Smarty Assy

Thanks to jrh's generosity and mad post office skillz I am reading Dooce's book, It Sucked and Then I Cried. I started reading the site in the middle of both her pregnancy and their housing remodel and I wondered how different the book would be from reading those posts in real time. Turns out it's a lot different. (This will not be a review of that book. Would you realistically assess Oprah on your fledgling talk show? No? Yeah, well, neither would I.) Something I'm finding interesting is how Heather almost never references her web site in the book. There will be tales that I remember being told on her blog and others I keep waiting for but she doesn't seem to mention the feedback she was getting back from readers or any of the hoopla surrounding some of the old posts.

This year for me has been a string of firsts in terms of things that happen when more people start reading your blog. Don't get me wrong, I'm still to blogging what Craig Ferguson is to the Late Night Wars but more is a relative term and therefore things happen. So there was the cunt controversy and the fact that I recently met someone online who happens to live so close to me that, with the curtains open, we can look into each other's apartments. Today marked a new one and I decided to explore it a bit, just for fun. (Read: To put off putting my apartment back together.)

In August I wrote a review of the movie Away We Go over at Please Pass the Popcorn. Until today no one had commented on it so I had no proof that anyone had read it at all. Fortunately I get all the comments on my posts over there e-mailed to me and I got an e-mail this morning with a comment from one Jon:

"They don’t go to Toronto. They go to Montreal. Maybe you should actually pay attention to the film before blogging about it.
Or was your error some failed attempt to seem laid back, yawning and indifferent? If so, nice work."

I hate when I make stupid mistakes like that. On the other hand it was a good review of the movie and it was written months ago so, why did he bother? Usually I'd leave this sort of thing alone. I mean, again, why bother? But I was ticked about something else so I re-directed a little aggression and wrote back:

"I'm curious about why you're so mad that I made a location mistake in a review of a movie that I really liked. Especially so long after the fact. I mean, I'm sorry, but not so sorry I want to track down tiny mistakes in other people's web sites and take time out of my day to comment months after the event.

Interestingly enough I was talking about Away We Go this weekend and made the same mistake again and corrected myself. Not sure why I keep thinking it was Toronto.

Thanks for reading our site!
Kizz"

It was probably too nice to provoke a response and truth to tell, while I'd have been interested in an apology I didn't want to create a huge dramatic opera out of a single note (see also: Cunt Controversy) so I went middle-of-the-road. Surprisingly, good old Jon took more time out of his day to write back:

"I had just re-watched the movie and remembered some of the negative reviews that made similar mistakes as yours."

Which is right about when I remembered that people really are assholes and not clever ones either. Couldn't keep myself from pointing that out so I tossed off a one-liner:

"So you made fun of me for not attentively watching a movie after not attentively reading my review. That's...telling."

And I expect it'll be left at that.