Oh, if only!
It’s true! It’s a fact. You can see for yourself! Continue reading
Sigh.
Oh, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. And it’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen again. Actors are … actorish, and this is what they do. They’re like cats on the doorstep…I want in…I want out…I want in…but unlike cats, you can’t exactly stick your foot under their butts and decide it for them. For one thing, most of them are bigger than you, if you happen to be me. For another, the whole virtual butt-kicking thing works much better in fetish DVDs than in motivational emails.
So I’ve heard.
But fame or no fame, actor or no actor, I’ve been down this pixel trail a time or two (dozen) before, and frankly, you can’t push people. They come or they go, and it can mean a great deal to the “audience” or it can mean nothing at all, but that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not the person returns for the long term. I’ve seen people come back for twelve hours. I’ve seen people come back for just long enough to register a digital avatar trail and say “see, I went.” I’ve seen Brian Atene come and go and come back and go again over the course of a couple of years. But it’s the same process and we are just exactly as impotent.
I could email. I have his email. But I don’t for a second believe he’s playing coy: I think the man is honestly backing off, and that nothing is creepier than opening your email to see a mass of zombie grab-hands springing out from it, trying to draw you back. I’ll leave him be. If he returns, he returns; if he doesn’t, I hope he’s making shitloads of money and eventually sends me that autograph he owes me, which, no, I don’t think I’ll ever see. I’m like that myself, you see, and the list of things I owe to people I’ve never seen in the flesh is longer than I am tall. Even if I were, like, tall.
And if you think this is just about Brian Atene, you haven’t been paying attention at all.
Blogging for Beginners: four hours, start from scratch and learn to post text, video, audio, and images. Basic copyright and blog etiquette, intro to sidebar widgets, categories, custom headers and design, and what on Earth to put IN the blog. Also where to find technical help.
This one is running August 2nd, ie this Saturday, 10-2, $150 pre-registered, and only eight four three spaces left. I’ll be running it again on the 23rd.
To register, please pre-pay via the Paypal button in the top right-hand corner of the blog. Paypal will give you a receipt and I will email you one as well. If you are registering for the August 2nd course, please email bloggingclasses AT gmail DOT com in advance to make sure the class is not sold out.
Pimp My Blog is practical tips and tools for increasing your readership and influence, and applies to any blogging platform (with the exception of Tumblr, which is really only good for talking to the voices inside your head in my opinion). It includes a very basic intro to social media like Facebook and Myspace for promotion. I’ll be teaching this one on Saturday, August 9th. This is a $150 course, also from 10-2. There are only eight places in each session.
Last: Vacation Blogging (I should have done this in June!). Covers what to do with all those photos and all those memories to keep them fresh forever. It’s basically Blogging for Beginners, with added talk about mobile posting and internet cafes and photoblogging issues. FYI it’s also $150, and runs Saturday, August 16th. Six spaces, because this is going to be more personal.
Hey, it’s summer and there’s a Gawker commenter meetup tomorrow and I have to get presentable and meet someone I’ve never seen before for drinks at Connor Butler in three hours and I still have to get this apartment ready for a houseguest or at least throw the sheets in the washing machine and take out the recycling so he doesn’t think I’m an alkie and make a post about my new blogging classes and I was supposed to get the press release out today but instead I had to wrestle with the damn computer for hours and restart upon restart and don’t even ASK about the Zune and besides, there’s a total buckpassing issue that I have to solve one way or another in the next 12 days not that you asked but have you heard anything? and don’t even ask about the personal life plus there’s an event going on tomorrow that I’m really looking forward to and was supposed to have all the sequins sewn on by today but I don’t but Irwin says the event doesn’t exist and I suppose an arts administrator would say if an event falls at Trout Lake but nobody administers it does it occur at all? but then I’m an anarchist, so what do you think I said, eh? Plus I’ve had two requests in the past 24 hours for a sandbagging tutorial (ie “I have a troll on my ass and I want to lay the smackdown on him; can you help?” Oh, baby, it’s what I DO!) which I totally would have done except:
A) why let the enemy read your battle plans and
B) computer problems (see above).
So I don’t know about you, but I need this. A mashup of Britney Spears’s Toxic and the B-52’s Love Shack:
raincoaster 