What People Are Reading on This Blog

And here he is again.  That blasted Dos Equis spokesperson.  An actor named Jonathan Goldsmith, who I remember years ago played a crook on "Knots Landing."  This clown has driven more traffic to Len Speaks than anybody else. 

And, yes, I have the stats to prove it.

Blogger.com, the site where I house all this daily gloriousness, recently changed a lot behind the scenes.  You don't see it in the output, but they have certainly ramped up the ease of mechanics for those of us creating blogs. 

While I was tooling around the new tools (and how's that for redundancy), I noticed a whole section devoted to statistics.   Now I keep a running count of reader hits on the bottom of my blog page, but Blogger now has a lot of other nifty diagnostics.  I hit on one that grabbed my interest.

"Number of Pageviews - All Time."

Hmmm.  I looked up the Top 10 Posts for Len Speaks by the number of pageviews.  This gives me a clue to what people are Googling and how they are turning up on this blog.  And here goes.  As of last week...

# 1:  WHO THE HELL IS JONATHAN GOLDSMITH? - 996 Pageviews. 

Originally posted on June 17, 2010.  I had gone to a Dodger game and this actor threw out the first ball.  At the time, I had no clue who the fuck he was.  I got tons of comments from total strangers telling me how stupid I was.  I'm an idiot?  How about close to 1000 people searching the Internet for information on this guy???

# 2:  NOW I KNOW WHO THE HELL JONATHAN GOLDSMITH IS - 783 Pageviews.

Originally posted on September 23, 2010.  This was my follow-up to the violent reaction I received from readers who were actually insulted that I questioned anybody's interest in somebody who is nothing more a spokesperson for imported beer.  I am still getting nasty comments to this very day.  What is the fascination with this character????

# 3:  THE SUNDAY MEMORY DRAWER - HANGING OUT WITH MURPHY BROWN - 550 Pageviews.

Originally posted on February 27, 2011.  This was the second in a three-part Sunday Memory Drawer trilogy that concentrated on my first days in California fifteen years ago.  I had spent that time on the Murphy Brown set and I am guessing that the draw of this piece was fans simply Googling Murphy Brown.  This is fascinating to me, since I don't sense a lot of nostalgia for this show.  It certainly feels dated when they rerun it.  Warner Brothers never released any DVD seasons beyond the first one.  I'm glad there's some life out there for the only sitcom I ever physically appeared in.

# 4:  CHOCOLATE MILK AND OTHER HORRORS - 509 Pageviews.

Originally posted on April 14, 2011.  I take on Michelle Obama and her need to control school lunches.  Are people Googling the word "Bosco" a lot?  No clue.  A seemingly nondescript piece that is still getting hits.  Go figure.

# 5:  THE SUNDAY MEMORY DRAWER - TV SHOWS I WATCHED WHEN I WAS A KID - 301 Pageviews.

Originally posted on September 25, 2011.  In this post, I discussed my favorite TV shows from back when.  Included are Hazel, Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Peyton Place, The Lucy Show, Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and Bonanza.  So, which of these shows is driving a lot of on-line traffic?  Or is a little bit of interest in all of them? 

# 6:  THIS DATE IN HISTORY - JULY 6 - 276 Pageviews.

Originally posted on July 6, 2011.  My goofy little Wednesday throwaway is usually my least sampled post in any given week.  Yet, for some bizarre reason, people are particularly interested in the date of July 6.  I went back to look at the post.  There was nothing remarkable about the date istelf.  Some nonsense about Richard the Lionhearted.   A couple of tidbits about Popes from centuries ago.  It's the birthday of Nancy Reagan, Merv Griffin, and Burt "Robin" Ward.  Buddy Ebsen and Roy Rogers died on that date.  All in all, a true mystery to me.

# 7:  MORE BAD YEARBOOK PHOTOS - 250 Pageviews.

Originally posted on January 14, 2011.  This proves there is no limit to looking at bad pictures of high school seniors.  The post shows that a sequel can do better than the original because....

# 8:  BAD YEARBOOK PHOTOS - 170 Pageviews.

Originally posted on August 26, 2010.  Like I said.  It's always fun to laugh at people.  

#9:  THE SUNDAY MEMORY DRAWER - CHRISTMAS SHOPPING ON THE AVENUE - 153 Pageviews.

Originally posted on December 4, 2011.  One of my many homages to what life used to be like in my hometown of Mount Vernon, New York.  I cheated to get attention to this piece.  I posted it on a Mount Vernon-dedicated page on Facebook. 

# 10:  THE SUNDAY MEMORY DRAWER - THE FIRST FULL DAY IN CALIFORNIA - 137 Pageviews.

Originally posted on February 20, 2011.  The first edition of the aforementioned trilogy.  Once again, Murphy Brown is mentioned.  Somebody at Warner Brothers should take note.  There is still an audience out there.

So that's my Top 10 right now.  I will check back periodically to see if these ranks change.  But, given that I have mentioned Jonathan Goldsmith one more time, I will guess that this very countdown piece will be ranking somewhere in the Top 10 as well.  Yet one more redundancy.

Dinner last night:  Leftover chili con carne. 

Tomorrow!  From New York---the first time since last December.