My good friend the Dylan freak often quotes these lyrics—from “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”— when he gets tired of hearing me bitch about how things aren’t the way they used to be. And even though I’ve always been a Springsteen-over-Dylan kind of guy, I’ve grown to love those lines. They work as both a kind of prayer against self-pity, and one of those little mantras I keep repeating to myself right before I do something potentially foolish or fatal—like start a blog. As I sit laboring over this first post—beginning has always been the hardest part for me—I have very little idea where I’m going to take this. I’m not even sure I’m cut out for blogging. For me, the Devil, and maybe God, too, are in the details, and details are the first things that get cut when brevity is the order of the day. I also fear that I’m just too old-school in terms of my journalistic upbringing and mindset to be able to make this thing fly—that my attempts at blogging will be about as appealing as a bald, paunchy guy in a t-shirt and cargo pants trying to rock out among the lithe, long-haired and barely clothed beauties at a Vampire Weekend concert. And yet, I can’t help but think that I spent four years working for one of the original blogs of the pre-Internet variety, the gossip column Page Six, where I learned how to combine reporting with perspective in 20 lines or less. I was good at it then. Let’s see what happens now. Time to be born.

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