Murder One For All
Quick take: Looking for bloggers, or anyone not eating lunch through a feeding tube, to collaborate on a crime blog. One post per weekday (no word count or time of day requirements) is all the commitment we need. No advertising, no money, but you get all the street cred of a neighborhood bully. We're doing this for our love of getaway dunebuggies and the low-flying helicopters that chase them.
5-part miniseries version: There's a scene at the end of a Law & Order episode where Briscoe talks to an old friend/retired cop who committed a sole but highly crooked act while on the force which was revealed when a cold case file was re-opened and finally solved by the current crew. The disgraced cop asks, "Do you still respect me, Lenny?" and Briscoe replies, "All day long, Tommy, all day long." That's when it hit me...what is this fuckin' horseshit I've been sludging through everyday for the past 2 months, ALL DAY LONG?? (This was in March, I now fear daytime programming.) I'll admit I enjoyed a fair amount of it, especially the Angie Harmon years, or maybe exclusively the Angie Harmon years. When I thought a plot was too boring they'd usually throw in enough of a twist and cute-but-tough Asst D.A. action to keep me from switching to VH1 Classic's All Star Jams. But truthfully, most of the time I felt like I was watching Crime Drama for Dummies.
Much of the problem has to do with its format. Each episode covers one case from beginning to end. The first half hour is the "law" part where detectives finger and nail a suspect; the second half serves a steaming plate of "order" as Sam Waterson prosecutes the case with a sense of self-importance considerably more than when promoting TD Waterhouse. It's a simple design which doesn't involve any season-long story arcs which translates into syndication heaven since you can follow any one episode with no regard to another. Except if you're keeping track of Briscoe's horribly hacked-off one-liners. (People think he's the quinessential NYPD detective portrayed on television? I'd spend a week on Rikers Island if that honor wasn't Dennis Franz's Sipowicz.)
Why I am analyzing something that you either already know or couldn't give two chili-coke shits about? First, let me add that I also like World's Wildest Police Videos, City Confidential, Forensic Files, Catherine Crier on Court TV, and cop porn. "These handcuffs aren't the only thing tight around here, officer..." This is all perfunctory background to illustrate my moderate interest and fascination with crime. The rest of the country is addicted even more if A&E's new crime and investigation network and the launch of Justice magazine are any indication.
Unaware of either of those media developments, Chris Gage and I have been planning to do a crime blog for as long as I can remember which dates back to February of this year. You would think The Smoking Gun would have one but they don't. While researching the idea I easily found over 100 blogs covering crime in one form or another, from 2nd Amendment gun freaks to literature types into crime fiction. So we came up with the idea of Blottered.com to be a catch-all repository of the more interesting local crime blotter stories, some celeb crime, crime shows and books commentary, the full spectrum of guns, weapons, torture devices ("that band sucks! lock them in the shame-flute!"), bounty hunters, drugs, historic crimes, pretty much anything that involves enforcing and breaking the law.
One problem though, I realized there's no way I could do 6, let alone the industry-prescribed 12, daily posts on a topic-specific blog for more than a month. My attention span is best characterized by a renegade tank driver on the loose creating havoc in a residential neighborhood, steamrolling over cars and trees, making a mess of rock gardens, tearing through parked RVs like Michael Moore's hot hands through buttered popcorn, firing a bunch of rounds at the authorities and abruptly ending when fuel and ammo run out simultaneously. Then the guy is beat down, sedated, and hauled off to a correctional facility.
But I got feedback from enough people who said it was a "great idea" (it's fully possible they were humoring me) and since we already have the domain + logo, why not make it the Houston 620 of group blogging? We are looking for anyone who wants to be a charter editor of this next-generation blog. Imagine a masthead as long as Paris Hilton's Yahtzee scorecard and filled with names completely off Blogebrity's radar. (Let that one sink in a bit.) A commitment of one post, no word min. or max., per weekday is all we require but you can probably get away with doing less because we have an unlimited sick days policy. The strength of this blog will be its lack of consistent voice and we will NEVER accept advertising to prevent any and all accusations of editorial bias. (Well, name a price and I'm sure we'd reconsider.) Serious or disingenuous emails should be sent to info at [my last name] dot com. I am not being disingenuous, seriously.
