To Twitter or Not to Twitter
All right, I get it. Twitter is the "next big thing" in personal media. My friends are quickly jumping on the bandwagon, certain radio idols of mine are twittering, so am I expected to join the masses as well?
If you're not familiar with Twitter, it looks to me like a cross between extremely-short form blogging and updating your Facebook status. You write whatever is on your mind in three lines or less. Well, if you've read this blog, you know damn well that I am completely incapable of limiting my thoughts to three lines or less. I don't do bite-sized. Here's how I generally come up with a blog entry: something happens that either tweaks my interest or pisses me off. If I don't have time at that moment to blog about it (which is usually the case), I leave a note for myself to write about it at a later date. The next free moment that I get, I sit down, start writing, make sure I get all the relevant points I want to make out there, digress several times, somehow manage to get back to the original topic, END. If the creative juices are truly flowing, I can crank one out in 45 minutes.
In terms of sheer content, if I were to twitter... or become a twitterer... or tweet... or whatever the hell it means to use the stupid thing... I would probably put about as much in a week as I do in an average blog entry, only it would be three lines at a time, and instead of a nice long treatise on the president's health care plan, it would be 20 posts about things like the status of my NCAA bracket or the new "This is SportsCenter" commercial. Also I feel like it would be redundant to, say, write a quick blast about Oliver Perez's WBC misadventures and then write up a full baseball preview (coming soon) that included my Ollie take. I feel like I would just get lazy, take the easy Twitter way out and never blog again.
Seriously, you don't need to hear from me 8 times a day. I don't need to hear from me 8 times a day. Maybe I'll just follow other people who don't confine their thoughts to their Facebook status... or I'll sign up for Twitter, follow people for a week, and then forget about it. At least then I can say I tried, right?
Speaking of wondering if I need to have something... the new "special edition" of Pearl Jam's debut CD "Ten" came out this week. Pearl Jam is one of my all-time favorite bands; "Ten" is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock. It would be nice to have all the extras, such as the additional tracks and the DVD of the band's 1992 "MTV Unplugged" appearance. However, if I were to get this, I would still have essentially two copies of the same CD. I see no reason to get rid of my original copy, which has more collector's value. I'm sure many people who are much more obsessive fans than I am over something like this will go out and buy the special edition, but I think my $27.99 could probably be spent better elsewhere.
And finally... SU went down in the Sweet 16 last night. Yes, I picked them to beat Oklahoma (for entertainment purposes only, of course), as did President Obama, which may well have provided the Sooners with extra motivation to beat us. All in all though, you have to be happy with the way the SU season went. A month ago, the Orange was on the bubble, and they pulled off an unforgettable 9-1 stretch that included the 6-overtime classic against UConn in the Big East Tournament, and a run to the Sweet 16 is better than losing in the NIT quarterfinals any day of the week. So for the next few days, please indulge the morons who will lay this loss completely at the feet of our Hall of Fame head coach and plead for his imminent retirement. Jim Boeheim isn't going anywhere, and we need to be reminded once again of how good we have things here in Syracuse. We've won 20 games or more 30 times in Boeheim's 33 years, a record for any college basketball coach. We've made the postseason in every year we were eligible, and usually it's been the NCAAs.
Now apparently, Myopic Syracuse Fan would gladly trade some of those 20-win seasons (which they are convinced are inflated by wins over creampuffs) for a couple more Final Fours and another national championship or two. They would rather have a record like Duke or North Carolina, which both had bottoming-out periods and losing seasons between championship runs in the last 20 years. No thanks. I'll take a consistent winner and excitement every March over the occasional 13-18 any day of the week. Most college programs would kill for the standard we've set of not having a single losing season in nearly 40 years. We should be even better next year, provided our star players stay for one more year. No reason for cynicism. I'll even accept the occasional unfortunate back page headlines, because if we are going to be "New York's College Team", like Dr. Gross wants us to be, we're gonna have to deal with the New York media, so that's okay. Better to be flambeed on the back page of the New York Post than never to show up there at all.
And now that I have once again proven that my mind works in too grandiose a way to be contained within a twittering... or tweet... or whatever... I think I'll stick with what works.
