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Over at By the Way, John Scalzi’s new little blog adventure with AOL, he’s doling out advice to some first time bloggers out there. (That’s right; AOL is empowering a whole new group of people to muse endlessly on the internet. Watch out.)

Specifically, folks queried him about writing a blog about other people. What if they find out? Grandmom won’t be pleased that I don’t like her pie. Here’s the short version of his longer response:

My personal blog (found right here, amazingly enough) takes a much lighter and complimentary tone because of this very fact. Mom taught me that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When it comes to personal acquaintances this is still a very good rule. Everyone else — political figures, actors, athletes, and even good old John himself — well, rail away.

What you may find interesting, though, is how folks you know may react to their names showing up on your blog at all, even when you post something nice about them. Some are delighted to see their name in lights (even if, generally, these lights are very, very dim). Mom might be happy that you love her. Others are more sensitive. Brother Bob might be upset to see his full name appears in so many google search results. Maybe you shouldn’t have posted his home phone number.

In some cases, you might need to be sensitive. This whole Internet thing is still rather new and scary to a lot of people. In other cases (e.g. other bloggers tend to be pretty open people), you might have a lot more rope to play with. I personally tend to let those close to me know when I write about them. It frees my conscience from the odd feeling of speaking behind one’s back and I get a, possibly faux and often silent, approval of my comments.

You’ll get a feel for this stuff as you go. Just be ready to be read, by anyone, especially the source of your material.

Those who don’t follow NASCAR — and, if I know my small reading audience well, that’s nearly all of you — probably missed all the fun that Jimmy Spencer and Kurt Busch had over the weekend. See Kurt Busch gave Jimmy Spencer a nice little bump during the race. Jimmy Spencer returned the favor with his fists shortly after the last lap was run.

This isn’t the first time the two of them have tussled. This is, however, the first time it came to blows. After running out of gas following the race, Kurt found an angry Spencer swinging at him through the driver’s side window. He’ll race next week with a broken nose and a missing tooth. Spencer won’t be racing next week at all.

The trouble is, I can’t feel sorry for either of them, even poor little slanted-nose Kurt. I can’t defend Spencer’s wild sting-like-a-bee move but Mr. Busch isn’t Mr. Innocent. As they say, he had it coming.

The event before the impromptu boxing match, also known as the race, took place at Michigan, a track that sports some of the fastest speeds of any track on the NASCAR circuit. Kurt’s bump of Spencer’s car wasn’t an accident. How do we know? Let’s listen in on his pit radio:

Why would he do such a thing? There are two reasons that come to mind. One, he could ruin the Spencer’s areodynamics. Bang him up and he slows down. Two, he could make Spencer cut a tire. A blown tire normally means the driver gets a very rough reception from a nearby concrete wall. The move was classless and, unlike this weekend’s trip to Bristol, where such tactics are almost encouraged due to the small track and slow speeds, dangerous.

Incidents on the track are often referred to as “racing deals”. Incidents at any other time are personal. That, in my opinion, is bullshit. A “racing deal” is every bit as personal at 200 mph. It involves much more than a pretty little face. It involves a life. Note to drivers: don’t be surprised when you get a spanking for a dumb-headed move on the track.

By the way, those who have even a little interest in NASCAR would be served well by watching this weekend’s tussle at Bristol Motor Speedway (here’s an entry about the last Bristol race). Yeah, yeah, it’s all about cars that go in a circle. But this circle is really, really small. And there are lots of cars. Tempers flare and helmets fly. That’s where I’ll be on Saturday night, at least in spirit. I’ll actually be looking for a beer to accompany me and the wife on the couch.

This weekend I was treated to an unexpected surprise, courtesy of my friend Jason. Someone had backed out on him at the last minute and a ticket to the John Mayer/Counting Crows concert was up for grabs. Surely I couldn’t let it go to waste. I quickly rearranged my plans and (with a, ahem, heavy heart) left work early to head to the concert.

First up was a band that we passed on a side stage. While sweaty young men and nubile young women glared at them from the beaches of the oversized posters on the prominently sponsored stage walls, Parker’s Back played some tunes very reminiscent of Train or Matchbox 20. I can’t say they were taking any musical risks but as the music fell through the summer heat, I couldn’t help but think it was a great warm up to the main event.

The opening band – which, I must say, I was surprised to see because I was unaware that there was an opening band – had an interesting mix of instruments. Wisechild replaced the standard rhythm guitar with a violin, reminding me of Dave Matthew’s Band without the sax and with a few more open spaces in their music. As I’m a big fan of Dave Matthew’s Band, it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed the show. Occasionally, their Tennessee roots were a little too obvious but I liked their sound. I picked up their new CD, which sits comfortably next to the CD I purchased of Parker’s Back earlier that day.

