Heck Of A Guy

Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of My Blog

That means yesterday was the last day of the first of my blog, and yesterday, as it turns out, was also the one year anniversary of the Heck Of A Guy blog.¹

And, like Sir Paul McCartney, “Oh, I believe in yesterday.”²

Set the Wayback Machine for March 3, 2006

On March 3, 2006, the first Heck Of A Guy post, a little something I like to call ~Opening Statement~, was published. I emailed a dozen or so friends to confess what I had done. Immediately after that astute marketing move was completed, the web site, unbeknown to me, went into Stealth mode, becoming invisible to everyone except those who were logged in to the blog ³ for the next two days.

In that first post, I noted that

Less than 60 minutes later, I published my second post, ~A Heck Of A [Warm-Up] Guy~, which, of course, consisted entirely of new material.

Thus, the first hour of blog operation generated not one but two of what would become many such laboriously constructed, ever more elaborate petards upon which I would then be hoisted. To this day, this pattern remains the only recurrent motif ever identified in the hundreds of Heck Of A Guy postings.

Commemoration Ceremony

So, skim a few of those early posts from March 2006. Then, light a candle⁵ (thoughtfully provided below), lift your drink, and toast a toast because it doesn’t get any better than this.⁶

Nostalgic Waxing Option

For what it’s worth, in addition to the already mentioned two initial posts, my personal favorites from that first month are (in chronological order)

Wedding Protection
Open Your Hymnals To
Fallacious Linguistics: A Special March Madness Presentation
If I’m Ever A Suspect On Law and Order
This Is How A Love Story Began

And, three of the Information Pages, also written at the creation (and certainly never read by anyone other than the bots since then) are worth a glance:

What
Whence
Why

Footnotes

1. Yes, I’m trying to obscure the fact that I forgot about this occasion yesterday when I should have written this post. Give me a break.↩
2. Yesterday, by the proverbial bye, has been recorded by over 3,000 artists, making it, according to The Guinness Book Of World Records, “the most covered pop song of all time.” It was also the song with the most radio plays until 1999 when You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling passed it. [No, I have no idea how the number of radio plays are calculated or if the count includes all versions of Yesterday or just the one sung by the Beatles. I do know, however, that both songs came out in 1965, that one of the singers backing up the Righteous Brothers on the chorus of You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling is Cher, and that You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling is itself no slouch in the covers category, with versions sung by Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond and Dolly Parton, Cilla Black, Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, The Human League, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, Daryl Hall and John Oates, and Johnny Rivers, among others.] ↩
3. At that time, if everyone with the ability to sign in had done so, the total number of viewers, counting me, would have been … one.↩
4. It’s sad that I have to reprint this excerpt here when I’m all but begging readers to take a look at some of those early posts. Sigh.↩
5. This is, incidentally, one of the few blogs recommending that the reader light a candle and curse the darkness↩
6. I’m sorry about that and I am going to try harder but one should, I believe, be realistic about the prospect for improvement.↩

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