I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.
– William Tecumseh Sherman
Recently, several of my fellow bloggers, both on the TU page and elsewhere, have thrown their proverbial hats in the ring for your votes for the new Times Union “Best of the Capital Region” campaign. Now there are plenty of choices for “best of” locations, although I don’t see a location for “Best Trivia location” (which would be, for me, a toss-up between Brown’s Brewing, Elbo Room, Junior’s, Meka’s Lounge, Wolf’s 1-11, Duke’s Irish Pub, Graney’s, McGeary’s, Bombers, Fuller Roadhouse, TGI Friday’s in Stuyvesant Plaza, Blue 82, Del Lanes, Pinhead Susan’s, Legends on Lark…). But once again, I digress.
There are dozens of “best of” choices on this survey, a virtual cornucopia of the Capital Region’s movers and shakers and places to see and to be seen. And of course, there’s a category on this survey of “best local blogger.”
Now this is very important. No matter who you vote for in this category, do me a favor.
Don’t vote for me. I do not deserve the honor.
All I am is a local guy with an unusually large appetite for trivia and minutiae and Albany history and photography and the like. And I share it, once a day (sometimes twice) on this blog. Heck, I haven’t even finished updating and serializing “The Robins of Iverhill” yet.
Instead, let me recommend some people you should consider voting for in the category of best local blogger.
- Vote for Naomi Seldin and her excellent blog on how to clear out all the clutter and junk in your life.
- Vote for Farmlife, Teri Conroy’s blog that allows us to experience the wonders and joys of rural farm life.
- Vote for Rob Madeo, who found a way to shed his Albany Eye blog and come up with a new and creative and interesting blog series.
- Vote for Amanda Talar, who still comes up with funny and whimsical and insightful blog posts every day.
- Vote for Kevin Marshall, so that he can celebrate by posting the real Alive at 5 concert schedule.
- Vote for Ed Dague, who took a year off from blogging and came back as forceful as ever. Ed Dague, the only person Chuck Norris truly fears.
- Vote for All Over Albany or Nippertown, two “must read” regional blogs.
- Vote for J. Eric Smith‘s blog and his observations on music and basketball and other feats of Southern intelligence.
- Vote for Libby Post or Alice Green or David Kaczynski and take a stand.
Vote for any of those bloggers, or vote for one of a hundred other bloggers that I didn’t have time to mention in this post.
I know that some people will look at this post and say, “Oh yeah, Chuck’s trying to use reverse psychology, by telling us not to vote for him, we’re going to vote for him anyway, nyah nyah.” That, or “Hey, let’s put Chuck’s name in the ballot box as sort of our ‘None of the Above’ candidate, har har har.”
Look at it from this perspective. Do you remember about a month ago, when everybody was campaigning about possibly being a bobblehead at the Tri-City ValleyCats game this season?
Yeah, I do too.
So for me to declare my blog a “bobblehead-free zone” during that marketing campaign, and then to then turn around and say, “Hey vote for me in the TU poll as best blogger, vote vote vote for me,” is not in my nature.
But what’s most important is – you have the right to vote. You have the power to choose any candidate you wish in any campaign you wish. You can vote for Erin Andrews to win Dancing with the Stars. You can vote for Siobhan Magnus to win American Idol. You can vote for whatever new color of Crayolas or whatever new marshmallow treat in Lucky Charms that you want to.
But rather than suggesting or pandering for personal votes, I’d rather graciously step aside and let you make your own decision on who is the best blogger in the Capital Region. I gave you several choices of whom I would vote for; you may pick from them or vote for anybody else.
And maybe next year, when I have at least 365 more blog posts archived on this site, and a few hundred more photographs, and maybe when “The Robins of Iverhill” is complete…
I’ll most likely recommend several more bloggers you can choose for Best of 2011, rather than voting for me.
Chuck The Writer 
Those “Best Of” are self-congratulatory masquerades, year after year. If you read TU.com, then yes, of course you are very likely to *like* whatever is on TU.com. Same would happen if AOA was nominating itself in a “Best of Blogs”. My take on this: if you are a web site running a “Best Of”, have some humility and remove yourself from the competition, saying, in substance: “Guys, we know you like us, so why don’t you just vote for somebody else who you think *like-minded* people would be interested in reading too”. Sort-of “Hey look over there, those guys are doing a great job too”.
And to be even more fair, add a very necessary “Worst-Of” *and* include yourself in that list. That would give a chance to OTE to win in *two* categories. Wohooo!
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They’re doing a Worst-Of, unless that was a Times Useless April Fools prank.
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Chuck, You are so funny! I didn’t even know there was Best of blog category. Thanks for telling me, can I vote for more than one? Now I have to find the Best of thing. I am so frigging clueless about anything off this farm.
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Thanks for the kind words, Chuck, and I agree that self-pimping of blogs for a “Best Of” award with no financial or other benefits (what? you’re gonna put it on your resume?) is pretty lame. I mean, it’s pathetic enough that we all do this for no pay in the first place, so have a little dignity and try to keep the grovelling to minimum, please and thanks. I also know from first-hand experience just how few people (in relative terms) actually vote in these things, how few votes it can take to win some of the lightly contested categories . . . so a “Best Of” award doesn’t imply that many people like (or even know about) you, it just means that YOUR people have enough time on their hands to fill out the form. Take from that what you will.
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Times-Union…edgy and original…and only a month behind Metroland.
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#5: Ya misspelled “Useless” there.
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