Fundamental Lack of Respect for the Mr. Wrong column

I dunno if I already told you this, but in July of this year, my column, the Mr. Wrong column, won an award for being the “Best Column” out of all the Alternative Newsweeklies (OK, all the ones that entered to win an award) this year at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Convention awards ceremony thing with cocktails in New Orleans, Louisiana, America. Yeah, I know, I totally already told you this, but c’mon, I won a prize, man, it’s a big deal for me at least, you know? Anyway, I haven’t received any sorta Certificate of Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence, yet, but I expect it to arrive any day now, and if it is suitable for framing, I will frame it and display it here in my office, if only to remind the people around here that it has been like six weeks since the most recent installment of the Award-Winning Mr. Wrong column ran in the paper it got picked out of, against other big-shot fancy-pants papers in Los Angeles (LA Weekly) and New York City (Village Voice), where the columns that got beat by the Mr. Wrong column—the losing columns, if you will—probably run way more than that. Like, maybe they even run every week? How’m I supposed to win a prize next year and cover my paper with Glory if I got a fraction of the amount of columns the other columns have to pick from? Seriously, counting this column, I think I have filed maybe eight columns this year, which means I’m gonna file maybe two more before the end of the year, tops. Just saying.

Just saying, because when one has a column that runs more on the regular, like every other week, like my column used to (which also was not enough to suit me, of course, on account of: I am Greedy), one could at least decide to pick a topic out of Current Events, you know? Like, it woulda been nice if I coulda wrote a column about this year’s Best of Baltimore before we had our big Best of Baltimore paper, because I totally get psyched for Best of Baltimore since it is always our biggest and Best-est paper of the year, because: biggest, you know? Or even at least it woulda been nice to write something the week after Best of Baltimore, but now it’s been what, two weeks? Who cares, right? It’s like, not a Current Event anymore, you know? Except for people being mad about that “Yoga Pants” one, and the “Best Comic Book Store” one, there hasn’t been much to talk about with this Best of, except for me on a personal note, one of the items I wrote for the Best of Baltimore issue got cut out, so I’m gonna run it here, and if you don’t see it right here under these words, then it got cut again. Here goes:

OK, so I dunno if it’s there, right above these words, because it mighta got cut by The Editor, but I was pretty psyched to write that one for Best of Baltimore, because it was actual Reporting, as opposed to going like, “Hey man, this place has the Best Hotdog,” which is totally subjective, you know? I went to an Os game, that guy yelled that heckle, which totally cracked up everybody who was around him, I got his name, confirmed the quote, and it’s like, a perfect Baltimore Living item in Best of Baltimore because it is a thing that happened and I observed it because I live in Baltimore, you know? Anyway, it got cut and I’m shoving it in my column because if I couldn’t put it in Best of Baltimore, where am I gonna put it besides Where the Sun Don’t Shine, right? So yeah, the Mr. Wrong column is a lot like Where the Sun Don’t Shine, except it is an Award-Winning Where the Sun Don’t Shine for the year Two Thousand and Eleven, see?

I figure the next episode of the Award-Winning Mr. Wrong column will be maybe like Nov. 16, so that means anything I mighta done about topical stuff like voting in the city election that is not the Primary (just once if you haven’t tried it, vote against all incumbents), or Daylight Savings Time (I am against it, I mean, set your alarm, get up when you want, you know?), or Halloween (I am for it, but I can’t afford to give out full-sized candy and I have a problem with trying to get a good deal on candy with all these bags of candy being impossible to compare), or maybe Thanksgiving, I dunno, I might get to write about that. We’ll see what I have to be Thanksgivingful for, eh?

theawl.com, mrwrong.tumblr.com

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