The LG Report: The Inaugural Blog

Sure, it's a cheap move to lead your blog entry with a close up of a cute dog (name to be revealed down below, so keep reading animal lovers...) I know that.  And, clearly, I'm not above it.  Hopefully I have you hooked by now.  Don't make me resort to more cute animal photos.

"The LG Report” may sound a bit too pretentious for a blog title.  Maybe it's a bit too Anderson Cooper-ish.  Any guy with a last name for a first name is pretentious in my book (but not chicks, e.g. Taylor Dane, Whitney Houston and Taylor Swift are all good by me.) Maybe I should go with LG360. Nah, that's sort of taken already (Note: I couldn't figure out how to get that degree symbol inserted after the 360, maybe that alone proves that AC is a smart guy.)  Actually it just shows that the pampered SOB has a good tech staff.  I love Anderson Cooper and if he ever reads this I hope he mentions my blog on air.

Confession: I’ve spun around the Blogger.com dial a bit and I must admit that I don’t fully understand the blogosphere yet. I’ve been writing a blog on an insurance industry website (and I still may be doing so if they haven’t cut off my access yet), but this is my first general interest (read: general interest to me) blog. This site has a different feel from the insurance site, as well as different controls, applications, procedures, etc. The world is complicated, I know. And it ain’t getting any simpler.

If you disagree with me, just fill out Blogger.com Comment Form #45DE843-23 in 10-point Times New Roman font and send it to me via high-speed HTML submission with a Windows 7.0 interface beta oscillator code. That didn’t make sense, I know, you don’t have to tell me.  Don't expect a lot of "sense" here.

Second confession: I was initially attracted to Blogger.com by the originality of its domain name. Someone really strained their creative muscles to come up with that one. “Blogger.com” for a blogging site? Pure genius. “Madmen” could use that type of creativity [Note: continued sarcasm like this may get me kicked off Blogger.com before I have a chance to reach my ambitious goal of 10 "followers."]

Third confession: I once picked up these two hot nurses who were hitch hiking after a rodeo and.  Sorry, I forgot this blog is G-rated. 

My blog will contain a mish mash, hodge podge, grab bag and cornucopia (I could riff all day with the synonyms, but I’m sure you get the idea) of various ramblings: book, movie and travel reviews, political and other opinions, and a wide variety of miscellaneous topics. There’s a not a laser focus here, and there probably never will be. One friend advised me that to be a successful blogger I would need to pick a theme and stick with it (e.g. politics, cooking, religion, college basketball, etc.) I’m not known for following suggestions, especially good ones. So there will be no consistent theme here, although there will be humor (or attempts thereat) throughout. How many other blogs use the word “thereat?” Not many. And the other ones that do aren’t worth your time. When it comes to entertaining blog posts, find them here at, not thereat. I know that's a strained and awkward use of those words, it will be an occurrence common hereat. 

I think that Larry the Cable Guy is pretty funny. If you disagree, you might not like this blog. I don’t have allegiance to particular politicians or a single political party, but when it comes to stuff like Larry the Cable Guy and movies like “Animal House” and “Dumb and Dumber,” I don’t tolerate differing views. Sorry to be so rigid. I’m only bringing up Larry the Cable Guy because one of his high-brow movies happens to be on as I type (I don’t know the title, but I think it’s one of those Merchant Ivory/Elizabethan period pieces.) This is the type of totally random inspiration that I’ll be pumping into the gas tank of this blog.

I think that blogs are infinitely more interesting if they contain pictures. Especially when those pictures are accompanied by funny or facetious captions. In accord with that philosophy, I am inserting some random pictures in this first post.

I will have some high-quality pictures to post soon, when my friend Stan, a photographer extraordinaire, sends me some of his most excellent shots of Key West. I will be writing a Key West travelogue piece, (bold faced to get you excited about what's to come; feel free to bookmark this site!) replete with recommendations for places to stay, eat and drink. I will also mention the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum, although not in depth, so don’t get your hopes up (if you did, in fact, get your hopes up over that, you will love this blog.) I know that you are on the edge of your set. I’ll wait while you center yourself…

OK, so here are the random pix:

This is my friend Chris. He lives in Boston. That’s not really a relevant fact but I’m not restricting my postings to relevant facts. He is the one who advised me to pick a single theme for this blog. He looks intimidating in this photo, makes you want to hide your wallet and walk the other way. He’s so scary-looking that Chuck Norris asked to have Chris’s picture accompany his obituary. But, in real life (non-blog life, that is) Chris is not scary at all. I think that holding the camera low, aiming upwards and sporting a new beard makes him look like a bigger, tougher badass. I don’t think “badass” is a real word but, nonetheless, I hope the creative geniuses at Blogger.com don’t censor it. If they do, I will send Chris to see them.

This is a shot of my sister Maria’s sidewalk (call her “Marie” if you’d like a 50-yard field-goal strength kick in the crotch) at the Jersey Shore the day after the recent snowstorm (Saturday, December 19, 2009.) I posted this photo on another blog that I write and I was accused of intimating that I shoveled this sidewalk myself. I didn’t, so don’t think that you’re smoking me out because I'm admitting it: a snow blower did this. But I did spend hours shoveling her driveway and deck. I have no photos of those because I was too exhausted after that back-breaking work to snap a photo. It was brutal work. Prisoners on chaing gangs don't work that hard.  I know, I watch "Raw" on the Discovery Channel. Those guys are wusses.  Chris could take them.

This is a shot of Sophie the Blog Dog (she’s in the foreground) and Jake. Sophie is six months old and is featured repeatedly on another prominent national blog, which is how she acquired her nickname.  She's also the dog featured at the top of this blog.  The paparazzi hound her everywhere she goes (obvious pun intended.) This is not a good photo of Sophie.  She’s actually very cute despite the fact that she’s the offspring of Lucifer and will gnaw your shirt buttons off if given the slightest chance.  I’m in the process of negotiating rights for some of her glam shots. One of them is a Marilyn Monroe redux picture where Sophie is standing on an air duct and her collar is being blown up around her ears from below.

Jake, eight years old, is very docile and friendly, save for the occasional hump of your leg with his razor sharp claws. Chuck Norris would like a picture of Jake’s paws to accompany his obituary. I guarantee you that Jake could hump Chuck Norris until he yelled "Uncle!" 

So that’s it for my inaugural post.

Please spread the word to anyone who you think may enjoy wasting their time reading a bunch of inane and pretentious crap seasoned with sophomoric humor (but there will be some interesting photos…) If I get a certain number of readers the Energizer Bunny will appear on your computer screen and Bill Gates will send you to Disneyland to claim your free laptop from Sanyo and your inheritance from your long-lost Nigerian relative. And if you find any of this amusing but don't want to have to keep clicking in periodically to see if a new post is up, you can simply sign up as a "follower" and an e-mail will be sent to you automatically when there's something new to read.

I haven’t settled on my stock sign-off phrase yet (by all means feel free to post a comment with a suggestion. As I've already admitted, if it’s a good one, I probably won’t listen…) so for now I’ll just go with "Thanks for stopping by."  And I mean it.