Whither Thou Bloggest

Whither Thou Bloggest is a quote I found myself ruminating upon the other day. It's derived from the Old Testament - the Book of Ruth  - and it means literally:

"What am I going to do with
 my suck ass blog?" 

I've been writing this blog almost six years and it continues to be as popular as the slides of your 1964 family vacation to Freedomland USA. I began musing on Facebook that very day as to possible ways to pump up the blog, improve my readership, and get ya to love me!  

Here's a few ideas so far:

1) Add a Frozen sing-a-long to every post.

2) Develop a story arc where I become Professor of Quantum Physics at MIT and do significant research in Vector Analysis. Merriment ensues.

3) More dick jokes.

4) Make the character an insecure Jewish Baby boomer. Oh, wait, that's the shitty premise we're trying to fix.

5) Add special features commentary by director Wes Anderson. 

6) Include Bloopers and Out-takes, especially when I flub use of the pluperfect  subjunctive. LOL!

7) Don't be so Jewish!

8) Instead of a Baby Boomer, I will now be a barefoot freckle-faced boy growin' up along the Mississippi with his best ol' friend Jim (Note: Check copyright availability.)

9) Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Liza Minnelli!

10) A quick 'n easy dinner recipe in every post.

11) All Flash Fiction will now only be about The Flash.

12) No more fantasizing about hot women. From now on, it's moonlight and Sean Hannity!

11) Adopt warm-hearted "From Our House to Your House" sensibility.

12) Close each post by digging into a large bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. Bon Appetit!  

13) Make the character a blond Nordic gentile with self-confidence. You think that's a stretch?  

14) Somewhere in this blog, boys and girls, I've hidden an afikomen! 

15) I marry a woman with a big brood of children, and we follow their sassy adventures!

16) Bake each new fan a chocolate cake. But I won't have time to ice them.

17) I juggle flaming stuff.

18) More car crashes.

19) Ginger and Mary Ann cat fight over me. 

20) Occasional cameos by Mr. Bill Murray!

21) Always leave 'em with the old soft shoe.

22) Sure, everybody loves 17th Century English drama, but if I read one more Beaumont and Fletcher joke....

23) Dick joke translations into the Greek exclusively by James Franco.

24) Develop line of "Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute" cutlery and and transform blog into 24/7 infomercial featuring Tom Bergeron.  

25) Plumb the depths of human experience and illuminate the angst at the base of the soul. That'll reel in the suckers!

26) Add a catchy jingle. "Here's a story about a man named Perry ..."

27) Larry King? You're here? You'll do anything to stay active, won't you?  

28) I go undercover at Scientology Headquarters and produce a hard-hitting series of posts which prove conclusively and beyond a shadow of a doubt that they ain't bothering nobody.

29)  Add super hot women characters who have just overdosed on female Viagra. Explore endless ways in which they tell Perry "no, we're just not in the mood right now."

30) My secret identity as Batman is at last revealed! True,  my crime fighting career is over, but maybe now you'll pay attention to the dick jokes?

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So, do you have any other thoughts?  All are welcome as I am as desperate for a blog concept as Republican Presidential candidates are for a credible idea.

Oh, and one more thing.  

Any of you know Liza Minnelli?

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Top Ten Reasons Young Women Should Date Boomer Men

Yeah!

10) Gray hair on pillow almost assuredly isn't yours.

9) Very unlikely to have a tattoo inside his thigh with the name of former girl friend.

8) If you shout out another man's name during sex, odds are he can't hear you anyway. 

7) Where else can you find such an invaluable store of information about Iron Butterfly?

6) Hours on end relating his experiences to you during the Sixties far more effective and fast working than Ambien.

5) Not in the mood?  Just play "Hide the Viagra!"

4) Nobody does a better Dwight Eisenhower impression!

3) Little chance he'll cheat on you because who'd want him? 

2) Very receptive to your saying "not tonight, I have a headache" because he assumes everybody else feels as lousy all the time as he does.

And the Number One Reason Young Women Should Date Boomer Men, 

1) Far more likely than a younger man to appreciate you for your mind rather than your body, although the only reason I wrote this list in the first place was to lure you into the sack!

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If you liked this post, you might also like 62 Reasons Why 60 is Not the New 40, 25 Reasons It's Great Not to Have a Significant Other, and When It's Your Turn to Speak, DON'T!

If you hated this post, I hope you end up with somebody even older and less appealing than me .... if that's possible!

My 1 1/2 Minutes

Swimming Pools, Movie Stars

It was the great Andy Warhol who said “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

I don’t know if it’s true, but I do know there is a lengthier form of the quote which includes an extensive list of exceptions. You don’t hear this quote quite as often as the other one because it’s less pithy, being 48 million pages long.

