Wednesday, February 1, 2012

February 1st, 2012 - Writing Wednesday

Happy February, though you'd never know it from the weather here in New York. Today was one of the most spring-like days you can imagine, warm and sunny and a day to just be outside doing whatever. I've been a really busy boy these days writing, but things are a little different this week. Check it out and you'll see...



Yahoo Voices Top 1000 of 2011


Yesterday I got a very surprising email from Yahoo telling me that for the second year in a row I've been named one of the Top 1000 Writers at Yahoo Voices for 2011. This was something I wasn't expecting at all, considering I've written less and less for them in recent months. I do have almost 400K page views, so I guess I really did alright. I am humbled and very grateful for the honor! Yahoo!

Examiner

Spring-like temps on Long Island a sign of the apocalypse? Nah!

The weather was so nice today I wanted to make a few comments about it on this blog, but when I did a little searching I found some interesting stuff about why we're having such a mild (to put it mildly) winter. It may be year 2012, but this is definitely not what the Mayans predicted.

Long Island Pride website readies for this year's Long Island Pride Event


The Long Island Pride Parade organizers are already getting ready for this year's event. It happens on Saturday, June 9th and they've got a new website to help them make it the biggest and best yet.



Gallo Restaurant of Patchogue: fine "comida Colombiana" at a great price


Gallo (pronounced 'ga-yo,' for you non Spanish speakers out there) is an excellent Colombian restaurant in my hometown of Patchogue. The food is fantastic, the prices great, and they've got an adorable waiter there by the name of Edgardo. Delicious yucca fritta, too!

Yahoo Voices

Tacosagne

Yup, for the first time in about a month I published a piece on Yahoo. It's a recipe I changed up a bit from a cookbook I've got and it is muy delicioso! You can also check it out on my food and recipe blog here.

Blogging

My most favored spot for writing lately has become this very blog. Much of what I used to write for Yahoo or Gather I am now publishing here. Just this past week or so I've written pieces about a possible Spice Girls comeback, a new ABBA song, their first in 18 years, Lady Gaga's latest single, and the latest flare-up between Elton John and Madonna.

Music is definitely the crux of this blog, but I also take pride in pieces I like to call 'social commentary.' I used to publish a lot of these types of pieces on Yahoo, too, but nowadays I find myself interspersing it here, between Songs of the Day, music news bytes, and my life. There were a couple I've written recently that I think would have been worthy for a Yahoo piece, but I tackled them in shorter order in the hopes of generating more views on John's World.

Three of these social commentary pieces I'd like to share here again. They include a food shopping rant, a commentary on today's generation, and a little piece about one of the many wrong things going on in our educational system. Check them out if you haven't already. As always, comments are always welcome.

More Blogging

In all, I've got four blogs registered here at Google Blogger. The first one I ever started was one called Rants, which I've abandoned in favor of this one. Then there's the food and recipe blog, one that I am hoping to build up a little, not so much as a regular thing, but something I can add to when a good recipe comes my way.

Johnny Driver

Finally, I've got the Misadventures of Johnny Driver blog. If you don't know it by now, Johnny Driver is a fictional character who works as a flower delivery guy in the Hamptons every summer. It's loosely based on a real job I used to have at a place called Pennington Flowers in Southampton.

I started writing the Johnny Driver series for the old Associated Content a couple of years ago and I penned over thirty 'episodes' spanning two summer seasons. The story lines are often humorous, sometimes shocking and always a little crazy, with a cast of equally strange and interesting characters based on real life people. The series earned me a lot of readers on AC and I moved them over to a blog, albeit in bits and pieces, so I can have the whole thing in one, easy to read spot.

Recently I decided to revisit the Johnny Driver series, and I'm planning on beginning a third season of episodes soon. In the meantime, though, I've gone back to the beginning to re-work some of the story lines to make them what I hope to be more readable and more enjoyable than before. It's been rough going so far, but I've got the first two chapters done and posted and am currently working on #3. Stay tuned for that, but in the meantime, check them out, as well as a note as to where I'm going with the series:

A Note From the Author of "Johnny Driver"

The Misadventures of Johnny Driver: A Prologue


Chapter 1: Johnny's First Day

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Image Sources:

Yahoo Voices

NY Girl Eats World


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