As I alluded to in the comments to yesterday's entry, something intriguing happened last night that was related to this site. Before I can really document it, I think I should explain a little bit about the psychology behind running a personal website.
If you can compare to it anything, I'd say doing your own site is like being in a local band. In both cases, you devote a lot of energy to something that is, in all likelihood, not very cool; there are tons of bands, even more websites, and almost all of them suck. To only suck a little bit (my goal here) is a definite victory. You slowly become used to spending a great deal of your life on something that causes most of your friends to roll their eyes and sigh. Nevertheless, once you get out there for a while, a few people become slightly interested, and that makes it fun. Matt Dillon's character in Singles describes it best when he's responding to charges that his band isn't very successful, and he says, "We are loved in Belgium and Italy!" Last night, I had my record break in Belgium, so to speak.
So, it's Monday night at Powell Manor, and I'm going to town on a chicken sammich while playing Pinball. There's a good chance I'm in my underwear. In the midst of all of this, I hear that I've received email. Anxiously awaiting the opportunity to rescue the fortune of a Nigerian diplomat on hard times, I switch over to Outlook Express to see what the message is. It's one of those emails I get whenever sends me a comment. I read it over, and while it looks like it could be spam, I'm not really sure; it's decidedly less penis centric than most of the spam. I read through it again, and the gist is that someone likes my site and they're currently talking about it on a show of some sort. I go to the website linked on the comment, locate the chatroom, and quickly proceed to berate the people in there until someone explains what's going on.
Answers start to emerge. Apparently, there's a web tv channel called Mania TV, and someone on one of their shows was spreading the gospel of Goulash. To me, it stinks of scamaroo. I start up the webcast to see how I'm getting bamboozled, only to see something vaguely legitimate. Apparently, there's a studio, cameras, and everything. Not only are the hosts speaking English, but they have their clothes on! Now I'm definitely intrigued. I turn my attention back to the chatroom and begin to holler that since I missed whatever happened, they need to do it again or else I'd unleash my army of Lady Sasquatch on their studios. After a few minutes of less than dignified pleading, the powers that be got on the trolley and commanded the hosts to do whatever it took to shut me the hell up. What followed was the most surreal web-related experience since Jacott threatened the lawsuit.
I'm watching the stream, and they're showing music videos. I'm kind of confused at this point, like a slow-witted monkey trying to figure out the Franchise features of Madden 05. After a bit, the videos stop and the hosts come back. One of them, Tre, says, "Welcome back to Mania TV, where we're all about the best in entertainment. That includes great music videos and great websites, like codypowell.com". Let me tell you now, there's nothing stranger than to be sitting at home in your undies, watching some strange dude in a studio somewhere talking about your website. For a minute there, I was convinced I was in the middle of something like that Michael Douglas movie, The Game. Clearly, my emotionally unstable sibling had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on concocting a scheme to freak me out and teach me a lesson. Whether this is the truth or not, no one in my family is getting any Christmas presents this year.
Eventually, it all got to be sensory overload. I hurled my computer into the parking lot, and then locked myself in my closet with nothing but a bucket and a bottle of Yoohoo until the shakes subsided. Looking back on it now, the whole thing was pretty cool. It certainly wasn't a featurette on Paul Harvey's radio show, but I takes what I can get. And the next time anyone gets mouthy about the site, I'll slap them across the face and say, "That ain't what Mania TV says, honey!"
Posted by Cody at September 21, 2004 6:32 PM