerary.

And so, I bid adieu to my loyal readership (I believe your name is George) for just a little while.

One more thing:  I'd very much like to bring you all something back from Costa Rica.   If you think of it, please tweet me your T-shirt size.  I probably won't buy you one,  but I'll be very excited thinking about the T-shirt sizes of my women followers when I'm on the plane.

Okay, have a good couple of weeks.

I guess I'm ready ....    

 Yep!  I'm ready!

The Next Dark Knight Rising

   
Who will be the next Dark Knight Rising?

As moviegoers flock like winged creatures of the night this weekend to see "The Dark Knight Rises," a question is already rising in the minds of the fans of the Dark Knight himself.  With the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale trilogy complete, when and where will we see Batman again?  And who will fill the cape and cowl of the Caped Crusader?  

You're in luck.  Casting begins now .....   

Send in the Applicants! 

                                

Wrong Type Entirely.

NEXT!

                       
                    
              Too Short, Too Nuts.

                      NEXT!

Has filled in for another actor before. May have to create new character "Bat-Nurse."   

                         NEXT!

Isn't it enough to fuck up ONE

  superhero movie?

                            NEXT!

         Let me get this straight:

You consider 'Jack and Jill' a 

resume piece for playing

                    Batman?

                          NEXT!

But how can you be both for

   Batman AND the Joker

          at the same time?

                        NEXT!

                         

NEXT!

                
                      Your Highness!

Of course you'd be brilliant!

                            NEXT!

  

Oh, Reg, we've missed you 

                 so much!

                             NEXT!

  Great, we can get Clooney! What? He did what before? 

He did What?!!!         

                     NEXT!

                   
                                  AT LAST!

     The Fresh Face we've

           been looking for!

  Ka-POW!     Ka-BAM!   CRASH!!!

The next Dark Knight has risen! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perchance to Dream

To sleep, perchance to dream.

To stay up, perchance to snack.

Aye, there's the rub! And no fair making an X-rated joke out of that line, because this post is about dreams, not sex.   

I had that awful dream again last night, the one I've been having ever since I was a small child. In fact, I've had it so often and for so long that I'm now collecting royalties from other people whenever they have it!

In the dream, I am going in to take a final exam.  I have not attended class all semester, have not studied, and don't even know for sure what the subject is I'm taking the test in.  I am fraught with guilt, insecurity, and an extreme sense of deep and abiding  fraughtness!  

At that point I awake and experience inexpressible joy that it was all just a horrible dream. Then I do not sleep for the next six months committing Wikipedia to memory until I'm ready to ace that sucker!

Why do we dream at all?  

It is indisputable that dreams can tell us a great deal about the dreamer, such as that he is asleep at the moment.  One man dreams he is being chased by Nazis, another dreams he is being chased by a giant man's pants zipper.  What does it all mean?  

Absolutely nothing,  except either way both guys are being chased by really big pricks!

Of course, it was Sigmund Freud who first referred to dreams as "the Royal Road to the Subconscious."  Further research since Freud's day, however, has shown that the Royal Road to the Subconscious is actually Interstate 47, which leads to Schwenksville PA.  I'd wondered for years why my psychiatrist Dr. Kropotkin was always asking me "So how do you really feel about Schwenksville?" 

We often hear that dreams only occur during REM sleep, but we now know you can dream during non-REM sleep as well,  provided none of us tells the sleep researchers. 

Is it true that people only dream in black and white? 

Another myth is that most people dream only in black and white. Personally I always dream in full Eastman Color, although the quality is faded and badly in need of restoration.  I also tend to dream a great deal in French with English subtitles.  This can be extremely annoying, especially when they pull the caption away before I've had a chance to read it.

Once I went through an entire evening dreaming in Japanese dubbed into English.  Got to the point I didn't even need the dubbing to know what was being said was "LOOK! GODZILLA!"

I've also had a few random dreams in Italian dubbed into English, which is kind of nice except when people's lips move too much for what they are saying. This happens especially whenever I'm dreaming about the late actor Steve Reeves playing Hercules.  

Can dreams foretell the future?

I don't know about this, but it makes a good argument for not sleeping with someone who continually moans in his sleep "Oh no, another film with Nicholas Cage!"

