Crushed by Inertia: Year One

It's my blogiversary. Yes, hard to believe, but true...My very first post appeared here on Crushed by Inertia one year ago today, November 21st 2004. Here's what I had to say.

Awwww...wasn't I adorable back then? Just an innocent, wide-eyed 25 year old unemployed guy from Palms. So much has changed...I'm 26 now. I work at a video store. Um...Okay, nothing else has changed. But still, it's been quite a year. I thought I'd walk you through some of my favorite moments and highlights from the first year of CBI, because I'm egomaniacal and self-aggrandizing like that.

Republican Scumbags

One thing that has remained constant here on the blog has been my distaste for the Iraq War, Fox News Channel, Republican Party in general, and President Chimpface McGee in particular.

Here was my very first political rant. Looking back, I must say, it's fairly prescient. Here's one thing I had to say at the time:

All I can do is hope he does such a foul job, without totally ruining America, that the people Bill O'Reilly so charmingly refers to as "the folks," see the folly of their ways and vote for whomever my side puts up in '08.

I was being sarcastic, but in a weird, twisted way, I got my wish. (All except for the "without totally ruining America" part). Not in my most outlandish dreams did I imagine the actual harm Bush would do to the American way of life one year ago. Hurricane Katrina alone far exceeded my expectations in terms of beurocratic ineptitude, institutional racism and callous disregard for American lives. (By the way, here's a post from the blog's second week about seeing Michael Moore speaking with John Dean at the Wadsworth Theater in Westwood).

This isn't really one of those blogs that's active in making the news. I'm far too lazy for any actual research or analysis. I see this blog as more a record of my anger and frustration with the way things in America operate. And no one frustrates me more than Billy "Falafel" O'Reilly. He's been a constant point of discussion.

Here's my reaction to his on-air fantasy about LA Times reporter Michael Kinsley being stabbed to death. Here's Bill comparing the immigration of his Irish ancestors to America with the African slave trade. Here's a post I've always liked that wonders how Billy O gets his bullshit ideas out to the average American so quickly and successfully. Here's a recent post in which I mock Bill's apparent ability to read the minds of historical figures. And, finally, here's a nice little post summarizing O'Reilly's yearly "They're Killing Christmas" bullshit.

O'Reilly's dumbass fellow Fox anchor John Gibson has even written a book on this secular "war on Christmas" nonsense. For a while, the blog featured a regular column on Gibson and the retarded things he frequently puts under his own name, in print and on the airwaves. But I would get so fired up and angry over his blatant lack of logic or reason or critical thinking skills, I had to stop writing about him. Here's Part One of the John Gibson Idiocy Watch, and here's Part Two.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Republican scumbags, I'd be remiss not to mention the sitting Scumbag-in-Chief of the U.S. Senate, Senator "Little" Ricky Santorum. Ricky was, of course, the winner of the 1st Annual Braffy Award, presented to the Worst Person Alive. (Look for this year's nominations to get going in March...I've been taking diligent notes all year, and am confident we're going to have an excellent 2006 Braffy Season).

Here is the original post nominating Santorum, the official nominations post and of course, the post in which I blogged live from the actual awards event. Finally, here's the nomination of Antonio Esfandiari, a horrible horrible man in his own right, whose idiotic column kick-started the entire Braffy Award phenomenon.

Teh R0x0rs

I haven't done nearly as many posts about music as I had initially imagined I would. I find it kind of hard to write about music on a regular basis. I just don't know enough about how music is made, and the theory behind it, to speak about it intelligently. Most of my observatiosn wind up sounding astoundingly similar. Like, "I like the drums" or "it's catchy" or "it's upbeat" or "I'd rather listen to a bone saw rip through a small child's rib cage for 12 hours on end than a single song by Sum 41."

But there have been a few notable indie rock-themed posts here on the ol' blizzog. This little piece about some great songs dealing with life in Los Angeles still ranks among my most frequently-viewed posts. Another popular post was my live-blog while watching this year's MTV Video Music Awards. Also, here I catalogued my Favorite Albums of 2004.

As for live concert reviews, I don't see as many shows as I once did, mainly out of pecuniary concerns. Here's my list of the Best Concerts I Saw in 2004. Here's my long-winded review of KROQ's Inland Invasion concert from this past summer, generously linked by the very funny and perceptive music critic Tony Pierce. Arguably the best show I've seen since starting this blog was The Decemberists at the Henry Fonda Music Box Theater in Hollywood.

