Post #300 - St. Paco's Top Ten All-Time Top Ranking Blog Posts

I seldom check my blog's statistics. For me it's simply enough to arrange a few words in TextEdit® (okay, several words), paste 'em into Blogger™, scan and upload photos, plop in some relevant tags, and then post it all to the "Internets." And when the post is done, that's it. Rarely does it occur to me to see if my offerings have ever caused a ripple in The Force™.

But it did occur to me to check into that today.

Becoming hyper-aware, after mentioning in an email to a fellow writer/blogger on Saturday that my blog was just two posts shy of 300, I thought that I should take a moment to survey how things have been going with YKFS. Traffic wise, I mean. I started wondering if anything that I'd posted to the blog since the last time I thought to check the stats *cough* maybetwoyearsago *cough* had generated a significant number of page views.

After keying in my username and password into the sign in screen at Blogger™, I logged in, opened up the control panel, slid the pointed cursor over to the statistics button on the left side of the screen and clicked the mouse. Top 20 reasons why Nicki Minaj is a geek goddess... 3,659 page views. Holy craaaaaaaaaaap!!!

Okay, a funny story about that piece. Not funny like 'haha' funny, but a semi-amusing anecdote. That post was actually written for The Smoking Section. At the time it was written, TSS was looking for new bloggers for their site and I drafted two original pieces for their sage consideration. Two pieces that I thought were perfect for a finger-on-the-pulse pop culture website.

The short Sprite Voltron piece that I also wrote for TSS was pretty good too. But I was really excited about the Minaj joint. So much so that I also made a bootleg 'click bait' teaser thingamabob, just like the ones on TSS. The teaser featured a nerdy-looking snapshot of Nicki that was spot-on for the piece. I then loaded everything into a nicely formatted e-mail, clicked 'send' and waited patiently for TSS to welcome the kid into the fold.

I never heard a word from 'em.

After about three weeks of waiting in vain, I said 'to heck' with TSS. I was actually beside myself with the thrill of posting the pieces written for them on my own blog. And here, now in major retrospect, seeing how one of those pieces attracted over 3600 hits for a back alley blog like YKFS, by my calculations they prolly should've taken a chance on yours truly. Who knows what kinda traffic I could've generated over there. Oh well, their total loss.

And, hey! This must be kinda how it feels for artists like Eminem and Kanye after they finally get a record deal and then go...sextuple platinum (yes, that's a real word). The big fat sense of validation it must bring, when juxtaposed against the maddening fact that so many fat cat execs passed on their music. Execs who later wanted to murder themselves for that critical lapse in judgment.

Okay, okay. I know that I am really, reeeeeeaaallly reaching here, but it's my blog post and I fantasize if I want to. And with that mini moment of megalomania out of the way...

In honor of my 300th pulse-pounding blog post (dis one), St. Paco (dat's me) would like to cast the full beam of the spotlight on my Top Ten All-Time Top Ranking Blog Posts. And I'm pretty jazzed at the number of views that every single one of my posts have generated. Especially when considering how I thought it'd be an accomplishment just to get a few dozen hits per post.

Oh, and I also wanna take a quick moment before closing this 300th posting to say that if I ever do get scouted to write for one of those überpopular pop culture blogs, whoever okays that move – to quote Eminem – should prolly "get a finder's fee out this world! Ain't no one 'out their mind' as me!" [Maniacal laughter]

Here's to the next 300. Thanks for reading me.

SP


The YKFS Top Ten All-Time Top Ranking Blog Posts

01. Top 20 reasons why Nicki Minaj is a geek goddess – 3,659 views
02. Another 'Great Day in Harlem – 2,057 views
03. Fall into the Gap – 1,546 views
04. The Secret Santa – 1,270 views
05. Jay-Z on Jean-Michel Basquiat – 1,069 views
06. The Deadly Art of Black Dynamite – 920 views
07. Shaolin Break Dancing – 846 views
08. Georges Marciano's Guess Girl – 764 views
09. Breaking and the New York City Breakers – 644 views
10. Crisis in Electric Ladyland – 535 views

Survival 102: The art of a mixape cover 'remix' (Sampling Bob Marley & The Wailers)

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain." 

                       – Bob Marley

It was indeed a bit of...overkill to make both a front and wholly impractical back cover for the Survival 101 mixtape that was arranged and assembled by yours truly. But once the inspiration had taken hold to make a pop art-style 'remix' cover based on Neville Garrick's design for the classic Bob Marley and the Wailer's album Survival (1979), I couldn't stop until the idea was fully exhausted.

Neville Garrick's cover, which brilliantly illustrated the visionary message of "Africa Unite", the lead track on side two of the Wailer's album, featured the flags of the 41 nations that made up the African continent at that time. But it also united with those nations the flag of Papua New Guinea, one of several distant island sisters to the African continent in the South Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles away.

