- From Faith Current: “The Sacred Ordinary: St. Peter’s Church Hall” - May 1, 2023
- A brief (?) hiatus - April 22, 2023
- Something Happened - March 6, 2023
Flower Power.
Hi folks! We’re getting a LOT of comments these days, which we love. Hologram Sam just sent a yawp of protest over a couple of his comments not appearing, so I wanted to set down what our guidelines are, because I realized that we haven’t ever done that.
1) We love comments. Love ’em.
2) We approve 99% of readers’ comments.
3) The only comments we don’t approve are ones which we feel a) don’t add anything substantive to the discussion, and b) are uncivil, e.g., “Yoko is a beeyotch.” Ms. Ono-Lennon may or may not be a beeyotch, and it’s certainly your right to feel any way you wish, but in general we try to keep the tone of Dullblog up. When in doubt, we approve and let the readers decide.
4) If you submit a typically in-bounds comment and there’s a delay, either Blogger didn’t send me a notification, or I’m swamped and digging through email as fast as I can. Just send me another comment, as Hologram Sam did, and I’ll post them. (I’ll probably post the gripe, too, because see 1) above. The purpose of our comments is to create a sense of Beatle sangha, and being annoyed at Blog Mom is part of that.)
5) I am getting Downturn Abbey ready for publication and starting promotion; and am in mid-revamp of my own blog at Mikegerber.com. In the next month or two, I plan to move Hey Dullblog over to WordPress, which will allow us to implement about sixteen different improvements. I love what we do now, but I want Hey Dullblog to become a much fuller experience, with tons of sensibly organized resources, drawing on a wider range of writers and topics. As The Beatles turn from primarily a commercial enterprise to primarily an historical one, it would be a wonderful thing to provide a place fans could go for comprehensive, curated information, discussion, and discovery.
6) Of course a lot of this will depend on my own time/energy (I am frequently quite ill), and the schedules of my fellow Dullbloggers. If there are any things that you’d like to see us try, or features you want but we don’t have, let me know in the comments below. After we change to the new CMS, I’ll be asking my fellow Dullbloggers what they can/would like to do.
7) One of the reasons we love comments is we use them to find new people to post. If you would like to pitch a post to us, please do–just send it as a comment; I’ll read it, confer with Devin, Ed, and Nancy, and respond to the email you provide.
Typed quite literally as fast as I can—
Thanks so much for reading, and commenting—
Sorry Sam, and everybody keep chiming in!
MG
Related posts:
Comment Policy
Advisory report
Just wanted to bring this to readers’ attention…
No comment necessary
Comment from A Tiny Revolution
Two things
Disclosure Policy
Isn’t it good?
Norman and Goldman and Sentimentality
Baby’s in Black: Answer to Dullblog Trivia Question #2
Dullblog Calendar
Let us now praise VERY WHITE people…
Hologram Sam and other commenters, please do keep sending in your thoughts! I look forward to seeing what further interactivity we can foster on a WordPress platform.
And Mike, thanks for taking on the administrative tasks for the blog!
Sure thing, Nancy–keeps me pretty busy at times, but always a pleasure. I love our readers so much! I’m hoping that WordPress will help our SEO a great deal, and bring the site to many more people.
Michael, Devin, Ed, and Nancy… This blog is one of the smartest I’ve seen.
And please pardon my yawp; I re-read my comment and I sound just like one of those peevish, entitled commenters that sprout like mushrooms on message boards. Robert Benchley said we become what we despise the most. I hope he was wrong.
Michael, congratulations on completing Downturn Abbey.
My childhood heroes were not baseball players. They were the Beatles, and writers like Benchley, Thurber, Perelman, Leacock, as well as the Marx brothers, Keaton, Chaplin. (I was an odd kid) Somewhere along the way, as I aged, I began to believe that a golden age of humor and comedy had passed. I admired George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robert Klein among others, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that each year there was less and less true wit in the world.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I was wrong. You are all just as smart and funny as any Algonquin Roundtabler. In a perfect society you’d all be getting more recognition and untold riches.
