Block Party

So where was I?

Oh yes.

Writing a blog.

Nearly two weeks ago.

Unfortunately it’s been that long since I hit the giant publish button at sirbacon123.com.

And boy have I really missed it.

Forget reading and arithmetic.

Writing is my favorite of the big three.

I could blame it on a bunch of things.

The holidays.

The kids winter break.

The this.

The that.

And true, all of those things have chipped in.

But the real truth is that for the last few weeks I’ve been living right in the heart of Writer’s Block.

At this very second, there are close to a dozen blogs just sitting on my desktop.

A dozen unfinished blogs.

Unfinished being the key word.

Blogs about my TiVo.

Blogs about Howard Stern.

Blogs about the Dollar Store.

The Vacuum Store.

The game of telephone.

Osama Bin Laden.

Do you see any connections there?

You do?

I don’t.

Right now I have more half-empty thoughts going through my head than Paris Hilton.

And that’s saying something.

As the great philosopher Bruce once said, I’ve got 57 channels.

And nothin’s on.

This is hardly the first time that I haven’t been able to complete a thought.

But it is the first time in a while.

And to be honest, it’s got me a bit freaked out.

After all, I am nothing without my words.

Even if I don’t punctuate them properly.

This little outlet called Sir Bacon has been a paradise for me.

Not always paradise.

But A paradise.

A place to disappear for a while.

A place to release the inner me.

A place to let it all go.

Everybody needs one of those.

For some it’s a bar.

Or a pool hall.

Or a Golden Corral .

For me, it’s my writing.

And unfortunately it’s been 12 whole days since I wrote my last blog.

Better known as The 12 days of Blisslessness.

I could blame it on a lack of time.

But that would be a lie.

I could blame it on a lack of stories.

Lie.

I guess I could blame it just on.... IT.

After all, IT happens.

And lately IT has been happening to me.

But just 347 words into this here blog, I can feel the blood in my fingers again.

And that’s a good feeling.

My writing is my castle.

And with the new year now here, I’m looking forward to a new beginning.

Another new beginning.

With new stories.

And new readers.

And new words.

Isn’t that why we all make new year’s resolutions?

Well this time my resolution is to start writing again.

NOW!

Do not fear Bacon lovers.

I still have a lot to say.

I just haven’t been able to say it.

A few days ago I tried writing about a weird dream I had.

A real dream.

Real weird.

I made it to 219 words.

Then stopped.

Then I tried writing about a weird story I heard.

A true story.

About a BIGTIME star athlete.

Who recently got in a plane crash.

But he doesn’t want anyone to know.

So nobody knows.

Except for me.

And the person that told me.

And the person who told him.

But I couldn’t find the right way to seal that story.

Or if that was even the right story to seal.

So I didn’t.

New Year’s Day marked the beginning of the third year of Sir Bacon.

280 blogs so far.

Probably an average of 650 words per blog.

My calculator app just told me that 182,000 words.

Catcher In the Rye has less than half of that.

And it took J.D. Salinger nine years to write that book.

12 days is nothing.

It’s good to be home.

Jilted at the Movie Theater

The 40 Year-Old Virgin is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.

Ever!

Not one of the best movies.

But one of the funniest.

I must’ve laughed out loud.

40 times.

But as a movie, I’d give it an.... ok.

I think that was my introduction to Judd Apatow.

He is the brilliant, hilarious, writer/producer/director funnyman.

Who has become one of the true stars in Hollywood.

And for good reason.

He cracks me up.

Because of The 40 Year-Old Virgin I saw Knocked Up.

Another Apatow production.

Funny?

Definitely.

Hilarious?

At times.

Great movie.

Not so much.

But I love laughing at movies.

The iconic chest waxing scene in The 40 Year-Old Virgin.

One of my all-time faves.

The phone call in Swingers.

Brilliant!.... and painful to watch.

When Harry met Meg Ryan in the deli.

Orgasmic.

Blazing Saddles was oh so wrong.

But that movie was oh so funny.

Austin Powers.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (another Apatow classic).

The Heartbreak Kid.

I laughed out loud at every one of those movies.

Out loud.

At least a bunch of times.

That’s a great feeling.

And that was the feeling I expected to have Sunday night.

When I took my 14-year old daughter to her first R rated movie.

The movie was Bridesmaids.

I checked ahead of time to see why it was rated R.

No nudity.

No violence.

Just a bunch of F bombs, a C word and a handful of S’s.

Nothing she doesn’t hear at home.

Everyone had talked about how great this movie was.

And why not.

It stars Kristen Wiig.

The extremely talented star of Saturday Night Live.

What little I knew about the premise sounded good.

And Judd Apatow was the producer.

What could possibly go wrong?

Um.........

How about almost everything.

Apatow once did a movie called "Superbad".

Bridesmaids could've been called SuperDuperBad.

Did I laugh out loud?

Ok.

A couple of times.

The food poisoning scene was funny.

And the ... hmmm... there must’ve been something else.

But for the most part it was one giant dud.

S

L

O

W.

So slow.

Had they just trimmed the fat off this baby.

It would’ve made one hysterical SNL Digital Short.

But every scene went 76% too long.

My watch told me that the movie ran about two hours.

It felt like 10.

I had heard it was the female version of The Hangover.

Well considering I didn’t really like The Hangover.

That much.

I would probably agree.

Even Howard Stern took 19 seconds from his four hour show to talk about how great the Bridesmaids script was.

Now I love Howard.

I LOVE HOWARD.

But what was he watching?

There was so much wrong with this movie.

Once in a while they stumbled upon a funny joke.

So they beat it to death.

By repeating it.

Over.

and

Over.

(Exhibit A:   Wiig and the rich girl going back and forth on the mic at the engagement party early in the movie.)

