For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Curtis Plowgian. I am currently a foreign language assistant living in Le Mans, France. I work 12 hours a week, so I need something to help fill my time. This first post is to lay out plans for what this blog will hopefully become, to let you know the format, etc. Now, you may have noticed that the title of said blog is “Curtis’s Top Fives”. That being said, I would hope you can imagine what the general format of the blog is going to be, but to further clarify, here are some general predictions:
-The majority of posts will consist of me ranking things according to my own personal preference, and then justifying these rankings using my own expert opinion. It may seem like this idea is a blatant rip off of the playful banter between Jon Cusack and Jack Black in “High Fidelity”, but I was thinking more of a tribute to espn commentators, and their eternal propensity to place everything in the context of “greatest of all time”. For example, when the Colts beat the Patriots in the AFC championship this week, there was an article on espn.com calling the game the “2nd greatest playoff game of all time”, with an accompanying list of the top 10 greatest NFL playoff games in the Super Bowl era. So, for all intents and purposes, any of my top 5’s are ranking, for their respective categories, the “greatest of all time”. I will take what I like to call the “Jon Greene approach”, asserting expertise and authority in all subjects about which I speak, but of course all lists are chosen somewhat arbitrarily and are subject to change.
This leads me to another important point. I have no idea how many people are going to read this blog, and among the readers how many of them are actually going to care. That being said, I want everyone to feel free to post comments disputing my ranking systems. I like to think I have a somewhat open mind, and if someone were to right a convincing argument about why my rankings are mistaken, I will certainly be willing to make changes and concessions. For example, if I were to write that Ron Santoni is the best professor of all time, I would certainly be willing to entertain arguments that Nestor Matthews is in fact a superior professor, or Dave Hawkins (although I never had Dave Hawkins, so that would be a tough sell).
tentative top 5 lists to come:
-Things that rock/suck about France
-Things that rock/suck about the U.S.
- NFL Quarterbacks
- French Snack Foods
- Snack Foods (all countries)
- Cheeses
- Red Scout Running Gags
- NBA Players
- Dog Breeds
- Dogs (individual)
- Possible Harry Potter Endings
and so on. I have many more, but for space sake I will not write them here. If you have any suggestions for new topics or things you would like me to rank, feel free to send them my way. Please, do not take the liberty of ranking them yourself before you send me the ideas, that would be selfish, pompous and unnecessary.
- There will likely be other posts interspersed when I feel like it, which may or may not include: a) Moral Question of the Day, b) Rants about whatever I feel like talking about, and c) Observations about moving through space, and/or “feeling feelings”.
So here we go! I look forward to what appears to be a fabulous, scintillating experience for everyone involved. Tootles.
January 24, 2007 at 11:35 pm |
Okay, I like this plan – and it will be very entertaining. However, you totally didn’t “round out” your top five. Maybe I didn’t read it closely enough, but I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen. You need to get on that, in a big way.
Even if it’s just putting that phrase in at the end. “And that pretty much rounds out my top five.” That would be kind of on the amazing side.
Also, another interesting literary device (and I can only assume that the Top 5 thing was in the Nick Hornby version of High Fidelity, the book, cuz the damn library couldn’t find their own damn copy of the damn book and I’m not bitter) is Douglas Coupland (Microserfs), who introduced his characters (via a first-person character narrator) by giving the Jeopardy categories that they know most about. I thought that was another one of those clever fun literary things. I think he also used something else in JPod but even though I read that more recently, obviously it wasn’t as memorable cuz it’s not coming to mind.
Anyway, bottom line, welcome to the BlogWorld! (I totally just coined that)
January 25, 2007 at 1:11 pm |
Okay, post has been edited, and top five has been rounded out. Thanks for reminding me. That was a close one.
January 28, 2007 at 3:19 am |
Ok, I take serious offense about the so-called “Jon Greene approach.” I do not and never have asserted expertise and authority on ALL subjects. Although I would claim to have more expertise (and thus more authority) on a wide range of topics, I would never attempt to claim that I better know how to condition rats than a psych major. However, if I spoke with an audience which knew nothing on the subject, I would put forth my best guess. Unfortunately, I seem to have been gifted with an authoritative and knowing presence which often confuses people into thinking that I actually have expertise and authority.
January 28, 2007 at 11:15 am |
Okay, perhaps I should have said “implying expertise and authority by my tone” rather than simply “asserting expertise and authority”. Bygones.
January 29, 2007 at 10:08 am |
Thank you.