As a teen, when I got my first copy of the Survival LP on 12" vinyl, I knew virtually nothing at all about "PNG", beyond the very eerie fact that its inhabitants – who live on an immense landmass a few thousand nautical miles away from the continental home of my own ancestors –  somehow looked a helluva' lot like me and my 'bredren'.

As an adult, around the time that I had somehow acquired a second copy of Survival on CD, I felt both genetically and intellectually compelled to become more informed about those distant cousins who inhabit the second largest island on our planet. The process taught me much about them, but also much about the people living on neighboring islands in the region. And, in the years since, I've written a little bit about what I've learned. Someday those writings will see the light of day. But, for now, back to the making of this mixtape's front and back covers.

After deciding to make what would be an abridged remix of Garrick's inspirational piece, I began a brief study of the original Survival album. It was at this point that I learned (or became reminded) that the flag of Papua had been included in the original design, and that surprising fact only doused gasoline on the idea that burned within to make a modern remix version of the cover. But one that would have not only the flag of PNG but the other flags of Melanesia as well.

And so, along with the flag of Papua, the flag of its struggling conjoined twin sister West Papua was added. Following those, the flags of the other Melanesian islands of Vanuatu, New Caledonia (Kanaky), Fiji and the Solomon Islands were promptly applied. And with the mixtape cover quickly beginning to take proper shape, it seemed only fitting to then include the flags of the nearby Torres Strait Islands and that of the aboriginal peoples of Australia and Tasmania. For similar reasons, the flags of the neighboring Timor-Leste and Maluku Islands were added.

After the flags of the Melanesian and related nations, the flags of 16 African countries were chosen due to either historical or aesthetic reasons. These include those of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau (the West African region after which PNG was named), Ethiopia, Zaire, Kenya, Liberia, and others. The last to be added were the "red, black and green" Pan-African flag of African descendants in North America, and the flag of Jamaica, the Caribbean island birthplace of reggae music and Bob Marley.

Pleased with how the front turned out, I wasn't ready to stop. Nostalgia reminded me of how the back cover of the original Survival album had always made me feel when I looked at it;  the sense of unknown history that it hinted at and the sense of connection I somehow felt to the people in the grainy black and white photographs displayed there. And so I tried to convey a similar sense of mystery -- and history -- with old photographs showing people from Papua New Guinea (top & bottom), Fiji (left) and the Solomon Islands (right).

I hope that some of what I was trying to convey with it all somehow comes across.

From start to finish, this mixtape project was a long and gratifying labor of love. But I also had tons of help from various 'surrogates' who didn't know that they were involved. These include the previously mentioned Mr. Garrick, and the small number of bloggers and DJs whose active promotion of Pacific Island music in recent years has exposed me to several artists whose music I now treasure. So massive "big ups" specifically to Street-vibez Mozikk,  Solomon Vibz, FreeSolomonMusic, Massive Entertainment, and the Reggae Revolution Radio Show.

I also want to say 'nuff respect and many thanks to all of the artists whose music has been featured on the Survival 101 mixtape. The intention behind this compilation is only to further promote and bring awareness to folks in America and elsewhere about this too-little-discussed part of our planet (Melanesia) and the fantastic branch of reggae that emanates from its breathtaking isles.

If you download and find yourself enjoying the tunes on this mixtape, please support those few fortunate artists whose music is available through Amazon and iTunes. In the meantime, have fun with this small sampling of what Pacific Island reggae has to offer.

Bless.

"Riddem Selekta St. Paco"

Read the fine print

At the time that the review that precedes this posting was written to be shared on Amazon, there were a handful of critics -- probably true blue impulse buyers -- whose 3, 2, and 1-star ratings were dragging down the overall product rating on a DVD release that I thought deserved much better.

The main gripe of the negative-leaning critics -- who apparently also had to be among to the very first in line to buy the DVD collection when it came out in April -- was that the films featured were all in the original Japanese language with English subtitles. And most Americans, as we all know, really have this thing when it comes to watching foreign language films with subtitles. "I don't want to read a movie", is the now-seemingly mandatory mantra of this crowd.

But their dislike of reading subtitles must also extend to simple product descriptions as well. Had any of those savvy spenders spent a measly 30 seconds reading the information provided by Amazon on the product page, they could have made an informed decision, instead of buying first and then negatively critiquing later a product that didn't live up to their own ill-informed expectations.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite cautionary punchlines was the one that warns us to read the fine print. But as an adult, all too often I find myself wishing that people would read the not-so-fine print too. 

Kodak Moment (Take a picture, it'll last longer)

Dear diary blog,

It's 2AM and I'm perched at the keyboard finishing the most difficult essay that I have ever attempted to write.

This long-problematic piece was actually started nearly ten friggin' years ago. Because the subject matter was so close to heart, though, it was always difficult to retain objectivity about the proper direction and the quality of the actual work.