Recently, however, I did indeed get my 15 minutes.  Or to be more precise, my minute ... minute and a half ... minute and 3/4s, whatever … of fame. The exact time of my period of fame is hard to measure because it included a lengthy PBS pledge break.

What happened? A month or so ago I wrote a parody of The Wizard of Oz which I called Flying Monkeys in the Mist,  and I posted it here in my blog.  Some of you may have seen the original movie The Wizard of Oz; it’s a fine film and I recommend it. It’s sort of a fantasy involving a young girl’s dream about traveling to .... Oh, No, Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!!! 

So sorry,  pay no attention to that!  Or, for that matter, to the man behind the curtain at the end of the movie who turns out not to be a real wiz ....  Oh, No, Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!!!

Well, anyway, Flying Monkeys in the Mist caught the attention of a man named Richard Horgan, who writes for an internet blog entitled FishbowlLA, part of a respected media and entertainment publication called MediaBistro.  And there on November 30, 2010 under the title One Man’s Wizard of Oz Remake appeared an article about the parody and about ME!, which puts forth the proposition that “I don’t suck.”

You’ll notice that Mr. Horgan mentions both me and famed Director Robert Zemeckis (of such films as Forrest Gump and Back to the Future) in the same breath, the implication being: “You’re out, Zemeckis! Mr. Block is the new creative genius of Hollywood! (It’s a bit subtle, you have to read between the lines.)

Ladies and Gentleman, Game Changer!!! 

I took three immediate actions: made an appointment for a haircut, began Googling agents, and put an ad on Craig’s List for a trophy wife.

No sooner had I read the piece than the phone rang: Brinngggg!

“Hello, Perry Block, Internet Superstar! May I deign to help you?

“Mr. Block, this is the Penn Wynne Library.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry. I simply don't have time to speak at any special Perry Block Night you may be planning at the library.  I'm  most likely going to be on a nation-wide promotional tour.”

“No, no, Mr. Block. We called to tell you that the book you took out --- An Overage Losers' Guide to Meeting Marginal Women --- is a week overdue and there’s a fine."

Guess when someone goes viral, librarians are among the last to hear.  Never mind!  Next off to tell son Brandon the incredible news.

“Brandon,” I trumpeted, entering his room, “believe it or not: I am the next Superstar of the Internet! You know what: ‘Californey is the place we ought to be!’”

“That’s great, Dad,” said Brandon. “Um, I’m trying to do chemistry here.”

“You don’t understand! The only chemistry we’re going to be needing is yours and mine with a palatial estate formerly owned by Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher!”

“Swell, Dad! Think Debbie or Eddie can help me calculate the molecular weight of plutonium?”

15 year old Philistine!

So I trotted off to the PC to bask in the dramatic upsurge in my Twitter and blog followings and the inevitable multitude of e-mail requests for endorsements of athletic equipment for sports I’m too uncoordinated to actually play.

But WTF! I’d gained no blog followers, lost a bunch of Twitter followers whose avatars were eggs, and as for e-mails, they were the same as always: 

“Want Viagra?” 

“Buy Viagra Cheap!”   
“Dude, We've Got Your Viagra!”
“Hey, Overage Loser: Here’s all the Viagra You’ll Need for that Special Marginal Woman of Yours!”

 Then I knew. My 1 ½ or so minutes were up. Time sure flies when you’re going viral!

I guess Andy Warhol was right. All of us may get our brush with fame, but most of us just don’t get to brush as long as we’d like.

Shucks. 

And I was so enjoying that fresh minty taste!

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Mantra of the Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute

Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute
“When the road ahead seems suddenly all in the rear view mirror.”
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We are the Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute!
Incipient Baby Boomer Geezers.

Inside we are 35!  No, not 60 or more!
Our enemies: the mirror, the camera, your 'who gives a fuck's' galore!
We like to think we still boogie, we’d like to think we rock,
But demographically we’re poison, just pigeon-feeder stock!

We are the Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute!
Incipient Baby Boomer Geezers.

Today we sprout hair in all the wrong places,
But where we so want it, only wide open spaces!
Once we trusted no one over 30, it’s true,
Today we know no one under, no gentile, no Jew!

We are the Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute!
Incipient Baby Boomer Geezers.

A bit of the bubbly means Alka-Seltzer,
Hard drugs --- Viagra, whadday expect, sir?
Once cuddly and cute, hip, happening, and cool,
Now avuncular, respected, well-furrowed, mature.

CRAP!

We are the Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute!
Incipient Baby Boomer Geezers.

We are Generation Ex-Lax, not X.
We are Generation Why???, not Y.
Hug one of us today!
Preferably me.

Please.

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