Photo Shop

I don't have Photoshop on my computer, and I'm not really very good at it anyway. So I have to rely on real-life amusing pictures to give the blog any kind of multimedia effect. Fortunately, our president does a lot of goofy shit, so it's really not all that challenging. Here are a few of my favorite images from the past year:



Something about that photo just makes me laugh. Bill + Nuns = Funny!



They've changed the name of this upcoming film from Snakes on a Plane to the much more boring Flight 121. That stupid title is all the thing really had going for it, if you ask me.



That's Sacha Cohen as Kazakh reporter Borat, interrupting Pamela Anderson's pet wedding. You are good!



Everybody seemed to like this map of America, Post Election 2004. I'd like to reiterate that I had nothing to do whatsoever with its creation. I just post the shit, I don't MS Paint it together, people.



Oh, man, I seriously hate the Braffster. Seriously. A lot. So much so, that I even write anti-Braff articles for other websites.



I love this photo of "Office" star Ricky Gervais from the 80's. He looks so different, and yet so similar. It's kind of amazing.

The next two photos are responsible for an egregious amount of my blog traffic. They must pop up early on Google Image Search or something. One is late, great comic Mitch Hedberg and the other is an animated representation of Anakin Skywalker. (See if you can tell which is which!)





But more than any other subject, this blog has featured silly photos of our President making a fool of himself, his third favorite activity, after starting land wars in Asia and brush-clearing. This is the very first photo ever posted on Crushed by Inertia:



And, just to round things out, here's Bush looking like an idiot from just this past week's whirlwind tour of Asian Outbeak Steakhouses:



But That's My Life!

My Uncle always says that his favorite blog posts deal with my personal life. I'm not certain that's true for everyone. It's certainly not true for me, personally. Maybe my life sounds interesting or amusing from afar, but up close, I've got to say, it feels kind of monotonous and vaguely unsatisfying.

I've written a lot about my various dental problems over the last year, mainly caused by my addiction to caffeinated sodas. Apparently, this is worse for your teeth than holding a tuning fork against them mid-vibrate.

Other favorite subjects have included cleaning up my apartment, daily life here in Palms, some of the odd customers who come into the video store (like the infamous Porn Man, a local crazy man named Dunning and the Rudest Lady I Have Ever Met Personally), car trouble, even more car trouble, running out of gas on La Brea Boulevard, brief brushes with celebrity and placing my wallet in a washing machine. I even related, for some bizarre reason, the embarrassing tale of how I got totally drunk at an office Christmas party and tried to drive my own drunken ass home.

At the Movies

You can already check out almost all the movie articles I've written on the sidebar over there. All the reviews, my list of Favorite Directors and so on.

In fact, the single post that has brought the most eyeballs to Crushed by Inertia deals with movies. It's my Top 70 Profane, Rude or Inappropriate Movie Quotes. Thanks to mega-site Gorilla Mask picking up the article, over 10,000 people came to check out the blog in less than a week. That's about 1/6th of the total blog traffic for the entire first year! As you can see, the post has a ridiculous 91 comments. It's strange to think about, but more people have read that single blog post than anything I have written since my UCLA Daily Bruin movie reviews (and even those didn't have that much more readership.)

I also like this post about Laserdisc films that aren't available on DVD, my reconsiderations of the two Star Wars prequels (here and here) and my Favorite Films of 2004 list.

A Final Word

It's been a pretty great year, and I couldn't have done it alone.

Well, okay, I take that back. I pretty much did it alone. But I am grateful to the other members of the CBI Community, who have tipped me off to good stories and ideas for posts, commented hilariously and often and just generally supported me this past year in my effort to gain an audience for this here writing o' mine. In particular, I'd like to thank all the blogs over there on my Blogroll (Ari, Horsey, Justin, Team Random Aggression, Lindsey and Konrad and the good people of PSoTD in particular, who have been with me since just about the beginning). And my brother Jonathan, always willing to correct an oversight or provide his own thoughtful counter-opinion. And all my non-virtual friends as well, who read the blog enthusiastically and often and then mess me up by knowing all kinds of weird, intimate stuff about my life. Cory, Vineet, Nathan, Brian, John, Kaz, Jason, Matt, Tim, Chuck...you guys know who you are.

Oh, and of course, my parents and grandparents, who try not to get too angry with me when I humiliate them publicly. Everyone is always shocked when I tell them my parents and even gradnparents read my blog. What can I say? They're cool like that.