Ten Years After

Big announcement time:  Humor Me, my award-winning blog (what award? -this is funny if you can imagine Jim Gaffigan saying it in that voice of his) is now ten years old.

Here is my first blog post from September 1, 2009.  Be prepared to be impressed.

"Humor Me is my blog and its sole purpose is to try to be as funny as possible. That’s it. I’m going to write a lot about College Football, politics, movies, and a bunch of other stuff.

I’ve got big plans for this blog. I’m running my weekly “College Picks” that I’ve been doing as a lark on the Wheeler Alumni pages. I’m thinking about doing a “Mad Men” update each week. I’m sure the President will be doing something for me poke fun at.

One thing: I’m going for laughs about 90% of the time. While I do hold strong opinions about many topics (Lima Beans-yuck), I don’t expect everyone to agree with me a hundred per-cent of the time. I can’t help it if you are stupid."

Looking back, I think I've followed my mission statement: To try to be as funny as possible.  I really don't have any other agenda except to say what is on my mind and to be funny at the same time.

I have written a lot about College Football.  I brought my This Week's Picks over to Humor Me even though I really don't know that much about College Football except Ohio State or Notre Dame will always be in the Top Five no matter their win-loss records.

I have written a lot about politics. An early blog post I am proud of is "The Faberge Egg". (Here it is: https://manisville.blogspot.com/2009/10/fibrage-egg.html ) It may be hard to remember, but there was a time when the President of The United States was not considered an existential threat but rather as a savior from our past sins.  As much as President Orange is vilified now, President Obama was worshipped.

Another early post was  President Obama giving the "Date In Infamy" speech. I was proud of that one, too. I think I got Obama just right. I tried doing it with Trump, but it is hard writing like he speaks. https://manisville.blogspot.com/2010/01/franklin-delano-obama.html

By the way, I said not once, but twice that Trump would never become President.(https://manisville.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-will-not-become-president-donald.html and https://manisville.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-will-not-become-president-donald.html) Despite this, I have been accused a couple of times of being a "Trumpster". I always brush this aside and put it down as "someone who has never read a word I have written".   I call balls and strikes with him. He does some good things. Obama kinda/sorta tinkered with the economy and we never got any economic growth during his administration. He was much more concerned with taking over the health care industry which has been a fantasy of the Democratic Party for years.

But, of course, Trump says things. Hey, the guy is from Queens.

I have written about some "other stuff".  I've written about: artificial turf for Cobb County High School football fields, how to fight on social media, and this strange obsession the left has with political beliefs of people selling chicken sandwiches.

Yes, I did a "Mad Men" recap.  "Mad Men" was probably one of the best television shows I have ever seen and the year I did the recap  (the third season) was when Betty Draper (played by January Jones, hubba-hubba) finds out about Don Draper's (played by Jon Hamm, my wife's second husband) real identity.  The problem was even though "Mad Men" was a popular show, it was not all that popular with my readers.

So, with the help of Dave Barry and The Miami Herald, I did a "24" recap. That was more popular and I would receive urgent inbox messages on Facebook wondering when I was going to post the recap of the last "24" episode.

In this ten year period of time, I have lost a brother, a mother-in-law, a father-in-law, a surrogate grandfather, and a cat.

My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010.  She doing great today.

I had a heart catheterization in 2009. But other than that, I'm as fit as fiddle.

In this ten year period of time, our son has gone off to and graduated from college. He is married and has a house.

Blogger "counts" how many views my posts generates.  I did a post about the Eagles documentary when it premiered several years ago. Blogger says it has received 1947 views.  That is a lot of views considering it was just a link in a Facebook status.

It is always a thrill when somebody says they like what you have written. It is so nice when people comment that I remind them of Lewis Grizzard.  I don't think I write like the Master, but no lie, it is great when you know people have enjoyed your writing.

One person who always complimented me was my pal, Barry Suttle.  He would always tell me I was better than someone in our local paper. He told me I should be published. One day, I was published. E-books on Amazon and they are still for sale.

Barry went to bed one night and never woke up. I wrote a post titled "Barry".  It has generated 4055 views.  It has only been linked to my Facebook status once.

Bob Dylan said, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there".  I turned 60 years old a few weeks ago. I plan to keep on writing as long as I can. Future topics include: How to get kids off your lawn, Why things were better then than now, and Which flavor of Metamuscil I like.

One more thing. It is difficult writing humor as a hobby when you don't know the basic rules of grammar and you can't spell. For that, I'm grateful that my wife proofreads my posts. Bless her heart.