Shameless Self-Congratulation

Literally overnight, my allegiance has shifted.

The Examiner is out; the Express is in. As if I haven't mentioned it in practically every post to this point, you know why I prefer the Examiner--their superior puzzle page and the chance there will be an especially lazy, plagiaristic column by Mr. Know-It-All so I can create an equally lazy post here. On the rare occasions when I'm in the mood for superior, free-of-charge editorial content (or the Examiner is unavailable), the Express, a lightweight version of the Washington Post, is what does it for me.

This morning began with a check of my e-mail, and a congratulatory message from a recently honeymooned fellow blogger.

Huh? Congratulations for what? Thanks to B&T, I learned that I finally hit the blogging big time after three arduous months of occasional blogging by having bestowed upon me the mother lode of blog shout-outs in the D.C. area--a quote in Express' daily BlogLog. I did get a shout at DCBlogs a few weeks back, but in the blogosphere, that's sort of like getting a Golden Globe when what you've really got your eye on is the Oscar. (Oh, well. So much for future shouts from DCBlogs.)

B&T posts a lot more regularly and gets these fairly frequently, so it's not such a big deal to him. We share some common DNA, especially the blogging and height genes. He is usually the one to clue me in to happenings in the blogosphere. But given my status as a loyal reader of the Examiner, with no Express accessible to a honeymooning B&T, and with none of Express' 284,899 other readers aware of my real-world identity, I was totally unaware of the shout-out until his return to cyberspace a week after publication.

So I downloaded the .pdf (much as you can for the next week or so here) and was a little disappointed to see that what was quoted wasn't what I would consider to be my best work. If I had to bet, I would have thought the Express (as the top newspaper read on the Metro every morning) would have taken something from my Metrorail piece a few weeks ago, particularly the bit about the smelly old 1000-series cars. No such luck.

I rushed to catch the Ride On, and on my way to the Metro, I thought about what I could have done on my commute last Wednesday had I known about this. I could have watched fellow Express readers on the train as they turned to page 36 and gauge their reactions for myself. The theatre has legendary stories about playwrights sitting in the audience incognito to gauge reaction and solicit feedback, and I was a week late for my once-in-a-lifetime chance to do the same.

Then things took a surreal turn. I arrived at the Metro station rushed to get to work and overdosed on ego. I grabbed the first paper shoved in my face by the two competing paperboys at the station (who are both easily in their 40s), assuming it was the Examiner. Nope. I got the Express instead. So, resigned that there would be no Kakuro this morning, I stood on the platform, and rapidly turned the pages to get to the inferior puzzles.

And in quickly passing by today's BlogLog, something stopped me in my tracks.

No way. This is too weird. (And you can download it here for the next two weeks or so to see for yourself.) Shakespeare, Hemingway, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling have yet to make the BlogLog two weeks in a row, how did this happen to me?

I boarded car #1125, and (having had a nice rain yesterday) took a whiff. Yuck. Fate suddenly turned me into a disguised Neil Simon in the back of the Plymouth Theatre during previews of The Odd Couple, sharpening up the script based on the audience reaction.

It didn't occur to me how many Metro riders read the Express until I had a vested interest in its circulation this morning. And from my vantage point, I could see that practically all of them were favoring Express over Examiner. Based on my limited survey sampling of one subway car, the fullsize, "big-boy" paper, The Washington Post, is a distant third.

I was actually close enough to about a half dozen Express readers to see what page they were reading. So I discreetly kept a watch on them as, at various times, they each reached Page 36 and the BlogLog.

Some smiled. One pointed it out to his Examiner-reading seatmate. All of them took a noticeable sniff to verify my olfactory assessment of conditions in the antique 1000-series cars.

Now I was no longer Doc Simon in the back of the theatre. I was Clark Kent, standing idly by with that cocky, knowing smile as Lois and Jimmy marvel at Superman's latest and greatest feat at the end of every episode.

Do I take this ego trip full-tilt on my ride home tonight and rip open my shirt in full view of the Express readership to reveal the large "M" tattooed on my chest? Naaaah. Just knowing that this blog is read and apparently found to be engaging by at least one reader is enough to keep me posting on a semi-regular basis.

Thank you for your support and continued encouragement. Doors closing!