Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

Ah, it seems like only yesterday that I was forgetting that my website was one year old. But we can’t keep the retrospective going forever, so tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

But before we do, I’d like to hear from you guys and gals, my precious, treasured, dearest readers. What have you liked about the blog in the past year? What are you favorite features? What do you is just terribly sucky? What sort of subjects do you want to see more of? What do you think I should get rid of? Let me know! I’m here to put out the best product for you all, so let her rip in comments.

Before I go, listen to this feature’s namesake, set to some Marissa Cooper clips from the OC (for whatever reason.)

Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun knows which side its bread is buttered on. You’re not here for the trenchant political commentary. You’re not here for the feeble displays of passive aggression. You’re here for Gossip Girl.

Regular readers of DD&U know that Gossip Girl is my favorite show on TV right now. It’s not even a contest. It’s the reason I’m able to make it through my weeks in the fall and winter. And considering how fortuitous the circumstances that led to me watching the show were, I thank my lucky stars that I have Gossip Girl in my life in the first place.

See, I knew that Gossip Girl was coming. I knew that it was from the creator of the OC. I knew there was an OC-shaped hole in my heart, but I had no idea if Gossip Girl would be able to fill it. I didn’t really have feelings about the show one way or the other.

My friend Meg and I were already fans of America’s Next Top Model, which was on Wednesdays on the CW. Even though I was committed to the show, I was sort of put off by Cycle 8, which saw Jaslene, who I thought looked like a garment bag filled with bones, win the contest. But like I said, I was committed, and when I commit to a show, I commit. I watched Cavemen, people. Every episode.

Cycle 9 premiered on September 19, 2007. I should have known the night was going my way, because I was introduced to my precious love, Heather, the prettiest girl to ever appear on ANTM, whose eventual ouster from that show led me to initiate a lifelong boycott. Because it might be true that when I watch a show, I commit to that show. But don’t ever cross me, or else I’ll move on to a show that rewards my loyalty more.

So that season premiere of ANTM ends, and we start seeing promos for this new show, Gossip Girl. I was at Meg’s place, and we were both a half a bottle of Chuck deep at that point, as was our weekly tradition. We decided, what the hell, let’s check this out.

The rest is history.

I wasn’t the only one watching Gossip Girl. The show immediately captivated Jessica Pressler and Chris Rovzar, writers for New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer blog. Pressler and Rovzar are famous for their weekly Gossip Girl reality index, but I’d like to direct your attention to a New York mag cover story they wrote called “The Genius of Gossip Girl.” Read it, and you’ll begin to understand why I love this show so damn much. (I also stole the “Greatest Show of Our Time” moniker from them. It’s an homage!)

I’m a regular reader of the Daily Intel GG reality indices, in which the authors go through every episode, adding and subtracting points from based on how authentically “New York” it is. A clever gimmick! I wish I had the cleverness or the capability to go through with something like that myself. But alas, I had to steal a bit from Bill Simmons (who stole it from, I dunno, Norm Chad?), and do the whole running diary thing. I think this is the first one, although I forget if I did one on the old .mac site. Irregardless, it’s become one of my favorite parts of DD&U. Forces me to watch the show more critically, come up with the wittiest (one-way) repartee I can. I’ll be honest with you, precious readers: the diaries aren’t a service to you. They’re a service to Gossip Girl watchers. If my dear readers and Gossip Girl watchers are one and the same, then great! If not, they should be! Just start watching, and you can stop skipping the weekly diaries.

For those of you interested in a little inside baseball w/r/t your favorite blog, Gossip Girl is responsible for the most random hits to Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. Since July 15, 2009, when I started tracking statistics using Google Analytics, a search for “omgbse”, or some iteration thereof, has been responsible for at least 186 unique visits to dangerousdirtyunfun.com. (I’m not counting the sundry versions of a search for “dangerous dirty unfun,” because those are, obviously, obvious.) “Omgbse,” of course, is something one of Blair’s minions uttered in a Season 3 episode, which is translated “Oh my god, best sleepover ever.” (You’ll also recall the clarifying update post I wrote.) Thing is, it’s the middle of June, and the top search term sending people to Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is STILL “omgbse.” So either there are a ton of people still watching old Gossip Girl eps and wondering what the hell is going on, or there are a ton of vegans who are just shocked at the idea of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Either way, if you’re shopping for your favorite blogger, this wouldn’t be a bad choice.

