I’ve reached another mall milestone on the blog. This post marks my 1,250th since I began this thing a few years back. I’ve had moderate success, I suppose, considering I had no intention of starting one the day I did. I had never even thought about it, strictly doing so on a whim when I clicked onto a bookmarked blog I wanted to check any new entries. What I got was “This blog has been removed by the author.” To the right of that was the questions “Want to start a blog?”
And the rest is history.
If you want to blame someone, the author I mentioned was Richard S. Wheeler, who has started and ended another blog since then. What has come since then is his fault.
Of those 1250 entries, I have some that still get regular hots, then of which have hit a thousand or more. Well, nine, as the tenth sits at 999, close enough. Number one I still don’t get as it was a DVD alert for Paul Newman on Turner Classics. A marathon of his movies were running that day and the next day, it was worthless. While it has slowed tremendously, it still gets hits almost every day, closing in on twenty thousand hits.
The others make more sense.
2: a post on the Davy Crockett TV series with Fess Parker at 4,138
3: A Beware of Identity Theft montage of cute animal pictures at 2,309
4: The Loner, as by J. A. Johnstone, will likely move up in those rankings as it’s the only post that still gets hits every day. 1,894 is the current count. People out there like this set of westerns and I keep it updated with news of the latest releases.
5: Patti Abbott runs her Forgotten Books thread every Friday. One time she did short stories and I did one on Harlan Ellison’s THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS. Now Harlan is by no means a forgotten writer, but this is an important story in his catalog and it’s the one that still gets hit fairly regularly. At 1,364. it will slide up higher sooner on later.
6: At 1,336, this one will drop. It gets hit the least of any in the top ten. It’s simply a photograph I came across that I titled WHAT IS COURAGE?
7: A Forgotten Music post a thread ran by Scott D. Parker once a month: THE BLACK CROWES has been hit 1,076 times.
8: Another entry in the Forgotten Books list. IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT by John Ball, the first of seven novels featuring Virgil Tibbs, the black homicide detective from Pasadena. Most folks don’t even realize there is a series(three short stories as well), remembering the film series with Sidney Poitier or the TV series that starred Carroll O’Connor, nweither of which is set in Pasadena.
9: Another book series, FARGO by John Benteen(Ben Haas) lies here. 1,031 and it’s the one that still gets the third most hits of the top ten. A favorite of mine and a lot of folks.
10. DAYBREAK 2250 A.D. by Andre Norton lies just under the mark at 999, but will likely go over sometime today.
That’s the top ten. The next in line, at 922, is one on Banned Books, one close to my heart as it was THE WIZARD OF OZ. I thought it would go up on Banned Book Week(September 25-October 1), but it didn’t get a lot of hits.
I’ll close now as I’m sure anyone reading this has long since got bored.
When I started reading THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC, I wasn’t sure how I would take these stories. You see, I’m one of the few that have never read any of the Matthew Scudder novels. Go ahead, rap me over the head. I deserve it. It didn’t take but a couple of stories before I stopped off long enough to order the first two in the series. They should arrive in a couple of days. Like I really need more books to add to an ever growing TBR pile. I’ll survive though and eventually add them all, get them read. I believe I have some good stuff to look forward to down the road.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