There are on file a handful of unexplained instances which seem to strikingly indicate the existence of clairvoyancy in  dreams.  The noted Midwestern psychic Edgar Carsick once awoke in great panic after dreaming about an ocean liner, swirls of rushing water, and frantic cries for help. His dream unmistakably pointed to an unspeakable catastrophe involving a cruise ship, a chilling prophecy that came all too horribly and tragically true shortly thereafter.

The very next day Mr. Carsick paid twelve bucks to see The Titanic 3D.

Does the movie Inception accurately portray the true nature of dreams?

The movie Inception showed that other people can actively participate in our dreams, although I've never seen actress Ellen Page floating around anywhere in mine, not even one lousy goddamn time! Then again there are probably laws even in the Dreamworld that would have my ass hauled into court for even thinking about doing nasty things to someone as young as Ellen Page, if not to Ellen Page herself.

Inception revealed a whole new aspect, depth, and dimension to our dreams.  It certainly has me scared to death to play dreidel anymore come Hanukkah time. 

All this talk of dreams is making me kind of sleepy.  

So goodnight, everybody ....

OH, NO!  

 LOOK, GODZILLA!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why Superman Doesn't Need A Secret Identity

 Superman, cut that crap out!

It's an issue that's been hotly debated since he first burst upon the scene in Action Comics # 1 in 1938.  Why does Superman need a secret identity? And where did he come up with the goofy name "Clark?"

A multiplicity of reasons  have been advanced for Superman's possessing a secret identity over the years, including:

1)   There's only one Superman costume and the guy can't exactly hang around in his underwear until pick up on Thursday (Wednesday, on fast service), can he?

2)   He likes lookin' smart, lookin' sharp in a three piece suit, and  

3)   He actually is nearsighted, which means we're all in grave danger 50% of our lives because Superman can't tell Jimmy Olson from the Olsen Twins!

But forget all that!  Truth is Superman doesn't need a secret identity at all.  In fact, by hanging on to the Clark Kent alter ego he's squandering precious time he could be using to make life a hell of a lot better for you, me, and the entire planet!

Batman needs a secret identity.  It was Bruce Wayne who witnessed his parents' murder, who devoted his life to fighting evil and injustice, and who hangs around Sunday afternoon watching football, drinking beer, and yelling at the television.  Batman is the fiction, Bruce Wayne the legitimate guy. 

But Superman began life as Ka-El from Krypton, not Clark Kent. Superman is the real deal, and Clark Kent the figment of our imaginations.  

And it's about time somebody clued this Super-Dense Super-Dolt Superman in! 

"Clark ... umm ... something I wanted to mention. Not that it's important or anything ..."

"Yes, what is it, Jimmy?"

"Lex Luthor is destroying all of Metropolis this afternoon.  There's wars in the Middle East and starvation in Africa.  There's crime, pestilence,  and disease raging throughout the world,  and three more Nicolas Cage movies have just come out."

"So?"

"You're Superman, you idiot!  Get on it!"

"What?!!  How do you know who I am?!!!"

"Clark,  ever since 1938 those ridiculous glasses haven't fooled a soul." 

"Well, do you think if I went to that glasses, nose,  and mustache ensemble, it would  make me look too Jewish?"

"Clark, aliens are right now crating up the blue states for transport to their home planet!  Can we get cracking here?"

"Sorry, Jimmy, I've got a couple of articles to finish first.  These stories about the new zoning laws won't write themselves."  

"Please, Clark ... Rick Santorum is about to get the nomination for President!!!"

"I'm backed up with filing too." 

"Clark, you don't need a secret identity!"

"Yes, I do, Jimmy.  Without a secret identity, my friends would be in great danger if my enemies knew I was Superman."   

"Clark, you hang out with the same three people as Superman as you do with Clark Kent! Everybody knows who we are.  Somebody tries to kill us every week!"

"Sorry, I've got a lunch date with Lois.  Y'know, if I play my cards right ..."

"Clark, you've been shtupping Lois as Superman for the last 17 years!"

"Sorry, Jimmy, I've got reservations.  Say, did you call Batman?"

"Can't get him either."

"Why not?"

"Bruce Wayne's at NASCAR all week." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~