What surprised me about both of these bands was how well they were chosen for this event. Both of them gave us tunes that should have fit squarely in the middle of the radar of anyone in attendance. I was no exception.

The Counting Crows was the first of the two main acts. This was another surprise. My ticket had the words Counting Crows in the middle in big lettering. I thought that would make them the headliner. I was wrong. After speaking with some rather inebriated folks, we determined that it isn’t always this way. The Crows were taking a little break and sharing the stage. This article from MTV makes it sound like the co-headlining thing was the plan all along. Who knew?

They played a mellow set. Mr. Jones was a meandering ballad more than an upbeat quickie. Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi took a slow turn around the block. Their usual staple of songs were left to simmer, only boiling over on their last song, Hangin’ Around. The slow pace and warm summer buzz of tunes was surprising but not disappointing in the least.

You got the impression that the Crows have really grown into the concert thing. You can tell when musicians are jittery or nervous on stage. They weren’t. They were relaxed, comfortable fiddling with their music, and more than happy to try something a little different for a single night.

John Mayer took the stage as the headliner. The music could have come directly off the CD. My only complaints were that he didn’t move around all that much and that my favorite Mayer tune, Neon, was left off of the play list. I’ll get over it. Come Back to Bed, a track off his upcoming album, made up for it. This blues inspired tune was the highlight of the show.

No concert experience is complete without talking about the venue and, I have to say, the Nissan Pavilion was not the most wonderful place in the world to visit. It’s not a bad place to listen to music. It really isn’t. It was clean. I really enjoyed the use of a side stage to keep us occupied in the hour or so we waited for the concert to start. But that’s the problem. We arrived more than an hour early, given that concert took place in a venue that was smack dab in the middle of the route home for every commuter in the Washington Metropolitan area. If we had left any later, we would surely have listened to the concert from nearby Route 66, as my wife has done on more than one occasion.

Getting out was no easier. We camped out on a couple of large boulders and watched cars fruitlessly attempt to leave the parking lot for over and hour and forty minutes. The traffic was insane. A car in front of us moved 10 feet in the first hour and a half. That was gas well spent.

Despite Nissan Pavilion’s attempts to poison our good time, I had a blast. There’s nothing like a summer concert, especially when it is free (Jason, thank you very much). As for the pavilion itself, it’s not very likely I’ll return to that place anytime soon. My wife mentioned that the only way she would return to the Nissan Pavilion is if Jesus himself was preaching there. I’m guessing that is a tough act to book.

Of course, the biggest news story of the day and the week and, likely, the summer, is the lack of electricity flowing in much of the country right now. New York, Detroit, Cleveland, and some of our friends in Canada sat in the dark last night, feverishly lighting candles to stave off the black of night.

The initial reports have been interesting. They are more focused on what didn’t happen than what did. Yesterday, we were told that it wasn’t terrorism. Today, we learn that it’s not related to the internet worm that has been making its digital rounds. One of these days they will get a handle on what actually caused the problem.

My personal interest in the matter centers not on the chaos but on the smaller stories amid the mass exodus of Manhattan and the thirsty folks of Cleveland. The “human side” of the story, as the news likes to say, really makes the outage something to watch.

Some people failed to be unique in their troubles. They were trapped in one of the thousands of elevators in New York. They were stuck on the subway, deep underground. Many found that Manhattan isn’t the easiest place to escape.

Others were more creative. Some folks looking for a little fun were caught on amusement park rides. When exactly will this coaster start to go down? A lady on the news proclaimed she was in the dentist chair when the lights went out. Sorry, I think we’re done drilling now. The radio this morning metioned that vehicles in Detroit were stuck in the car wash.

I’ve even heard rumors that this whole power outage has made accessing the internet a challenge for much of the Northeast. It seems that this whole “electricity” thing does something to make to make computer screens light up around the world. Now that sounds like a travesty.

I had a busy weekend. I spent some time with both the youngest and oldest of the Wootton brood. I added a new toy to my chest and I had one of those days where everything does not work out quite the way you planned it.

On Friday, the wife ran off with a friend to play the slots. That left me alone with my son, something that, surprisingly, doesn’t happen very often. We had the whole night to ourselves. It barely counts that he hit the sack right after eating dinner and taking a bath. I let him play in his bath a bit. His splashing knocked every toy out of the tub. The effort later knocked him out cold.

Speaking of Friday, earlier in the day I added a brand new toy to my entertainment center. I purchased a TIVO. I’m still a little lukewarm about the service contract you have to purchase. Still, every TIVO owner I’ve spoken with swear its worth it. I’ll see. My initial impressions are very, very good. I’m going to wait a week and let it sink in. Expect a full report on it very soon.