But tonight, after two days of just chipping away at it again (for the god-only-knows-how-many-eth time) I finally feel what I've always wanted to feel: that both the rhythm and wording are right, and that the whole is worth every bit of the seemingly endless effort.

Now, after nearly a decade of starts and stalls one would think that I'd managed to pen something equal in size to Plato's Apology. But it's only a 3,000-word essay–albeit one that shoehorns some 50,000 years of human history into a thoughtful and entertaining text. 

That is partly what made it so damned difficult to write. 

And it's also kinda personal too, but had to be made much less personal to make it work; letting go of the parts in which you have an emotional investment is probably the hardest part about writing. 

For me it is, anyway.

Two years ago, one of my previously failed attempts to rework the essay in question resulted in the "Black East" piece that was published in Giant Robot magazine. That was my first published piece and is in many ways a pre-quel to this one.

Coincidentally (but there are no coincidences, right?), Runoko Rashidi contacted me a couple of weeks ago. The somewhat well known historian and lecturer asked if he could include the previously metioned piece in his new travelogue called African Star Over Asia. 

When I finally find the words, I'll say something about just how...legitimizing the opportunity feels. Right now, though, all I can say is that it's an honor.

As to the title of my old-but-new essay – and it has had a number of 'em throughout its decade long gestation period – "Monster Islands" is the title that was settled upon in 2010 and it's still a perfect fit.

Oh, and diary blog, I just had a thought. 

If I could take a picture right now of what I'd like my life to look like it would be something like the screenshot that I just captured. See it?

Click to enlarge

Well, at the center of the image is the current work-in-progress, which is essentially complete except for a lil' fine-tuning. On the top left side of the screen, the movie Monster From a Prehistoric Planet (aka Giant Beast Gappa) is playing with the volume turned down. And underneath the minimized media player screen is a map of Papua New Guinea, which – like the movie itself – is referenced in the essay.

Over there on the right side of the screen is an antique photograph of a young maiden from Papua New Guinea––something discovered during one of the Raiders of the Lost Ark-style research runs. Beneath that stunning portrait is an iTunes window that displays the song "Genocide" by the Reavers (featuring rappers Spiega, Billy Woods and Kong) as it plays with the volume turned down low.

When I open my eyes to dream, that screenshot offers a perfect example how I'd like my life to look. But in the vision, I actually make a good living doing what I love as both a writer and artist. And if not every single day, most of my work/play days would look like that. 

Okay, the only deviation from what's captured in the image is that there would probably be two flat-screen monitors on my desktop––Oh, and the desk itself would be something new from Ikea.

As for tonight/today, though, I'm happy with what I've got, and happy with how my life looks.

Five hundred + hit combo!

A puny 98-pound weakling could have knocked me over with a pink feather boa when I figured out that the "Shaolin Break Dancing" post from a few months back had generated over 500 page views. Some of these YKFS postings are lucky to even break fifty (not really), but that piece generated hits like a Street Fighter™ combo on crack.

Even more remarkably, though, a few other postings generated well over 700 and 800 hits. Sha-zam!

The reason that this merits mention is 'cuz I told a buddy some months back that it was cool (for me) just knowin' that there are a couple dozen YKFS readers. Now, though, havin' seen the actual number of page views that some of these pulse-pounding postings have generated, I'm getting inspired with the desire to touch even more eyeballs.

As beautiful fate would have it, it was just over a year ago that I blogged about how if it nailed down, I'd be bringin' it – whatever it might happen to be – to Your Kung Fu Sucks. Gauging by the page views earned by some of these posts since then, methinks this lil' ol' blog has managed to 'level up' a tad.

So, this quick missive has been written to show my appreciation to the subscribers (all six o' you), the lurkers and the information superhighway passers-by. You're the reason that bloggers put fingers to keys. In the immortal words of Bartles & James: "Thank you for your support."

– SP

Since 2006?

According to my profile, this lil' Blogger account was created back in the Spring of 2006. And yet, amazingly, despite a fairly established presence elsewhere on what George Bush often referred to as the "Internets" (Western twang required), I have virtually nothing to show for this now nearly 4-year-old account.

That, true-believer, is about to change.

Yes, coming soon to this not-so-new, but greatly improved blog is a...plethora of new postings, many of which will feature things that are currenty in development at the KFG Mountain Monastery. I have lots of new D-I-Y items on the horizon, including 1" button sets and a new zine or two.

In the immediate days to come, there's also gonna be a blurb about an article I wrote which will soon be featured in one of my favorite publications. (As soon as I have the details, true-believer, you too will have 'em.)

Yes siree, 2010 is the year of the blog! Well, this neglected blog anyway. So please keep an eye out for much more than what was posted in the past [cough] threeyearsandninemonths [cough].

And hey, considerin' my previous track record, with just one single post it already feels like I'm about...two-thousand and six steps ahead of the game.

St. Paco
Kung Fu Grip! Zine