Top Ten Posts on Left Coast Cowboys From Jul 2009

I usually try to keep things light around here. Hilarious farming misadventures, terriers, and, of course, loads of coyote poo. I purposely try to restrain myself from getting too political. Because those who know me know that you can get me on political subjects and sometimes it’s questionable if you can get me off them. I toyed with the idea of segregating those rants and posts to a separate blog.

So I was planning to resist this whole Michael Jackson sobfest. And here I am putting up my second MJ post in two days. I still have deeply ambivalent feelings about him. Sure, his songs played through my childhood and young adulthood, although I wasn’t a super fan. I even went so far yesterday as to reclaim him from Generation X to his rightful place with those of us sandwiched between the Xers and the Baby Boomers, Generation Jones.

I’m starting to get flooded with emails from Blogher offering helpful tips for getting the most out of the Conference. Then I got the one that urged me: “Don’t forget your Elevator Pitch!” Elevator Pitch? For those of you who might not know, this is a succinct pitch (in this case a description of your blog) that can be blurted out between two floors on the elevator.

The BlogHer ’09 Conference has been so jam-packed I’ve barely been able to Twitter, let alone blog. But before we get started, let me first reassure you that it hasn’t been because I was one of the tiara and boa wearing girls passing out drunk in the lobby after way too many cocktails.I met up with a fellow Mount Holyoke College alum last night who is a former Chicago Tribune editor.

Since the news has become All Michael Jackson All The Time, it was inevitable, no matter how I tried to resist, that I would have to put up a Michael Jackson post. But this won’t be the one you expect.Full disclosure, I was never a huge fan, so my mind is free to roam, when the subject is Michael Jackson, to other tangentially related topics.

As California braces for a Michael Jackson funeral concert that they are saying will cost the indebted City of Los Angeles over $2 million dollars, I find myself in an equally ambivalent position. Here I am, who thought I wasn’t a fan, writing my third Michael Jackson post in a week. First I reclaimed him for Generation Jones, then I came to terms with the surprising fact that he did have some relevance to my life.

The town of Sonoma puts on what every Fourth of July Celebration should be: very local, very small town and everyone who wants to be involved can be. The parade usually kicks off with a Civic Group like the Native Sons of the Golden West holding a huge American flag and ends with the volunteer fire department parading their equipment and blowing their sirens.

It’s some sort of Forties thing. When they hit those birthday numbers, men either have to do something incredibly macho or have an affair. Luckily, our friend Andrew (called “Scotch Andrew” to distinguish him from my Andrew, who is “English Andrew”) decided to do the Alcatraz Challenge. (Of course, if you saw his gorgeous wife, Jan, you’d realize why an affair was not an option.

I have a favorite conversation starter I like to employ at parties. I ask, “Who would I be shocked to find out you admire?” No, I don’t want to hear about how you like Eleanor Roosevelt’s pluck. I’m looking for a Left Wing former hippie to tell me he secretly thinks Sarah Palin rocks. Or a staunch Republican to say he’d love to do beers and shoot hoops with Obama.

I keep signing up for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) which allows you to retake the pledge every month to put up a post a day. Some months are better than others. Even though I wasn’t going to make it for July, I really fell off the rails as of Wednesday. Blame it on a mega Spanish test that had me using my computer only to cram in as many audio sessions as I possibly could.