We Interrupt This Wednesday For....

...a visit from Hazel the blog housekeeper. This maintenance has been planned for a while and all good things need to be dusted and polished from time to time.

Or repaired.

First of all, thanks to all who check in daily. For some mystifying reason, traffic has been way, way up for about three months and I don't know why. Readership is also coming from a lot of different places around the globe. So, buenos dias, Spain. Bonjeur, Ottawa, Canada. Hi, y'all, Arkansas. And lots of points in between. This is noteworthy since I don't have family or friends in all those places. Unless, of course, my father got around much more than I thought when he was in the Army.

We're still light on the commenting in this blog, averaging 1.7 comments per day. This means there are some folks who never manage to finish their sentences. But I certainly get your feedback privately via e-mail and it is appreciated.

I didn't know where this whole blog thing was going over three years ago when I started it primarily to give myself a daily writing exercise. Of course, there are some weeks where the daily writing exercise is confined to working a whole lot on one day of the week and then goofing off the other six, but that's not the point. You still get something here every day and it's well worth the price you pay for an annual subscription.

Nevertheless, this blog has settled into a pretty predictable format. Videos on Saturdays and Mondays. More lengthy written pieces on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And, of course, the Sunday Memory Drawer is probably the best received of all days. Who knew that all my youthful neuroses would have a positive result years later?

Speaking of Sundays, regular readers will notice some reruns coming up as I re-purpose older entries for a second glance and take a little Summer siesta. If you're willing to watch Seinfeld episodes for the sixteenth time, you can certainly read my writing twice. Think of all those new people I mentioned above. They never saw the stuff the first time.

Besides, the Memory Drawer is not a bottomless well. I'm going to run out of funny things my grandmother did. She's been dead for almost thirty years and less available for new nonsense.

Meanwhile, there's one day, however, that I still grapple with every week. Some of you love it. Some of you hate it. Some of you stopped reading this altogether and aren't even seeing this entry.

That would be Wednesday. Ironically, the highest traffic day of the week.

Way back in the early days, this was supposed to be my spoof of that stupid column Larry King used to do for USA Today. Remember it? When he used to pen nonsense like...

"For my money, there's no better hard salami than Oscar Meyer's."

But my ramblings sort of meandered into a weekly monologue about current events. And, frankly, I was never happy about it. Try as I would, the piece always became a bit mean. I'd become conscious of it and start to soften the tone. But, like a picture you would draw on Etch A Sketch, somebody would shake the box and I'd have to re-establish tone all over again.

Meanwhile, the country about us gets more and more polarized every single day. And that angst creeps in on Wednesdays. It's made worse by my own political views. I hate everybody regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on. Nothing in America is being helped by this. From my vantage point, they all stink.

So, why should I muddy the waters even more? The blogosphere needs another pundit like it needs another...well, pundit. Indeed, there have been some written moments that even made me cringe. And the tipping point was three weeks ago when I wrote something down and then paused to stare at it.

"Oh, my God, I've already made that joke here before."

Oh, trust me, I'll write about a current event if it is warranted. When somebody does something really, really stupid, I'll be here. That, of course, could have me writing about it as early as tomorrow. But, I can't do the weekly rant anymore. Sorry. If you need the mental discharges, tune in to Fox News or MSNBC or, if you're really a weirdo, the Animal Planet. You won't get fed here. The restaurant is closed. Alice and Flo have left Mel's Diner for good.

So, in between time, there is the matter of next Wednesday and all the Wednesdays after that. How do I fill the white space on my computer screen?

Unintentionally, the answer came to me from my friend, the Bibster. He doesn't even know it.

For the past few years, the Bibster has been sending me a daily e-mail of quite morose and ridiculous proportions. "This Date in Dead History." It's a listing of famous people who died on that day. Stupid? You betcha. But, it's quite amazing to see how many people checked out on the same date years apart. Or maybe even on the same day.

For Wednesdays in Len Speaks, I am going to expand upon this device. Each week, I will pull down important things that happened on that very date throughout history. With the usually wry comments provided. Quite educational and hopefully clever as well. For instance, here's a small sample of what I'm planning if we were to start this new feature today on August 11.

1965: RACE RIOTS START IN THE WATTS SECTION OF LOS ANGELES.

So, there was a specially selected starting time for this? Was there a pre-riot show for TV? And who got to throw out the ceremonial first brick?

Or something like that.

Effective next Wednesday, check in here for "This Date in History - August 18." Heck, this device will allow me to write a lot of entries in advance. If I'm ambitious, I might have all the Wednesdays through 2011 done by the end of August.

Even better!

Dinner last night: Turkey burger.