Where did Music Is My Imaginary Friend come from? I really wish there were a captivating story behind this one, treasured readers, but the fact is that posting a music video at the end of the day is a common convention on a lot of political blogs I read, and I straight up stole it.

The first-ever MIMIF, from back in my Blogspot days, was a live rendition of This Providence’s “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.” I since learned to try to steer away from live videos, just because they often lean in the crummy direction, and if I’m trying to share some of my favorite tuneskis, I want them to sound good!

As soon as I made the switch to DD&U.com, I wasted no time posting a Cure video. I can’t really tell you what put me in a particularly emo mood that day, unfortunately. If only there were some venue for me to have written that down somewhere . . .

As for the title, what do you think? That there’s a not lame story behind it? Ha! Remember that commercial, from when the iTouch first came out? I was looking for a song about music to name my little feature after at the time, and this delightful song by Cansei de Ser Sexy fell right into my lap. What luck!

Anyway, in the grand tradition of MIMIF, take a listen to “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex.”

While the invoice from my hosting company should have been ample reminder, I completely forgot that May 29 was the one-year anniversary of dangerousdirtyunfun.com. What a horrible blogger I am. Where’s the romance gone? Sure, at the start, there were rose petals leading from the door down the hallway and right to my laptop. Pretty soon, though, the posts got less frequent, the writing got a little skimpier, until finally I’m forgetting our anniversary. I’m sorry, dangersoudirtyunfun.com! Let me make it up to you with a special Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun Event.

In the coming days and weeks (because let’s be honest, precious readers, DD&U doesn’t do week-long events), I’ll be going through the past year’s worth of posts, picking out some of my favorites, providing some commentary, basically playing around in the archives. I’ll do my best to provide some fresh content so this isn’t some exercise in blatant narcissism. But then again, you people will read anything I post, right? Right?

Anyway, here’s the oldest post I can possibly point to: the first one, from May 29, 2009! It’s extra cute, because I talk about all this crazy customization I planned to do on the site, and reference all of these old details that are long defunct. Ah, capricious youth. The most substantive bit here is the origin of your favorite blog’s title, which isn’t really that substantive, but hey! Cut me some slack, it was my first post!

Way back when I was a junior in college, I and a group of dear friends took a road trip out to sunny South Bend, Indiana, to watch the mighty Eagles of Boston College vanquish their bitter rivals, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. On the way home, two of our group attained other means of transport home, so it was just Michelle, whose car we were in, Katie, and myself splitting driving duties. I remember being behind the wheel and blazing through Indiana in a pelting rain storm. I don’t recall how long it took us to get back to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but I do remember driving through the night, and trying to get some shut-eye in the backseat, which wasn’t necessarily easy.

So there we were, on the Massachusetts Turnpike, 15 or 20 minutes from home, going through a tollbooth. Michelle was driving, Katie was in the passenger seat, and I was in a half-catatonic state in the back. Michelle called our attention to an advertisement on the divider between toll booths. I think it was for Boston’s public parks. Anyway, it hyped up Boston’s playgrounds as “Safe, Clean, and Fun!” This wasn’t inherently hilarious. But then Michelle said “Of course they’re safe, clean, and fun. What are they supposed to say? Dangerous, dirty, and unfun?” This wasn’t inherently hilarious, either, but for whatever reason, be it the sleep deprivation, or maybe the residue of the copious amounts of fermented spirits I had imbibed hours before, I laughed harder than I ever did in my entire life. All the way home, I couldn’t stop laughing, gasping for breath, clutching the seat in front of me, wheezing “Dangerous, dirty, and unfun! Ha!” After that, the term became something we brought up in conversation, and it also became the title of the memorial mixtape of the trip that Michelle made for me.

So that’s it. I just thought it was a fun term. Is there any inherent meaning or application to the blog? I don’t know. You tell me.