Monday, August 18, 2008

A Big Day!

Today was a pretty big day, I realized that I had written over a thousand articles over at Blogger News, actually its sitting at 1011. Holy crap, thats a lot of words! In the past two years of being the Editor over there I have got to talk with some amazing folks, some everyday names, some unknown, but all have been interesting.

while this is not as much fun as interviewing the famous, and maybe rich, I did do something today that was life changing. I resigned! Jan has some family stuff that can not be put on hold. So we are packing up and heading south. Of course this will not be an easy deal, my idea of moving is two suitcases and a computer or five. Jan on the other hand thinks that everything, including the kitchen sink should become part of the adventure!

I can see this becoming a stressful adventure!

Just another boring day in paradise :)

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Giggle Of The Day

A couple of months ago during a fit of absolute madness I read a press release about Motley Crue, and their upcoming Crue Fest tour. I apparently contacted the PR folks and said I'd be interested in covering the Calgary concert for Blogger News Network.

I had completely forgotten the entire adventure, apparently the folks at RED (I think they are part of Sony) had not forgotten. There are two press passes and a Photog credential waiting for me to pick up for tomorrow nights adventure into Metal!

God, what was I thinking? Needless to say, my Country music loving wife is overjoyed at the prospect of 6 hours of aural assault by Motley Crue and the various other bands.

I suspect that Jan won't be speaking to me for days after this adventure.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Further Adventures In Reviewing

As most people who know me will attest, I do have some interesting habits when it comes to reviewing. My mother used to say "You can't judge a book by its cover". well mother that is a load of crap! You can indeed learn a great deal from the cover, and that is not limited to books, CD's and DVD's are equally good candidates for the cover test.

Yesterday I was looking for something to review, I have no shortage of stuff, just a shortage of stuff that passes my cover test.

Pretty much experience has told me that if the cover art contains Skulls, Dead People, Blood, or depictions of Hell the music genre is likely to be Death Metal. Equally telling is if the Bands name or the CD title contains words like Atrocity or Malevolent. Any CD or DVD that hits this early quality control test immediately go to the bottom of the pile. Actually to be accurate, they go in the bottom box of the pile of boxes!

So there I was diligently going through recent arrivals when I stumbled upon Passing Train by Joel Harrison. It looked harmless, so I took it out for a whirl. I really liked it, great little CD. So I stuck up a quick review.

The problem though, was where the hell did it come from? I know the 'calling cards' of most of the publicists I work with, but this CD was different. The press release was not one that I recognized, there was no contact info! Now I was really confused. It had to have come from somewhere, and my shipping address while not a state secret, is not something I have posted anywhere.

I searched the cavern that is my email repository and could find no reference to either the singer or the album. Well someone wants to know that the review is up, but who the hell is it?

Well I decided that if nothing else, I could at least tell the srtist Joel Harrison that it was live. It was pretty easy to track down an email addy, so I sent him an email explaining that I had no idea where it came from, but I liked it, and the review was running.

A couple of hours later Joel got back to me:

ummm, that was me, I sent it. A publicist I know gave me a few addresses, so I sent the copy.

Problem solved! Oh and I do like the CD, so I hope lots of people rush out and order it. Give Joel a chance, oh and tell him I sent you! I have not heard back from him yet, but I am hoping to do an interview with him.

SimonB The New King Of Spam..

Well, thats not true, but Google decided that I was. Yes folkes I was one of the thousands of Blogger users that our friends at Google decided to play a late April Fools Day joke on. I received an email from them informing me that I had a Spammy blog and they were locking it out so I could no longer post articles. If I wanted to grovel with them about it I needed to click on a link and they would manually review it.

To say I was pissed is putting it lightly, and so I launched a couple of tirades on Blogger News. Being the Editor of a Google News accredited site does have its perks! About 6 hours later with no apology or explanation the lockout was removed.

'Do No Evil', great company philosophy!