If you're not familiar with Twitter, it looks to me like a cross between extremely-short form blogging and updating your Facebook status. You write whatever is on your mind in three lines or less. Well, if you've read this blog, you know damn well that I am completely incapable of limiting my thoughts to three lines or less. I don't do bite-sized. Here's how I generally come up with a blog entry: something happens that either tweaks my interest or pisses me off. If I don't have time at that moment to blog about it (which is usually the case), I leave a note for myself to write about it at a later date. The next free moment that I get, I sit down, start writing, make sure I get all the relevant points I want to make out there, digress several times, somehow manage to get back to the original topic, END. If the creative juices are truly flowing, I can crank one out in 45 minutes.
In terms of sheer content, if I were to twitter... or become a twitterer... or tweet... or whatever the hell it means to use the stupid thing... I would probably put about as much in a week as I do in an average blog entry, only it would be three lines at a time, and instead of a nice long treatise on the president's health care plan, it would be 20 posts about things like the status of my NCAA bracket or the new "This is SportsCenter" commercial. Also I feel like it would be redundant to, say, write a quick blast about Oliver Perez's WBC misadventures and then write up a full baseball preview (coming soon) that included my Ollie take. I feel like I would just get lazy, take the easy Twitter way out and never blog again.
Seriously, you don't need to hear from me 8 times a day. I don't need to hear from me 8 times a day. Maybe I'll just follow other people who don't confine their thoughts to their Facebook status... or I'll sign up for Twitter, follow people for a week, and then forget about it. At least then I can say I tried, right?
Speaking of wondering if I need to have something... the new "special edition" of Pearl Jam's debut CD "Ten" came out this week. Pearl Jam is one of my all-time favorite bands; "Ten" is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock. It would be nice to have all the extras, such as the additional tracks and the DVD of the band's 1992 "MTV Unplugged" appearance. However, if I were to get this, I would still have essentially two copies of the same CD. I see no reason to get rid of my original copy, which has more collector's value. I'm sure many people who are much more obsessive fans than I am over something like this will go out and buy the special edition, but I think my $27.99 could probably be spent better elsewhere.
And finally... SU went down in the Sweet 16 last night. Yes, I picked them to beat Oklahoma (for entertainment purposes only, of course), as did President Obama, which may well have provided the Sooners with extra motivation to beat us. All in all though, you have to be happy with the way the SU season went. A month ago, the Orange was on the bubble, and they pulled off an unforgettable 9-1 stretch that included the 6-overtime classic against UConn in the Big East Tournament, and a run to the Sweet 16 is better than losing in the NIT quarterfinals any day of the week. So for the next few days, please indulge the morons who will lay this loss completely at the feet of our Hall of Fame head coach and plead for his imminent retirement. Jim Boeheim isn't going anywhere, and we need to be reminded once again of how good we have things here in Syracuse. We've won 20 games or more 30 times in Boeheim's 33 years, a record for any college basketball coach. We've made the postseason in every year we were eligible, and usually it's been the NCAAs.
Now apparently, Myopic Syracuse Fan would gladly trade some of those 20-win seasons (which they are convinced are inflated by wins over creampuffs) for a couple more Final Fours and another national championship or two. They would rather have a record like Duke or North Carolina, which both had bottoming-out periods and losing seasons between championship runs in the last 20 years. No thanks. I'll take a consistent winner and excitement every March over the occasional 13-18 any day of the week. Most college programs would kill for the standard we've set of not having a single losing season in nearly 40 years. We should be even better next year, provided our star players stay for one more year. No reason for cynicism. I'll even accept the occasional unfortunate back page headlines, because if we are going to be "New York's College Team", like Dr. Gross wants us to be, we're gonna have to deal with the New York media, so that's okay. Better to be flambeed on the back page of the New York Post than never to show up there at all.
And now that I have once again proven that my mind works in too grandiose a way to be contained within a twittering... or tweet... or whatever... I think I'll stick with what works.
Labels: blogging, college basketball, music, Twitter
posted by Dave | 10:17 AM
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