Somebody please make them stop.

I’m sure they wrote some brilliant ideas on the dry erase board.

Like Wiig having broken brake lights in the first hour of the movie.

And getting in a car accident in the second hour.

Ooh pinch me.

Or a cameo from SNL early 90’s cast member Melanie Hutsell.

They should’ve had her play Jan Brady again.

That might’ve been funny.

They had some British actor playing a Milwaukee cop.

Really?

Have you been to Milwaukee?

According to Wikipedia, 2.8% of the population in Milwaukee is “English”.

That’s just plain comedy genius.

If there is some good news to report here, my daughter has now seen an R rated movie.

And it was nothing special.

Nothing at all.

Which may mean she won’t be asking to see another one.

For a while.

Now that’s a funny joke.

Weekend at Grossinger's

Grossinger’s Resort.

Grossinger’s Resort.

Grossinger’s Resort.

Did I mention -- GROSSINGER’S RESORT.

Those two words changed my blog.

For at least a day.

You see Sunday I wrote a blog about my recent trip to Cooperstown.

And in that blog I mentioned that my father and I went to Grossingers Resort in upstate New York when I was 12.

Then I made the smooth, almost seamless transition to the trip I took with my 12-year old son last week to Cooperstown.

In upstate New York.

Those are the types of segues that win Pulitzer Prizes people.

But what does this have to do with my blog.

Well, here’s what.

Monday night I was watching Goldmember in the basement with my kids.

At some point between Mike Myers costume changes I picked up my iPhone and clicked on sitemeter.com.

That’s the software that shows me who is reading my blog at that exact second.

(It’s so addicting.)

Well as soon as it loaded, I immediately noticed something abnormal.

The number of eyeballs on the blog had gone bonkers.

Now when I say bonkers, I’m not talking youtube bonkers.

Or even perezhilton bonkers.

Sir Bacon is still a local mom and pop operation.

But at 10:30pm ET on Monday night, I had dozens of readers on my website.

At a time when on some nights I don’t even have one.

Readers from Port Saint Lucie, Florida.

Amarillo, Texas.

Mattawa, Washington.

Bixby, Oklahoma.

Warrenton, Virginia.

And the Czech Republic.

And MANY others.

So I put on my Inspector Clouseau hat to get some answers.

That’s what journalists do.

Well it turns out every single one of those readers had found Sir Bacon from the same exact place.

The yahoo search engine.

By searching for the same exact words.

Grossinger’s.

and

Resort.

I hear Grossinger’s is huge in the Czech Republic.

I did some snooping to see if Grossinger’s was in the news last week.

Nothing.

My friend said maybe Howard Stern mentioned Grossinger’s on his show.

Nothing.

Maybe the return of Fear Factor is being shot at the Grossinger’s Resort.

Nothing.

Now the initial surge into sirbaconville certainly caught me off guard.

But what really blew me away was how it continued.

For the next day-and-a-half.

And during that time I had literally 20 times the amount of readers I usually get.

And 99% of the readers found me by searching for those same two magical words.

“Grossinger’s” and “Resort”.

Now the fact that hundreds of people -- from all over the world --were all searching for a resort in upstate New York at the same time is a little funny.

And the fact that they all stumbled across my blog by doing that search is a little bizarre.

But here’s where it gets flat out creepy.

Oliver Stoney if you will.

According to wikipedia, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel closed its doors.

In 1986.

25 years ago!

(Cue the Halloween music.)

Now I’ve been writing this here blog for the last 18 months.

And I’ve been constantly blown away by how many people have found it.

And I thank every single one of you for doing so.

But it’s not like I’m advertising Sir Bacon on the Super Bowl.

This is a word of mouth thing.

And the fact that anybody has found me still blows me away.

But how is it that casually mentioning a hotel in my blog.

A hotel that closed its doors 25 years ago.

Can increase my audience by 20 times.

That makes no sense.

If it’s really that easy...

I’ll be writing a blog on Grossinger’s Resort every Monday.

The 1959 Edsel Ford every Tuesday.

My favorite M*A*S*H* episodes on Wednesdays.

I’ll have a million followers by Thursday, right?

Thank you Grossinger’s.

RIP.

Praise the Lewd

Before we met up with the rest of the kids to start the journey we grabbed a quick breakfast with my stepmother.

She moved from one coast to the other after my dad passed away nearly nine years ago.

The five of us had breakfast at Bob Evans.

Baltimore's version of Denny’s.

I had Bob’s version of a chili-cheese omelette with potatoes and biscuits.

Don’t worry, I got the egg whites.

Diet?

We don’t need no stinkin’ diet.

Knowing full well that nutrition won’t be an option on this trip, I thought spending 44 minutes on the hotel elliptical machine this morning would make a lot of sense.

So I got my butt up at 7:30.

The rest of me came about a half hour later.

Midway through my huffing and puffing a nice lady came in to take on the empty treadmill next to me.

One of my rituals when I work out is listening to Howard Stern.

Something about mixing smut with sweat makes for a perfect calorie burner.

Of course I always use headphones.

I would hate to offend anyone.

I guess she didn’t feel the same.

While I was listening to Howard, she grabbed the remote and flipped on the teevee.

Turned on some guy named Joel Osteen.

If it wasn’t Sunday morning I wouldn’t know Joel Osteen from Claude Osteen.

But I quickly figured out that he was one of them TV Evangelists.

And I learned even quickerer that the lady next to me LOVES him.

So much so that she turned the volume up.

To 42.

Really.

I counted.

And as she walked, she smiled.

And laughed.

And as I elllipticalled, I smiled.

And laughed.

Two different people.

Listening to two COMPLETELY different shows.

Having the same reaction.

Ain’t that America.