5-part miniseries version: There's a scene at the end of a Law & Order episode where Briscoe talks to an old friend/retired cop who committed a sole but highly crooked act while on the force which was revealed when a cold case file was re-opened and finally solved by the current crew. The disgraced cop asks, "Do you still respect me, Lenny?" and Briscoe replies, "All day long, Tommy, all day long." That's when it hit me...what is this fuckin' horseshit I've been sludging through everyday for the past 2 months, ALL DAY LONG?? (This was in March, I now fear daytime programming.) I'll admit I enjoyed a fair amount of it, especially the Angie Harmon years, or maybe exclusively the Angie Harmon years. When I thought a plot was too boring they'd usually throw in enough of a twist and cute-but-tough Asst D.A. action to keep me from switching to VH1 Classic's All Star Jams. But truthfully, most of the time I felt like I was watching Crime Drama for Dummies.
Much of the problem has to do with its format. Each episode covers one case from beginning to end. The first half hour is the "law" part where detectives finger and nail a suspect; the second half serves a steaming plate of "order" as Sam Waterson prosecutes the case with a sense of self-importance considerably more than when promoting TD Waterhouse. It's a simple design which doesn't involve any season-long story arcs which translates into syndication heaven since you can follow any one episode with no regard to another. Except if you're keeping track of Briscoe's horribly hacked-off one-liners. (People think he's the quinessential NYPD detective portrayed on television? I'd spend a week on Rikers Island if that honor wasn't Dennis Franz's Sipowicz.)
Why I am analyzing something that you either already know or couldn't give two chili-coke shits about? First, let me add that I also like World's Wildest Police Videos, City Confidential, Forensic Files, Catherine Crier on Court TV, and cop porn. "These handcuffs aren't the only thing tight around here, officer..." This is all perfunctory background to illustrate my moderate interest and fascination with crime. The rest of the country is addicted even more if A&E's new crime and investigation network and the launch of Justice magazine are any indication.
Unaware of either of those media developments, Chris Gage and I have been planning to do a crime blog for as long as I can remember which dates back to February of this year. You would think The Smoking Gun would have one but they don't. While researching the idea I easily found over 100 blogs covering crime in one form or another, from 2nd Amendment gun freaks to literature types into crime fiction. So we came up with the idea of Blottered.com to be a catch-all repository of the more interesting local crime blotter stories, some celeb crime, crime shows and books commentary, the full spectrum of guns, weapons, torture devices ("that band sucks! lock them in the shame-flute!"), bounty hunters, drugs, historic crimes, pretty much anything that involves enforcing and breaking the law.
One problem though, I realized there's no way I could do 6, let alone the industry-prescribed 12, daily posts on a topic-specific blog for more than a month. My attention span is best characterized by a renegade tank driver on the loose creating havoc in a residential neighborhood, steamrolling over cars and trees, making a mess of rock gardens, tearing through parked RVs like Michael Moore's hot hands through buttered popcorn, firing a bunch of rounds at the authorities and abruptly ending when fuel and ammo run out simultaneously. Then the guy is beat down, sedated, and hauled off to a correctional facility.
But I got feedback from enough people who said it was a "great idea" (it's fully possible they were humoring me) and since we already have the domain + logo, why not make it the Houston 620 of group blogging? We are looking for anyone who wants to be a charter editor of this next-generation blog. Imagine a masthead as long as Paris Hilton's Yahtzee scorecard and filled with names completely off Blogebrity's radar. (Let that one sink in a bit.) A commitment of one post, no word min. or max., per weekday is all we require but you can probably get away with doing less because we have an unlimited sick days policy. The strength of this blog will be its lack of consistent voice and we will NEVER accept advertising to prevent any and all accusations of editorial bias. (Well, name a price and I'm sure we'd reconsider.) Serious or disingenuous emails should be sent to info at [my last name] dot com. I am not being disingenuous, seriously.
