My 7 Links

Maya's breakfast at the hotel in Houston. She's the one who should be blogging.

Drive-By Truckers, Go-Go Boots
Centro-Matic, Candidate Waltz
Low, C'mon

I was tagged by my friend Frank at Lemons and Beans, (tapped himself by Grantourismo / Trip Base ) to pick seven posts from the pile that fit the following descriptions.

Most Beautiful: something between a cockfight and a wizard standoff



My blog is lousy with lousy pictures from a lousy photographer but this offhand snap of someone walking beside me at Spanish Town Mardi Gras justified the monkey/typewriter/Shakespeare relationship I have with photography.

Most Popular: Boo Fries at Acme Oyster House, Baton Rouge



In the five years (really?) I've had this blog (I've had others, I add rakishly), the page count has really only blown up twice; most recently in a post about my friend Jeanne Leiby's passing and back in 2008 over a re-post of a review where I make mild fun of Bob Dylan. I am a fan of the tortoise over the hare and the top subject that brings people to my site outside of my own name consistently is "boo fries". I still haven't been back to Acme Oyster House, but maybe I should cash in on all the fame I am bringing to them, or at least to myself through them.

Most Controversial: Feeding the Monkey in My Soul



By far, the most (only) controversial thing I have ever said on the Internet is that I don't care for Steely Dan, so much so that a guy wanted to take me outside of Frank's bar one night and straighten me out and that WNYC had me on the air to discuss this most peculiar of dislikes. The producer told me I was the only critic they could find that would publicly talk against them, and really, I don't even hate the band like I once did. The exercise that I went through on a previous blog (this discussion has transcended the blog barrier, so contentious it is) in fact taught me, in a way, how to not hate but to channel distaste into something useful. It was a valuable experience and continues to be one.

I still hate Supertramp.

Most Helpful: When 50,000 Hippies Descended on Prairieville



This research-dump of info about the 1969 New Orleans Pop Festival, the massive pop festival that took place in Praireville two weeks after Woodstock, was useful to me - it turned into a 225 article for which I was paid - and to those whose hazy memories continue to trickle into focus a year later.

Most Surprising: 33 1/3 Update



I'm not sure there is a surprising post up in here; my blog is mostly a catalogging of what I listen to, read, eat, watch and think about, so in the manner that flying a plane is a million little corrections that keep you from crashing, alexvcook.com is comprised of a million little surprises. The biggest surprise of it all is that blogging about songs on LiveJournal got me in with outsideleft which got me my first book which got me gigs writing for area magazines and made me a professional writer which got me inclusions in my favorite magazines on earth which got me a second book and who knows what's next. So thanks, blogging!

This one post where I made it to the semi-finals in getting a 33 1/3 book written was pretty cool and and more than a little surprising. I didn't make the final cut and I blame fellow blog traveler Scott from Pretty Goes With Pretty who I'm convinced edged me out with his book on Slint, but he's a good guy and it is a good book, so it's, as they say, all good.

Most Underrated: all I have



I'm not sure what this question is asking, or really how to answer it. My blog has a peculiar process-oriented focus and when the subject of reading my blog comes up in IRL conversation, most folks say "well... I don't read everything on there" like there would be any expectation that they would. I've toyed with titration of content, crowd-sourcing, even with doing some cursory copyediting on these posts but ultimately my Internet life is a lot like how I approached painting when I did that. I wanted my art to be a precipitate of my life, something that was spun from this one thread of humanity I have and in that sense, it's not too bad a weave. I ain't making jack off AdWords or selling any books but if space aliens were to emerge from the clouds and zap me into dust, I think you could almost reconstitute me from old blog posts.

So, what falls at the bottom of my sad Google Analytics breakdown? Yesterday's post with the Louis C.K. video. Admittedly not much of a post, but I thought the bullet-point poetry was sorta clever and c'mon, Louis C. K. is on fire. Surely more people care about him than they do "boo fries." Above is a different Louis C.K. video; maybe you'll like that better.

Most Proud Of: A Reverse Abecedary Poem for the Visceral Realists

Zealots!
your Xanadu washed vacant under torrents
stupid rain
quiet precipitation offering no meaning
like ketamine junkies in hallways
greedily, feverishly eating death
carrying bones around

I dunno, is blogging something to be proud of? What makes something the most noblest of blog posts? And if something is truly great and good, doesn't it transcend the grip of pride? Doesn't pride get you in the end? It's perhaps important to note that lions travel in prides and they are largely lazy, carrion-feeding blowhards that get undeserved credit for being kings of the jungle.

My first forays into the business of adult creativity were as a structuralist poet and while I recognize the one thing of less real use to the world than a blogger is a structuralist poet, I'm happy I can pull it out when the moment calls. Plus, that post was one of those trapeze-act numbers where I go all about the tent and wind up at the same platform, and I like when I can do that.