Heh. They pay people for this crap?

So I was bouncing around the stupidest word in my vocabulary today, and came across Bill Rini's post that not a single poker blog got nominated for a Bloggie, despite our efforts at ballot-box stuffing for Pauly, Al, Iggy, the Up4Poker boys, etc. and flipped over to see who did get nominated.

They didn't nominate anyone I like, they don't get a link. Google 'em.

So I bounced around some of their nominees and found an interesting post from a NYC stripper who wants to be a writer and is doing some columns for the Village Voice (is "the" a part of the title? I can never remember), and she's doing a column for the Voice on several women who have gotten book deals based on their blogs, one of them for some ridiculous amount of money like $500K. So I bounced over to see what was worth a cool half-million in the blogging world. And no, I can't really remember the chick whose blog I was on, or what the links were, and didn't care enough to save the urls.

Wow. Just like movie stars, financial success of blogging is sometimes inversely proportional to writing ability. I had silly business cards printed up with my email, blog address and cell number on there (vistaprint.com, free for 250 color cards and a few dollars for shipping, you gotta ask whythefucknot?) and my title I listed as Director, Designer, Degenerate, Scribbler. These folks don't even rate scribbler. There are blogs out there that I read for funny stories (is it BoozeDay again, yet, Al?), blogs that I read for news of the poker world, blogs that I read (and usually have to read 2-3 times) for strategy on the game, and then there are blogs that I read for the sheer damn literary quality of it.

Tao of Poker
The Obituarium
Up for Poker (you also get a fair number of entertaining stories, but these guys can ALL throw down the writing gauntlet)
Anything Daddy is guest-posting on
Boy Genius

These guys are writers. First, foremost and last, these guys are writers, and damn fine ones. I'll measure the work of these guys against these new novelist/bloggers any day. But the common thread I saw in my admittedly incredibly limited viewing of these blogs?

Boobs and bitching.

The few of these new novelist-bloggers that I visited, and there may be some that don't fit this mold, all seem like they must own the Sex and the City box set. Between the relationship drivel and bra pictures, I found very little writing that impressed me on any level.

Actually some of the imagery on the stripper's blog was pretty good, I thought. I think it was Mimi in NYC or something? I found her images to be much stronger than the crap on the booblogs. Yes, I chased it down. The one I liked was the stripper blog. She's got some serious moments of good imagery there. But the others? If I want to read about a hot chick, I'll go read the Blonde. And I do read The Blonde. Because she's a no-BS blonde, she just lays the truth right out there for you, and screw ya if you can't handle it. I respect that.

So I'd much rather read Pauly's as yet untitled Las Vegas novel than anything by this Jessica Lacy Bra chick. Not that I don't love lacy bras, but I do find them itchy under a dress shirt. But it looks like blogging for dollars is going to be like becoming a movie star - the talent (Steve Buscemi) gets the bit parts and the talent free lummox (Bruce Willis) gets $20 mill per flick. Hopefully somebody somewhere will read the folks I mentioned above and see that the are of writing is alive and well in the stupidest word in my vocabulary. Good luck, guys. It ain't a half-million dollar book deal, but you inspire me to keep plugging away.

Peace.