"It's Alive! ALIIIIVVVEEE!!!"
So obviously I wish for this little creation of mine to spring into the largest, highest-read corner of the internet, a Frankenstein's Monster of such massive readership and influence that it makes Glenn Reynolds weep and Dan Rather rage.Hmm . . . I've got a lot of work to do.
But I believe I've found a way. A shortcut. A ticket to Blogospheric Easy Street. Get the Kleenex now, Glenn, I've got you in my sights!
I've got . . . a nickname.
That's right. A nickname. Hey, all the big stars in the entertainment and sports worlds have them. Jennifer Lopez is "J-Lo." Alex Rodriguez is "A-Rod." Kenyon Martin is "K-Mart." Notice the pattern?
"M-Chron" sounds kinda silly, so here comes my slight modification:
Marchron.
Shocked and awed yet? Knew you would be. Fear the eight letters that will leave the punditocracy trembling in my wake. What other blogs have nicknames? Virtually none, except multiworded ones like RCP and LGF, but those aren't nicknames so much as abbreviations . . .
None of you are buying a bit of this at all, are you?
Didn't think so. Guess I'm gonna have to do all that work now. I'd like work if it weren't so much . . . work.
I'm keeping "Marchron," though. Don't like it? Too bad.
At any rate, this is what I wish to accomplish for this blog:
--My own domain.
One of the reasons I settled on "Marchand Chronicles" for the title is, well, it has my name in it. I'm a bit of an egoist like that. But I didn't want to name it "Mike Marchand" because that's a dead-end street; someone already owns mikemarchand.com: an actor/model from LA. (You know, just for one day, I wish some magical force could give us one of those Vice Versa body swaps. Eh, never mind. I'm sure I'd hate it and would want to throw myself in traffic by 5 pm.)
Until I get up the scratch to pay the minimal monthly charge for a unique domain name, I've registered "Marchand Chronicles" at geocities.com. There's nothing there; don't bother checking. (And if one of you cybersquatters buys up marchandchronicles.com, marchandchronicles.org, marchandchronicles.net, marchandchronicles.us, or "marchron" with any of the above suffixes, I'll throw you in traffic.)
--Weekly essays.
For five years I was a biweekly columnist for Notre Dame's student-run paper, The Observer. I enjoyed it so much that for the final three of those years I put up with complaints that pretty much began and ended with why I still had a column when I had already graduated. Evidently The Observer finally caught on last fall and didn't invite me back for a sixth year. Oh well, I had a longer run than Tyrone Willingham.
Writing those columns were one of the few things I've ever really loved doing. Sadly, and this can be proven easily by searching the archives, many, if not most, of my columns were crap. Utter, stinking, mountainous heaps of crap. My deadline was Sunday at noon, and since I usually shut the bars down on Saturday night I had a massive headache, and I had to crank out 800 words when I really needed to be writing a term paper, or at the very least propping a bag of ice against my head and swearing to the heavens never to touch that accursed demon's nectar called alcohol again. But two Sundays later I'd be in the same position. My only excuse is that I was unsalaried; The Observer got what they paid for. (And that I love beer. Mmm, mmm, loves me some beer.)
Unfortunately, it's not like newspapers and magazines simply hand out columnists' positions like they do for, well, journalists'. I can't be a journalist because I can't be neutral in many situations, and sadly, columnists mostly seem to be journalists whose opinions have achieved a certain level of editorial merit. Using those qualifications, though, how Maureen Dowd is still employed is beyond my feeble faculties.
--Reviews.
Hey, I like movies. I like TV. I like books, too, but less than movies and TV. Why not write about them? I'm sure I can convey my attitudes about them with far less pretentiousness than guys like Ebert & Roeper, who deign their thumbs' vertical position on movies with the same air as Colosseum nobles who decide whether to spare the losing slave or have him killed.
--"Douchebag Of The Week."
This shall be what vaults me into the blogosphere's stratosphere. Each week, I'll comb out the biggest jerks in the news and award them the Douchebag Of The Week title. (My nominee for this week would have to be Jan Egeland, the UN bigshot who backhandedly said the U.S. was "stingy," igniting a worldwide peeing contest that, even if you agree with the stingies or the anti-stingies, seems so horribly pointless considering the death and destruction. Brag about how much you helped afterwards, people. Actually, don't brag about it at all. Shut up and get to helping.)
If the word douchebag offends you, I'm sorry, but I've done the best I can (even Mirriam-Webster recognizes it as official slang). My original title was filthier, involving a donkey and a void of space. When I realized Hustler Magazine has a monthly award with that name (uhhhh, how'd I know that? . . . ), I altered it to a donkey and a piece of clothing worn on one's head. When I realized that was probably still too strong for those readers who wish to keep it clean, I opted for "Douchebag." It's punchy enough to suit, it reads in print better than "asshat" (oh crap, now I've said it), and, best of all, at the end of the year I can make trophies consisting of actual, real douchebags spraypainted gold, silver, and bronze, and mail them to the people all my adoring fans consider the Douchebags Of The Year. I tingle just thinking about Michael Moore or Jeanine Garafolo opening a package and finding a golden douchebag. (I half-tingle just thinking about walking into my local drugstore and purchasing three boxes of Massengill. That just sounds like fun.)
That's all I got for now. Watch for these little bits and pieces as I spend the next couple weeks establishing my little Marchron monster.
posted by Marsh @ 1:46 AM
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