This is an unexpected pleasure: Jaquandor, who recently re-entered the blogging fray after a few months off, has bestowed upon me the “I Love This Blog” award:

He calls Simple Tricks “a terrific geek blog” and says that yours truly “writes a lot of well-considered opinion on topics wide and sundry.”

In all sincerity, thanks, man. I’m honored to think that my silly little rantings here provide someone I don’t even really know with some entertainment value and/or food for thought. One thing I find interesting, though: I don’t really think of this as a “geek blog.” I just write about whatever happens to be on my mind when I find the time to write. Which I suppose says quite a bit about me, doesn’t it? Oh, well… we should all accept who we are, I guess.

Anyway, this prize comes with certain obligations:

1. Post the award on my blog
2. Link to the person who gave me the award
3. Nominate at least 4 others
4. Leave a comment on their blogs so they can pass it on.

Items 1 and 2 are already covered. For Items 3 and 4, my nominees are:

1. Burlaki on the Thames, the personal blog of a gentleman named Ilya. Born in Russia, raised in the Soviet Union, emigrated to the US in 1991, and now living in London, Ilya provides a fascinating outsider’s perspective on American and British life. He also takes advantage of his proximity to Europe to travel with his family to some really neat places, and he seems to be a damn nice guy as well.
2. The proprietor of Retrospace goes by the name of Gilligan, which I suppose tells you all you need to know about the subject matter of this blog. There are a lot of nostalgia blogs out there, most of which do nothing more than make fun of old hairstyles and fashion, but this one is one of the few where you can actually learn something. Gilligan’s ever-popular entry “Sex, Drugs, and Custom Vans” is a good example. It’s short and linky, but it encapsulates a sub-sub-sub-culture of the 1970s that I vaguely recall, but was too young to really grasp. Fascinating stuff… the world is a very different place than it was only three decades ago.
3. Plaid Stallions is another nostalgia blog, more in the “making fun of old stuff” vein, but I’ve encountered very few places on the vast InterWebs that so immediately transport me back to my childhood in the ’70s.
4. And finally, John Kenneth Muir’s Reflections on Film/TV is the online presence of a professional media critic who just happens to be my same age and in love with the same nonsensical stuff I love. His entries are thoughtful critiques and, perhaps more importantly for me, detailed reminders of the movies and television shows (and other stuff, too) that filled my early years and warped me into the geek I apparently am today. His writings also frequently cause me to reconsider long-held opinions on that old stuff, or to at least see nuances that hadn’t previously occurred to me. An invaluable voice for thirtysomething fanboys.

I just realized that three of my four nominees are blatant nostalgia-fests. I didn’t really plan it that way, I was just latching on to several of my regular reads. Which, again, says quite a bit, doesn’t it?