“Huge wood chipper” and “wood chipper what to do with wood chips” – I didn’t realize that wood chipping was such a big deal, but apparently an awful lot of people have questions about them. And they are no doubt disappointed when they are led to my rants and raves about Why I Hate Larry.

“Ron Jeremy,” “Katherine McPhee,” and “Katherine McPhee in Halloween” - Speaking of people being disappointed, I somehow get the sneaking suspicion that the folks looking for images of the infamous ‘hedgehog’ Ron Jeremy and über-babe Kat McPhee were not hoping to see them standing next to my lame-ass on my Brushes With Greatness page. Also, what does “Katherine McPhee in Halloween” even mean? Were they looking for shots of her in a slinky Halloween get-up? Maybe including the word “costume” would have helped their search be more successful.

“Entenmann’s donut holes” and “pop ems” - That’s right, folks, I am not the only person out there that is convinced that Popems are in fact The Perfect Food.

“Short Circuit movie” – Three and a half years ago, there were reports of a remake of the 80’s classic movie, Short Circuit. I wrote a post featuring ten questions I had about the remake, and it still amazingly drives traffic here.

“iv league schools” - Because I’m a pretentious jerk, I wrote an informative and helpful post on what defines the Ivy League. Unfortunately, the fact that people think that it is in fact spelled “iv” and not “ivy” completely justifies my elitist mindset.

“LIRR Quiet cars” - My raving about loud people on the Long Island trains actually led to a Newsday reporter finding my site and contacting me for comment when the news broke that it was actually going to happen. Sadly, I didn’t get his email until after his deadline, and I wasn’t quoted in his piece. Bummer.

“Pink dumbbells,” “rolled up tshirt,” “iced tea,” and “swedish fish” – When I wrote my piece on Baby Measuring, I had to find pictures of all sorts of random images. Oddly and rather surprisingly, other people also searching for these images have ended up at my blog. Maybe they need them for their own blog musings about who-knows-what, or maybe they’ve just never seen a pitcher of iced tea and are doing some research. Regardless, you’d be shocked at how many people do Google searches for pink dumbbells every single day.

“Happy Birthday pictures of handsome men” – I swear I’m not making this one up… Apparently a bing search of that phrase brings you to my Housewarming Party pictures page. I have no idea what that bizarre search phrase means, but I choose to interpret it as a strange kind of interwebs compliment.

Sad, right?  Unfortunately, that is all that remains of a once truly great website.

Of course, it didn’t always look like that.  The site started out when the internet was still in it’s infancy.  The original webpage had a simple Brady Bunch-esque 3×3 square design, and was basically a Donald Duck fansite, with a little bit of info about its webmaster mixed in.  The main draw was a feature called The Simpsons Challenge of the Day, where James would occasionally (rarely was it daily) post screenshots from The Simpsons, and you would send in a short description of the scene to James to get points.

I was undefeated.

At some point, James redesigned his site into a web-log, also known as a blog.  It was a bold move, but it worked.  Now James was free to share his thoughts on all manner of topics, to reminisce on past moments (usually James’ing them slightly in the process), or making flash cartoons for his engaged friends.  An extremely popular feature was the weekly musings from Daron’s Diary, which showed the inner workings of the mind of a clearly conflicted young man.  But with song parodies!

As the years passed, James’ writing became less frequent, and James himself acknowledged as much in a post from earlier this year, when he resolved to blog more in 2011.  Sadly, it was not meant to be.  After months and months of inactivity, the site is now officially no more.

The internet is a harsh place, where the “it” site can be suddenly replaced and forgotten about when something newer comes along.  (Remember friendster?)  Sadly, jamesbrief.com has gone the way of cdnow and geocities, relegated to an archive on a backup server somewhere in the cloud.

There is still a silver lining to this dark cloud, and that is the blog you’re reading right now.  Even though James is too busy “saving lives” to maintain his page, *I* remain firmly committed to entertain you with my occasionally moderately semi witty repartee.  I hope there is some solace in that.

And I suppose it is inevitable that someday James will bring back his site, I will let mine fade away, and that he will then write a post similar to this one. But until that day comes, James, I know I can count on you to help me keep this page running. (How else do you think that link at the bottom of the page got there?)

I jut wanted to give you all a heads-up that ACES will be making our pilgrimage up to New Hampshire for the next week, so there will very likely be no new posts to the site during that time. (We’re going to a house in the woods; it’s not like there’s great wifi access or anything…) There will also be an especially long stretch without any new adorable pictures posted on FB.

Yes, it’s going to be a difficult stretch of time, I know.