On Saturday, the plans that the wife and I set up went astray. We expected to go to the movies. We expected to finally see Finding Nemo, a movie I’ve been desperate to see for months. We had the babysitter. We had the will. The world just didn’t cooperate.

The first bad sign was the weather. It was rainy. The clouds were grey overhead. The mall was packed; the parking lot full. The bright signs that announce the movie listings at the theater were on the fritz, forcing us to wait in line for 15 minutes to find out the movie was sold out. Sold out? The movie was released months ago. How can it be sold out? I suppose it might have something to do with the fact that it was the only movie shown between the hours 4 and 6:30 pm, a fact that left us with few choices. We couldn’t ask our sitter to stay that long and my Baltimore Ravens were playing at 8. We left the theater looking for alternative activities.

Our first choice was a nice, sit-down dinner. You know, the kind without a little baby to worry about. Some crabs would taste nice. So would a beer. The first restaurant we hit had an hour wait. There were some very sweaty looking customers waiting outside for their name to be called. The second restaurant we approached were out of crabs. I’m sorry but you should be forced to remove the seafood moniker from the sign outside when you run out of crabs in Maryland. At the very least, you should be forced to qualify it a bit. “Seafood, but…” would be a good start.

At this point, my morale had begun to fade. We hit up our favorite crab place in town, Always Best, and headed home. We’d get our crab dinner. I’d get my beer. We’d just let our gracious babysitter keep the little tike occupied for a while. We washed the whole thing down with some preseason football. It wasn’t a bad day at all.

On Sunday, it was off to Westminster to celebrate my Grandmother’s birthday. She’s now had 95 birthdays in a row. She can walk, she can talk, and she can hear. She can still drive my dad up a wall. Her eyesight isn’t what it used to be but, at 95, can you really complain? When queried about her chances for 100, she seemed nonplused. “It isn’t worth it,” she replied. I love the old lady. If God wants her around in another five years, I’m sure she’ll fight the good fight. If not, I bet she goes with just a hint of a smile on her face.

So that was my weekend. I better get used to it. The wife has a whole bunch of them scheduled for the fall.

I don’t normally stick needles in my face. Neither do I shock it with electricity with any kind of frequency. Somehow, however, I was able to fit both into my schedule this week.

On Wednesday, I took an early morning trip to Mercy Hospital for a little more physical therapy. The session went pretty much like I expected. I performed my assigned exercises for the therapist and was critiqued on my progress. The good news: I’ve improved. I may not be able to smile but at least I can raise the corner of my mouth a small amount. The bad news: I ended up with more homework. I have a whole new set of exercises to keep me occupied in front of the mirror.

And what exciting exercises they are. In addition to some practice with puckering and smiling, my old exercises consisted of tasks like filling my cheeks with air and saying words that begin with the letter b, like bow. My new activities are even more comical. One new speech exercise has me pin my tongue to the left side of my mouth and recite words such as grandmother. Another makes me raise my upper lip and say words such as friendly or far. Glancing at the list of terms, I quipped that I was glad that the word frankfurter was skipped. That little “problem” was quickly rectified.

After physical therapy, I moved up my appointment with the neurologist. I was in the building. I might as well kill two birds with one stone. It was in the examining room of the neurologist where words like “grounding” made their first appearance. “I’m going to have to give him a needle”, the doctor told my wife. I had no clue whatsoever that it would be in my face.

To be truthful, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The needles themselves were much like acupuncture (which, technically, I’ve only seen on TV) in that they literally rested in my face for a short time. An attached wire made it look as if the doctor were testing a human-sized (and Ken-shaped) battery. The part of my tests where I was shocked by policeman-like electrical do-hickey (I believe that is the technical term) was closer to that tingling feeling you get from laying your tongue on a 9-volt battery than sticking you finger into an electrical outlet (again, something I’ve only seen on TV). Any fear or loathing I had about the session is quite related to having someone jam needles into my face and that’s something I never want to get entirely comfortable with.

The real good news of the week was my prognosis. The doctor said that by Labor Day no one should really notice my facial paralysis. By October 1st, I should be all better. Both dates are now marked in bold on my calendar.

In the last couple of weeks, two of my biggest gaming addictions, Battlefield 1942 and Nascar Racing 2003, have been put aside for calmer, but not necessarily greener, pastures. This shift in my attention was forced on me but the overall effect has been refreshing. I’ve been spending a lot more time ridding the world of evil than making bombing runs or turning that 50th lap, an activity which is much friendlier to my partially blinking eye.

