Play One on TV

After a hiatus of almost two years, “Play One on TV” is back on the air!

And you’re saying, “who?” Don’t blame you a bit, son. Fame is fleeting, especially for someone who labored for the better part of one year to accumulate, at last estimate, six regular readers (seven if you count my mother). Those six (seven) people will recall my sudden burst upon the blog scene way back in 2003. Armed only with my wits and an old copy of Frontpage (a state that some would hardly call “armed”), I tossed out essays, commentaries, Top Ten lists, and rants against the evils of Pauly Shore worship. My goal: win the heart of my beloved back from Dave Barry.

For about nine months, things went swimmingly. I was having fun, I was learning new things, and my work was well received by my pitifully small audience. But somewhere along the way, life started rearing its ugly head, and I got busy with other things like family, outside obligations, and making a living. In fact, I became so busy that I was forced to concede, in writing, that Dave Barry columns were allowed in my marital bed (but not on Saturday nights, dad gummit. I had my limits.) At some point, my daily “I’ll get around to posting soon” posts became weekly, and then monthly. Around the latter part of 2004, the hosting renewal bill came in the mail. I received it with much the same enthusiasm as Dom DeLuise does the bill from his fitness center membership, and at that point the fate of “Play One on TV” was sealed.

That URL is now owned by some cybersquatter firm that is firmly convinced someone out there just can’t wait to drop $900 on my old web address (and they have the $7.99 per year to prove it). I should probably be thankful that a pornography concern didn’t snap it up, sending all my dedicated readers to the entire catalog of “Girls and Penguins Gone Wild.”

Even if I had no time to blog, the urge remained. For the last several months, I have lived my bloglife vicariously through other people’s sites, bloating up their disk storage figures with long-winded comments. I finally realized how much this was like wandering into a friend’s kitchen and eating all of the cottage cheese - I was being rude and living off the hard work of others. However, I’m not quite sure what finally triggered my “return to the fold” - perhaps I read something about Pauley Shore making a new movie. Whatever the cause, here I am.

The URL is slightly different - pootv.com. Short, simple, and sure to draw all manner of readers interested in terms like “poo”. The approach is slightly different, too - instead of “roll yer own” with Frontpage, I’m using one of those dreaded content-management systems (Wordpress, to be exact), which should allow me to concentrate more on content and less on window dressing (although I’m tempted to join a 12-step program for Theme abuse).

One of the advantages of having done this before is that content isn’t going to be much of a problem, at least for a while. Anytime I run dry, all I need to do is dip into the hard drive and blatantly plagarize myself (not unlike how Piers Anthony writes most of his novels). What was old will become new, or at least factory reconditioned.

The rest is up to you. If I have half the reception I got last time I did this, I’ll probably keep this up for at least twelve - no, fourteen months at the very least. You are hereby charged with telling me how funny I am, or failing that, how funny I could have been if I had included a couple of fart jokes.

See you around!