But hey, at least this blog is still updated more often than James’ essentially defunct page!

Have a great week, everyone!  I promise to write some really amazing intriguing good for killing a little bit of time stuff when we get back.

XOXO,

Alan

Moving forward, I reserve the right to use this page to occasionally share some photos of Eli, or some thoughts on fatherhood, or little tidbits about what the Noah family is up to.  But after some deliberation, I have decided to not use this page to showcase all things Eli.  It simply isn’t the best medium to post, tag, and enable people to comment on photos and videos.  If you would like access to Eli’s ‘other’ site and you haven’t yet gotten an invitation, just email me and let me know.  If you have been invited, but you have questions or concerns, again, just let me know.

And have you ever had this Buncha-Crunch stuff?  It’s ridiculously awesome!

Sure, that excitement wore out fast, and I’ve since gotten slightly better at blocking a lot of the comments that are obviously spam.

But this is REALLY pissing me off:

Now my “Nick” post is being hit pretty regularly, and my filters seem to be missing a lot of the fake comments.

These spambots want to peddle their male enhancement and sleazy sites and online casinos, fine, but keep it the hell off that post. I have 207 other posts to hit – spamming any of them is annoying, but spamming that one in particular really gets under my skin. Maybe that’s irrational. Maybe I should just understand that these things come in waves, and in a few weeks another random post will be getting all of the fake comments, but in the meantime, this is driving me crazy.

If anyone has any good ideas on how to block these bastards, I’m all ears – thanks.

My oh my, how the time does fly when you’re blogging.  It is one year to the day since alannoah.com’s very first blog post.  Seems like less than that.  Or more.  But definitely NOT exactly 365 days since then.

Over the past year I’ve written about all kinds of things – looking over at the tag cloud it seems like television has dominated most of my obsessions, which isn’t that surprising really.  I’ve shared some crazy Lost theories, whined about the Mets, and ranted about all sorts of geeky things.  And who could forget the AN.com exclusives of Sherlock’s First Swim and the series of perennial fan favorites “Alan learns to love Buffy”?

Ah, good times.  Thanks to you all for reading – I’ll keep on wriitng if you’ll keep on wasting time reading what I have to say!  And for those of you who check the site but don’t comment – speak up!  We’re all friends here, there’s no need to be shy.

To all faithful alannoah.com readers (all five of you): We are currently experienciencing some technical issues, as you have no doubt noticed.  Our crack team of web designers (James) is hard at work on the issue. (Please, James!)

Stand by…

P.S. I’ve been a slacker in terms of posting pictures, I’ll try to update the page with new photos more often…

As many of you already know, today is my last day at VH1, and Monday will mark my first day as a Producer/Writer at CBS.

I am really excited for this new opportunity, and I know I’m in for all sorts of new challenges when I get there.  Even though it’s pretty intimidating to start a new job after five plus years at one company,  I feel that I’m ready for something different.

That’s not a knock at VH1; the fine folks at Video Hits One have kept me employed for more than half a decade, and I am extremely grateful for all I have learned, seen and done in that time. I got to hang out backstage at the VH1 Rock Honors in Vegas. I got to remind Yoda who he fought in Episode II when Frank Oz blanked in an interview. And, of course, I got to hang out at the Playboy Mansion.

But now it is time to look ahead to the network experiences that await. I’m not sure how much I can say about the show I’ll be working on, since it’s new, so I’m erring on the side of caution by saying nothing.  But rest assured, I will update this site with info on the air date and what it’s all about as soon as I can.

Speaking of the site, I’m going to try to keep on blogging as much as I can, but I have a funny feeling I may not be able to keep up my one-post-a-day schedule. I’ll still write whenever I can, so keep checking back weekly, daily, or hourly. Of course, one of my (not-so) secret motives to starting this blog was to help me land a Writer job, and it did, so mission accomplished on that front.

Here’s the story: on an interview for the job, my then-prospective employer asked me where he could watch segments I’ve produced, and I directed him here. That just so happened to be the day I wrote my anti-Larry rant, and it occurred to me later that day, that it might not have been wise to send someone with the power to hire me to my site when I wasn’t aware of his baseball affiliation.  In other words: what if he was a Braves fan?  My panicking was bor nothing though, as it turns out that my new boss is a HUGE Mets fan, and he appreciated my hatred of Larry.  Phew.

Anyway, I know it’s last minute, but if anyone wants to come out for a celebratory drink tonight, come out to The Village Pourhouse tonight at 6:30ish on. The bar is at Trird Avenue and 11th Street, and we’ll be in the back room.  All are welcome.