Robert H. Wooldridge, Jr. Memorial Blog Picks for 7/21

Hi everyone. As I mentioned on Monday, Bob
Wooldridge, my former boss, principal originator of Sports Bloggers
Live, all-around great guy and friend to all people and most
animals (except pandas -- get to that in a second), died
this past weekend.

His funeral was
yesterday. The church was packed, there were many fond memories shared,
and if you were driving in Silver Spring yesterday, I hope you weren't
delayed too long by the seemingly endless line of cars in the funeral
procession.

Now, Bob was no stranger to AOL
Journals; before he left AOL in May, he worked closely with all the SBL
bloggers, and he also had worked on a few blogs of his own, including
The
B.o.B: Blog of Buzzline.

Back in November,
he'd even popped up in the Editor's Picks, with a
Thanksgiving-food blogs theme: Boss
Bob's Boss Blog Blob.

Anyway, in memory of
Bob, I thought I would feature some blogs that made me think of
him.

Now, I didn't want to just pick blogs that Bob
worked on, or that I knew he read. This was mostly because I wanted to
make sure that this was appropriate, not some blogs promotion, and also
because a lot of the blog links we sent back and forth were in IMs, and
are now lost to the world.

Also, on a pragmatic
note, as mutual friend and cow-orker
Nancie pointed out, a lot of what he sent around
internally would be completely inappropriate for...
anyone.

So, I decided to open things up a bit. I
polled some mutual friends, and came up with some blog picks
inspired by Bob (in the sense of a movie soundtrack album
that features songs the director liked, but that never actually
appeared on screen).

Interspersed liberally
throughout will be some of my own memories and personal
observations on Bob:

* Inner Monologue
of Bandit the Panda: This is probably the
worst possible link for me to start out with, since
it's the exact opposite of a Bob blog pick, so I
will just have to call it anti-Bob
programming.

Bob had what I would call an
irrational hatred of pandas -- he thought of them as
furry, reproductively-incompetent, bamboo-eating freeloaders that
couldn't even get sex right. It made him livid.


Worse was the fact that pandas are still
so beloved, in spite of, or more likely, because of
the fact that they don't make panda babies very
well.

Anyway, Inner Monologue of Bandit the
Panda is a group blog written in the voice of "Bandit the
Panda", which is their name for Tai Shan, which is the official name
that the National
Zoo folks gave him, which is different from the nickname that
everyone else calls him, which is
Butterstick.

(Incidentally, the
World Wildlife Federation claims that wild pandas
are not
actually poor breeders, but this would not have dissuaded
Bob.)

* Waxy.org:
Links: Of course, Bob was always up on the latest
Web fads and memes -- all that stuff that pops up at
the same time on people's blogs, and that gets passed around in e-mails
and IMs and links pages.

There are tons of links
sharing blog sites like this -- I called out Waxy.org's links page,
since that's where the Star Wars
Kid really took off from.

I remember
sharing the Star Wars Kid video link with Bob -- both the original
version, and the followup versions with the special effects added in.
He also liked the Vader
on Wheel of Fortune minisite on YTMND.com. I think it was not
just because they were both involved Star Wars, but because they were
both created by fans, and they were both ridiculous and silly and
funny. That's my theory, anyway.

* André Mika's Fork in
the Road: This one is actually linked from Bob's
Buzzline Blog sidebar -- it's a foodie blog
by André Mika, a guy who's in New York by way of New Orleans.
He used to be a cook and restaurateur, and now writes from the other
side of the kitchen door, with restaurant reviews, recipes and food
talk.

(Random Bob Food Note:
After his heart episode last year, he'd been making an effort to eat
healthier, which on one occasion that I witnessed, involved
substituting waffle fries instead of onion rings.)

*
Capitol
Punishment: Now, being a Sports Bloggers Live guy,
you would expect Bob to be up on his sports. And he was. He also loved
history and reading and fronted a rock band in college, though, so
don't pigeonhole him.

I could probably do a few
editions consisting soley of sports and music blog links inspired by
Bob, but I won't -- suffice it to say, he was a fan of the Maryland
Terrapins, Washington Nationals and the Redskins, and took his kids to
more than a couple of games.

Capitol Punishment is a
local DC blog that covers the Washington Nationals, who were supposed
to have some grand reboot (of both the team and the stadium) after the
All-Star break, but that doesn't seem to be going so well right
now.

Oh, and while we're on sports, SBL's
Erin informs me that Bob loved STEELER BABY (well, she
says "Actually, I think it scared him more than anything else.") --
it's not really a blog, although it is... well, really
creepy.

* Vinyl
Mine [strong
language warning]: This one is a little convoluted, so bear with
me: Brandon sent me a link that he said Bob "truly
loved" -- it's a Flash
video of Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing' [the video is fine,
though other content on the site may be objectionable], only
re-envisioned as a cheezy "tribute to
America."

Now,
believe it or not, I couldn't really find any Journey-themed blogs
(although you can watch the video
for Separate Ways, at least currently).


However, in my blog searches for "journey," I came
up with Vinyl
Mine, which is a music blog, featuring a lot of music
ripped from vinyl and converted to MP3 format.

A lot
of it comes from the 80s, but it's not the 80s stuff that you see in
the Time-Life commercials (incidentally, Bob was an editor with Time
Life Books for a buncha years before he came over to "new" media).


* Music is also behind the next pick, which is the
JefItoBlog, or in particular, the entry featuring
"The Complete Idiot's
Guide to The Replacements" [also features strong language].
As several people have noted in their blogs, Bob did love his
Replacements, and also his Ramones. But The Replacements were number
one.

However, it did surface that he also loved
Katrina and the Waves -- after 'Walking on
Sunshine,' he thought they would be the breakout band of the 90s. I
couldn't find any Katrina and the Waves blogs (do a blog search, and
all you'll find is hurricane-related stuff), but here's the band's site, as well as
Katrina
Leskanich's solo site (she left the band in
1998).

* Okay, this last one is a seventh, bonus
pick, and it's totally silly and self-indulgent on my part. As far as I
know, Bob had no real connection to or love of South
Africa. However, we had something of a morning
ritual:

Me: What's the
word?
Bob:
Johannesburg.

I
was going to feature the Joe
Blog (Joe = Johannesburg, or J'burg) -- I mean,
come on, look at the name -- but it's more of a rolling events board
than a blog. So, instead, here's Barbed Wire
Kisses, another music and concert blog, featuring
news updates from the South African music scene.

Oh,
and I have one more pick, this one from the man himself -- this was one
of Bob's "The List" picks, from April of 2003: It's a Hometown page,
the 'BJ and
the Bear' Fan Site, and Bob called it THE BEST SITE
EVER!!!

So that's my little take on some Bob blog
picks. Thanks for indulging me, and I hope you like the
picks.

If you want to see what other people have
written about Bob in their blogs, please check out blog entries
tagged with "Bob Wooldridge." If you do your own entry,
please feel free to tag it that way as well so that other people can
find it.

Also, the writeup
in his obituary is really good. (It also notes that anyone
who'd like to make a contribution can donate to the Friedreich's Ataxia
Research Alliance.)

Erin shared with me
one more thing about Bob -- in the farewell e-mail that he sent to the
SBL team, he closed out with lyrics from the Rolling Stones
song, Before They Make Me Run. I won't include the
whole thing, but here's the last
verse:

After all is said and
done
I did alright, I had my fun
And I will walk
before they make me run

Walk on, Bob. We
miss you.

Thanks -- Joe
Tags: Bob
Wooldridge, Journey, panda,
Don't Stop
Believing, Katrina and
the Waves, Guest Editors Picks