Future blog topics:
• John as a cat person, Paul as a dog person (John and Mimi kept many cats, John cried in the Dakota after Yoko’s cat was euthanized vs. Paul and Martha My Dear)?
• The Beatles musicianship: (As a non-musician, they seem highly skilled to me, but I’m always reading about how simple and easy their playing was)?
• Beatle fashion (beatle boots, collarless jackets, moptops… if there had been no beatles, would long hair have eventually made it over here from Europe anyway?) Or would it have stayed brylcreem pompadour 1960 for the rest of the decade and beyond?
– hologram sam
Thank you, Sam–as someone who shares a lot of the same heroes (I was an odd kid, too) I am especially pleased to be mentioned in that same long breath. I am probably the only person you know who owns an LP of SJ Perelman reading some of his pieces from The New Yorker.
While I am waiting to see whether or not one of the big NY outfits can move quickly enough to get Downturn Abbey out for Xmas, I am considering actually sitting down and writing a long essay about the history of modern parody, which began with our pal Benchley–and why a certain kind of it is THE Brucian battleground for the future of comedy. Wish me luck; it could be my version of Benchley’s never-written, long-threatened “history of Queen Anne furniture.” 🙂
I didn’t sense any entitlement, btw, just understandable frustration. I hope what came through from my end was a real appreciation for our smart commenters and some sense that we do try to create a blog worthy of our audience (and topic).
Since there wasn’t any “PRIVATE” at the top, or email address for me to respond to, I assumed that you wanted that very kind email posted, Sam. If you feel like addressing any of those topics, shoot me a draft to circulate. All worthy and interesting.
Finally, re: one of your comments on the other thread, if my health holds out under all this work, I’m considering writing a definitive post on what I think about Lennon’s Dakota years–how I try to clear away the static surrounding them. What/who to believe is a persistent question on Dullblog, and while there are a lot of things that we’ll never clear up definitively, I’ve found some attitudes more useful than others during my own search.
Sounds good, Michael. I look forward to the upcoming changes and perhaps improvements at my favorite site. I’ve been away recently and just read the post regarding John playing live and the discussion in the comments about myth vs reality in the world of Lennon. As you know Michael, I would LOVE to read your analysis oh John’s Dakota Days. To me, it is an endlessly fascinating topic. What was he REALLY doing, what was the REAL reason he stepped away from the game, why was he so gaunt in his last months, and the big one: WHY DID HE STAY WITH YOKO!?! This last one gnaws at me daily. Relationships can be difficult to end because that would require change, and many people don’t like that. But all John had to do was move back in with May and he could have become happy again. He had so much more to give, and the fact that he spent his last years locked away in a castle being miserable is infinitely depressing for me.
Hey Dullblog is the best blog on the Web. I was so happy to discover it, after reading Devin McKinney’s book (twice). It is the only blog I check regularly (besides my wife’s). One thing that makes it great is that it is run by four people, not a single person, so it has a feeling of community. I’ve commented on posts several times, and have been gratified to have all my comments accepted (and the illustrious blog authors respond seriously to at least two of my posts!). Michael Gerber’s post is just another example of Hey Dullblog’s generosity. I hope that in the transition to WordPress, Hey Dullblog won’t lose what makes it special.
Thanks, Anon–and don’t worry, the switch to WordPress is solely a technical thing. It won’t change our content or attitude; what I’m hoping (not to tell you more than you care to know) is that WordPress’ better SEO will give us greater traffic, and the ability to use WP plugins will allow us to offer more/better content.
I have commented a time or two on how wings have been dissed several times on this blog by folks of younger generation not growing up in seventies and maybe a few boomer snobs. I have not seen my comments make it, so when wings mentioned, I again defend the best concert I saw in fifty years of concerts.
Hi, just want to say that there is also some Wings love on this blog! We welcome different opinions as long as they are civilly expressed.