Testing one, two, three…

Is anyone there? Hello?

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve all given up and gone home for dinner by now. I hope you haven’t, but Simple Tricks has been out of commission a long time, and attention spans are short these days. I get it.

Still, if somebody is hanging around out there in the darkness, patiently waiting for my return, you’re in luck, because we’re back in black, five by five and ready to boogie. I’ll spare you the technical details of what happened — to be honest, I don’t really know them myself — suffice it to say the outage was caused by a mechanical problem with the rather elderly server on which these premises are constructed. Parts had to be ordered, shipping delays occurred. You know how it is.

Being blogless for a week proved to be a very odd experience. As I said in a comment over at Brian Greenberg’s blog, it was almost like a vacation to be free of the thing for a while, an unexpectedly welcome break from the pressure of having to produce and the frustration of not having the time to keep up with it as well as I’d like. But on the other hand, I really missed my soap box — all week long, I was spotting things on the ‘net that I would’ve liked to post, or comment on, or rant about, and the sensation of being unable to reach out to my audience was… well, not painful or anything so melodramatic as that, but I certainly didn’t enjoy being silenced. And I also missed whatever tiny community action I have going on here. Facebook offered some compensation, but it’s different over there… much more superficial-feeling, I guess. Facebook is all about the pithy comment, the “hi” as you pass someone in the virtual hall. This place feels like a conversation to me. Or at least that’s what I’d like it to be.

The strangest part of the past week was remembering how, when my buddy Jack first told me he’d built me a blog as a Christmas present, my initial reaction had been, “what in the hell am I going to do with that?” When he told me last Monday that it would take him a few days to fix the server problem, my reaction was, “what the hell am going to do without it?” I guess I hadn’t realized just how big a part of my routine, my identity, really, this silly little time-waster has become. And I don’t know if that’s cool or kind of lame…

The usual irregular posting will resume shortly. In the meantime, here’s a video that’s been going around and which everybody has probably already seen, but hey, I’ve been out of the loop for a week, remember? Besides, it cracks me up enough that I think it’s worth another look…

For a few years after Jim Henson’s death, I thought The Muppets had become irrelevant and unfunny, and ought to be retired. Whoever is running the brand these days is proving me wrong each and every time one of these virals is released. I think they’re hysterical. Jim would be proud, guys…