Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

In the world of blogging, there are certain perils. One of them is having a great idea for a post that you feel really good about, only to write half of it and leave it languishing in your drafts folder. It’ll be there when you have time to finish it, right?

The peril, of course, in missing your shot. One day, you’ll be tooling around your Google Reader, only to come across a blog post that makes every single point you had been trying to make, and a few more that you would have made if you had actually finished your own damn post in the first place, although probably not as eloquently, so it’s probably for the best.

In that spirit, here’s Eric from Pitchers and Poets on expanding the Baseball Hall of Fame.

My pal Reeves over at his Meanderings blog is doing a neat little exercise. I’ll quote the man himself at length:

People in major cities spend a lot of time on mass transit; by my rough estimate, most New Yorkers spend an hour per day, 7 hours per week, 30 or so per month, and a dozen or so full days per year on a transit vehicle of some kind. That’s a lot of livin’.

So, hopefully with your help, we’ll be chronicling those 12 days of life. This is not meant for “Weird Shit That Happened on the L Train.” This is meant for the everyday, the normal, the poignantly average.

He’s done a few so far, and they’ve lived up to the “poignantly average” directive. Reeves solicited guest contributions, and I was more than happy to oblige. You can read my entry here. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun will recognize the running diary format from various Gossip Girl and Oscar posts; I’m nothing if not predictable.

I call it a neat exercise because riding the train is such a monotonous, soul-crushing, utilitarian activity. If you use mass transit regularly, you truly enter autopilot. Not to say that I did a terribly good job, but actually looking around and jotting down my thoughts, instead of just staring blankly across the aisle or listening to my iPod, was an interesting change of pace. I didn’t expect to find the inspiration for the Great American Novel in a crumpled up Metro, but it was nice to actually experience my ride. I recommend you read Reeves’s entries, because he’s better at this sort of thing than I am.

And while you’re there, you might as well throw Meanderings into your bookmarks or RSS reader or whatever it is you use to keep track of the vitally important things that you must read daily. It’s like a smarter and more disciplined Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. His “This Week’s Best Profile” and “I didn’t know this yesterday” features are especially thoughtful and eminently stealable.