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| Yes the name of this blog was inspired by one of Snagglepuss's favorite exclamations. |
I'm still working out the kinks, come back later, it will be better. Thanks.Back in those days we thought that George W. Bush was, and ever would be, the worst president of the United States.
All these years I've been hogging the domain name mcclernan.com for myself, in spite of having many relatives, close and distant, who share the name. But so far nobody has complained.
Here's a funny coincidence - I've written about Pete Duel on this blog - first in 2005, then again in 2015.
And the Pete Duel Memorial Site is still going strong in 2025. The entire series "Alias Smith and Jones" is now available on the Internet Archive.
1. Did Brigitte Macron and her first husband appear in an episode of "French in Action" - mystere et boule de gomme! - over 16,000 visits.
I recapped the first ten years, back in 2015. Obama was president then, so things were looking up from the Bush years.
So what's happened since November 2015?
I was blogging pretty heavily from 2015 through 2018, averaging about 300 blog posts per year, more or less. But blogging fell way off in 2019, when I only managed 59 posts and after that only managed 42, 28, 23, 29 and 34 posts each year after that. This year I have 43 posts, counting this one, so far.
The reason blogging dropped off so much on Heavens to Mergatroyd is at least partly because I started my blog Pinkerite and instead of writing about politics and especially race pseudoscience on this blog, I started writing about those things over on Pinkerite instead.
I see that in 2015 I expressed my admiration for the feminist writer Sady Doyle who since then became Jude Doyle. I mentioned him in January of that year in a blog post on Pinkerite.
2016 started out on a high note when I moved from Astoria back to Manhattan, to the Upper West Side in a quaint hundred-year-old walkup. Then I moved out thanks to unpleasant neighbors in 2021.
Trump was elected. I immediately became interested in Canada and in the French language. I had been in Canada once, in 2005, before I started this blog. Since Trump was elected I visited Canada in 2017, 2018, twice, then not again until January of this year.
Part of the reason for the gap, I think, was because Biden defeated Trump in 2020, and I didn't feel as much of an urge to get out of the United States during that time. But when Trump was elected again in 2024, I went to Montreal during the inauguration, just to be out of a country full of morons who voted for a rapist fascist disgusting felon psychopath, clearly in the early-mid stages of dementia.
And of course there was Covid.
In the past ten years I traveled to France and Slovenia.
I've written about learning French quite a few times. Thanks to my French studies I ended up learning more about Peppa Pig and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic than someone my age would ever expect to know. Dear god I know so much about My Little Pony now.
I discovered Murderbot, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron. I knew J. D. Vance was a creep in 2016.
I've continued to expressed my appreciation for the Beatles and in particular for Paul McCartney in the past ten years.
I've memorialized Earl Rich, a friend of mine who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1997, several times on this blog.
Quite a few people I have known have died in the past ten years. My childhood arch-enemy John Sayers, my young adulthood arch-enemy Laura Garth, my actor friend Tony White, another actor friend Doug Rossi, my college friend Geri Tuckett. And of course my cats, poor Miss Willow and poor Mr. Fuzz. But at least my cats lived about as long as cats normally live, the other people I mentioned here died before their time. Since my cats died, I've switched to caring for plants instead.
Theater-wise, things have been slow. I only managed to eke out one production, Norma Jeanne at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic about Marilyn Monroe in the past ten years, but I've written three solid full-length plays since 2020 and am working on a fourth.
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| Pete Duel, Judy Carne, Ben Murphy ----------------------------------------- |
And the Pete Duel Memorial Site is still going strong in 2025. The entire series "Alias Smith and Jones" is now available on the Internet Archive.
One of my favorite episodes, "The Root of it All," was quite feminist for 1971. In the episode, Smith and Jones meet a feisty woman played by Judy Carne and another woman played by Victoria Thompson.
Well Thompson showed up in a playwrights group I was part of for a couple of years in 2022-23. I knew I had seen her name before and after Googling around I discovered she had been in AS&J - but I never got a chance to ask her about the experience. But still, it was a funny coincidence.
In addition to this blog, I've had my blog NYCPlaywrights going since 2010, and Pinkerite since 2018.
TOP TEN POSTS IN THE PAST 10 YEARS
2. Move over Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp! - 15.6K visits.
3. Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right & hereditarian connections (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite and also updated the diagram.) - 4.2K visits.
4. No, Erik Satie did not only eat white foods(!!!) - 2.98K visits.
5. What do the evo-psycho bros think "race" is? (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite). - 2.74K visits.
6. Qui était Jeanne de Bret? - 2.68K visits.
7. #Free Melania - yes I know Melania has only herself to blame for marrying Trump, but my god, you can see what a grotesque psychopath he is in this video. No wonder, according to Trump's biographer Michael Wolff, she hates him. - 2. 22K. visits.
8. RIP MTM - I discussed the death of Mary Tyler Moore. 2.15K visits.
9. Watching Justin Trudeau talk about feminism is the most erotic experience of my life - still undefeated - 1.94 K visits.
10. Manhattan statuary - surprisingly popular at 1.94K visits.
Will I manage another to blog another ten years? On va voir!