100 Posts

Marking the occasion

Brandon and I started this Redskins blog back on August 9, and today we generated our 100th post, the one immediately below about the Brunell-Campbell switch. So I'm going to take a minute here and pimp The Curly R.

When we started this blog, our goal was to provide daily and amusing comment and content about the Redskins and the world of football. As a lifelong Redskins fan, it's a piece of cake for me to whip off 1000 words on pretty much any topic, and if you are anything approaching a regular reader, you know I love Redskins history and find many lessons for today in the annals of Redskins teams past. We don't really do straight reporting and we're not terribly stat-heavy. There are other, better media outlets and blogs where you can find more sober assessments and granular stats. We're trying to connect to the community, we love to engage in the comments and we'll even do the occasional guest post if your take doesn't suck. If you are out there reading this and you have been waiting for the right kick in the ass to start your own online journal about the Redskins, start one up on your own at Blogger or Typepad, or head over to the Hogs Haven community site and get a login and start blogging!

Brandon and I have different styles, and I try not to stray off my strengths, and my posts here tend to follow a predictable format. I tend toward compactness when I can, economies of title, image, image caption and main story. I am in the Mark Twain 'I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn't have the time' camp. William S. Burroughs called his writing all a series of 'routines,' and in my mind, everything I write is a bit (in fact, I workshop my bits for Curly R and Curly W on my wife and neighbors, annoying them all). In my mind I'm a comedy writer not a reporter.

Everyone writes for a reason, right? The question a writer has to ask him or herself is, is writing something you do for yourself, or something you imagine you are doing for someone else? It has been said that a writer's job is to illuminate, but that's only part of it. A writer's job is also to entertain, and a writer has the prerogative to confuse, obfuscate, annoy and mislead, as long there is entertainment value in the delivery. If you've read George Eliot or Somerset freakin Maugham, you get the point. If you've read Bret Easton Ellis or Charles Bukowski, you also get it.

I love the Redskins' blogging community, and the NFL's more widely, and I look forward to retaining my membership, regardless of the Redskins' fortunes. Thanks for reading. See you again at 500 posts.


Curly R BONUS MATERIAL: at no extra charge, I have included below links to the resources I use to keep the historical context of our pieces. Bookmark these as they are invaluable sites for the NFL history buff:

JT-SW Pro Football
Database Football
Pro Football Reference
Redskins History Database
NFL History Network

Hail to the Redskins.