Let's Start at the Very Beginning. A Very Good Place to Start.

The Sound of Music is on television at least once a year so no sassy comments about a TV blog's first post referencing a movie. When was the last time you saw Julie Andrews twirl around on a mountain top meadow, arms wide open to the world, on the big screen? And the last time you saw her singing and spinning on an NBC Sunday night special presentation?

Mm Hmm. Just as I suspected.

“When you read you begin with ABC, when you sing you begin with Do Re Mi,” and when you start a blog you begin with why you started it at all. I’m pretty sure the fates or whoever is in charge of that laws-of-attraction craze Oprah just started has put me up to this.

Here’s how the story goes:

In October of ’05, I started America’s Next Top Novel so I could blog about the glorious train wreck that is America’s Next Top Model while balancing it with the loftier ambition of numerous book reviews. Eventually, however, I was slowed down by how slowly I read (despite a fifteen year career in book publishing). I gave it up, deciding that I should probably write my own book instead of writing about everyone else’s (what with that creative writing degree and all). But, like the fourteen other novels I’d started, that didn’t go so well, likely due to the fact that I was spending most of my time with my ass on the couch, TIVO remote in hand. I gave up Top Novel in May of ’06 and the Luddite that sometimes lurks deep within breathed a sigh of relief.

Until last week.

Last week, thanks to corporate whoring—oh wait, I must mean corporate cross-promoting—my beloved Mychael Knight of Project Runway fame appeared at the Starbucks two blocks from my apartment to promote his My Starbucks t-shirt campaign, which seems to be about Starbucks promoting how they can customize drinks for customers which is what they’ve always done since the first time someone ordered a split shot brevé mocha, so who knows why they’re acting like this is some fancy new PR opportunity, but whatever. There was my Mychael at my Starbucks (or you know, the one closest to my home, which is slightly closer than the one that’s three blocks away). I left work to attend his mid-day engagement and those of my local Runway-watching posse who couldn’t join me waited eagerly for a report (Fun fact: Seattle has the highest population of Project Runway watchers in the country. Don’t ask me why though. Fleece is for warmth, not fashion, people!). In my former Top Novel style, I wrote up an email play-by-play with a link to a couple of photos and a video of me standing with Mychael (the Luddite lives—when I got to the autographing line I accidentally had my camera set to video). I hit send and sighed heavily. Suddenly, I missed blogging. In some sort of all-planets-aligned moment, several of my peeps wrote back saying that they missed my blog. Sigh.

I’d been walking around with blogging on the brain for days when yesterday, a friend wrote me about a call for writers she saw on The Superficial. Why not? I weeded through the Top Novel archives, submitted the required three sample posts, and started feverishly refreshing my Gmail account cuz they were undoubtedly going to be contacting me upon immediate receipt of my application.

Nine hours and several hundred Gmail log-ons later, I started this thing.

After all, America’s Next Top Model’s new cycle starts next week with Project Runway following in April, and I know So You Think You Can Dance has got to be right around the corner. And don’t even get me started on how excited I am that there’s a second season of Work Out and then there’s that new show Drive, with Nathan Fillion, and my new found obsession with Studio 60…

“When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!!”