The Versatile Blogger

This is a post that's way past due, but I wanted to take the time to do it justice. Artist Michael Dean "MD" Jackson was kind enough to tag me with the Versatile Blogger Award and it's a special honor. I struggle all the time with how broadly focused this blog is. Most of my favorite blogs are very specific in their subject matter, even if the subject is just "comics," but I especially like extremely specific blogs like Double O Section, Shanna the She-Devil Blogger, and Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. I love those so much that I often think about narrowing Adventureblog's range to one genre or medium. If only I could pick just one that I wouldn't get bored with eventually.

I can't, so for better or worse, I'm stuck with a versatile blog. That's why I appreciate someone's creating this recognition and Mike's including me in his picks for it. I appreciate other versatile blogs too. I can't read too many of them before they become overwhelming, but I was able to pull five to mention from my follow list. I'll list them in a minute, but one of the other criteria for accepting the award is listing seven random facts about yourself. So that first:

1. My high-school job was bagging groceries and I was really good at it. As a result though, I'm overly critical (silently so, I promise) of baggers who can't make a paper bag keep its shape and mix items that shouldn't be mixed. Cold items don't go with non-cold items. Detergents don't go with food.
2. In college, I played the title role in The Sound of Music. I also ran the sound for My Fair Lady, which was an even more fun production. But that may have been because I had a minor crush on the girl playing Eliza Doolittle. Or her Georgia accent anyway. (She switched to Cockney for the play, but that wasn't nearly as attractive.)
3. You can get me to do just about anything if you ask me in a Georgia accent.
4. I can read ancient Greek, though I don't understand as much of it as I used to.
5. My first pet was a black cat we found at the garbage dump. He was only a few days old and we couldn't even tell what gender he was yet. We named him Muffit after the robotic daggit from Battlestar Galactica.
6. I was 10 years old when I wrote my first story. It was Star Wars fan fiction and I proved in not only the title, but also in a major plot element that I didn't know the difference between an "asteroid" and an "android."
7. My son has a live dragon living in his room. It's about two-feet long and bearded.

And now for the blogs I'm passing the award to. Mike says that the official rules call for fifteen recipients, but I'm following his example and only choosing five. In alphabetical order:

1. Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Brother Cal's already received this award at some point. That guy collects awards like mermaids collect swooning sailors. He deserves it though for being extremely prolific with posts on a variety of subjects ranging from the Cephalopod Menace to Selena Gomez.
2. Lady, That's My Skull: I came to Sleestak's blog thinking it was a comics blog, and with lots of posts on romance comics and space pulp heroines like Futura and Mysta of the Moon, it is. But it's also a lot more than that, including rants about the grocery store where he works and appreciations for Hayley Mills and of course The Land of the Lost.
3. Poplitiko: My friend Alex Ness started this pop culture group blog. Because it's a group blog (and because its theme is as broad as "pop culture," it has a lot of different interests. Just looking at the current page, I see a love letter to enjoying comics with your children; a linkblogging post covering superhero movies, Doctor Who, and Twecon; and Whatever the Opposite of an Ode is to Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson movies.
4. Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: Siskoid does tend to stick to geek-related topics, so he's not as all over the place as some of the other blogs I'm mentioning, but he has a broad range of interests from Star Trek to Kung Fu movies and he crosses genres and media types easily.
5. That F'ing Monkey: I've known blogger Ken O a long time from Steve Niles' message board, so his was one of the first blogs I thought of in creating this list. He's a huge fan of DC's The Flash and talks about the character often, but you'll also find regular posts about his other interests, especially games and booze.