Role playing games have been stealing a lot of my time. Two of them came off the shelf after a long, dusty stay. A third is brand new and has sunk its claws deep into me.

An earlier post mentioned the travels of the wife and I through the land of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. This action RPG was a lot of fun. The statistics are dumbed down to the point where all you really need to do is run around and smack stuff – or, in my case, hide in the back and chuck spells at things – and that’s a good thing. It’s easy to pick up and and easy to play. My only disappointment revolved around the story. It seemed more like two stories than one and the two didn’t seem to have much to do with each other. Our disjointed style of play, which was stretched over several months, surely didn’t help the matter.

Neverwinter Nights, which is now more than a year old, came off the shelf because of an opportunity to play it with a friend. That friend had purchased the newest expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide, and was interested in tackling one of many user made modules for the game. The result is that I’m not actually playing the game, per se. I’m playing a game someone made using the tools the developer so kindly provided.

Birthright of the North, chosen from a list of hundreds because of its high rating in the Neverwinter Vault, is impressive, especially when you consider it was constructed by a single person. I’m always stunned at the amount of work individuals put into game modifications. This one boasts 40 hours of play time, a ton of things to do, and a very open ended style of play. We’ve probably got thirty hours left. I’m looking forward to them.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the new kid on the block, does a lot to appease my disappointment with Star Wars: Galaxies. It’s the first role playing game I’ve ever played in the Chewbacca’s universe and – oh my – it’s a good one. The first thing you notice is how much story and dialog there is. All the dialog is spoken, regardless of the language. Want to hear some Wookie spout off about his grooming? This game has it.

The other thing that becomes immediately obvious is the number of choices you can make. Every situation has choices that decide whether you will follow the light or dark side of the force and, because of this, you get a good sense of freedom. I might be a good boy now but a second play through might be necessary to see how much of a bastard I can really be.

That’s what I’m playing now. As soon as I get better, I’ll return to a more balanced meal on the action front. My poor eye better start blinking soon, though. Madden 2003 comes out in a week. I want to be ready.

I’m doing ok. I’m doing alright. I’m glad to hear that your friend recovered nicely. No, I’m not better yet. I still can’t raise an eyebrow. I still can’t smile.

Many well wishes have come my way in the last two weeks as both friends and family hear about the Bell’s Palsy which afflicts me. I appreciate them. I really do. It’s nice to be loved. It’s nice to see that people care. I truly don’t deserve the kind words I’ve received.

That said, it certainly seems like I’m stuck in a rut. I spend a lot of time discussing both my mug and the mugs of others. I understand the curiousity. It’s hard to describe. It’s hard to explain. Just what does a person look like who can’t control one side of their face? You can tell when people really look at you.

It may or may not help that my contact with the outside world in the last two weeks has been limited. I haven’t been spending time crossing things off my schedule but I haven’t been making plans either. Church softball, my normal Sunday excursion, is a no, no. My partially blinking eye makes it difficult and I’d rather not risk any injury (look there’s a fly ball). Other events, particularly ones that involve eating, are not things I’m anxious to set up.

I’ll make two exceptions to that this weekend, one on both sides of the fence. I’ve decided to skip the annual work picnic. I’d like to go. I’d love to show off my quickly growing boy. I’m not, however, incredibly comfortable with socializing or community eating right now. Doing the two in concert would be torture to both sides of my face. You could call it avoidance. You can worry about symptoms of depression if you really want. I’m taking a different view. It just doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun to me. Besides, it looks like it will rain. I won’t miss it next year.

On the other hand, the wife and I are heading out to dinner and movie so I’m not sworn off the entire world quite yet. We are going to make another run at seeing Finding Nemo, although American Wedding has a good opportunity to snag our discretionary dollars as well. Hopefully we’ll eat some place that serves soft foods.

For those who don’t know, I started physical therapy this week. The therapy itself consists of both facial and oral exercises. I make wierd faces at the mirror and contort my face while repeating certain words. The faces are all the more strange when you take into account that only only my right side has any interest in participating. They do seem to help. The left side can feel odd, wormy, or tight in the hours afterwards. Any feeling over there is a good thing.

The whole idea of physical therapy is to accelerate the recovery process. Bell’s Palsy supposedly just comes back on its own. It comes back slowly, though. I’m hoping those frustrating hours in front of the mirror pay off. If nothing else, I’m learning to control the right side a lot better. Someday, I’ll be able to fake it on both sides.

For all those who have called, emailed, sent me cards, visited, or left an encouraging comment, thanks. I’m making it through this. Sometimes it is hard to forget, though. My Bell’s Palsy is something I cannot escape. You could say that it’s written all over my face.