250

This is my 250th blog post and just like an old sitcom, I think we need to take a look back at some of our favorite episodes. So pretend that you've lost your memory or gone into a coma (à la ALF or The Simpsons), 'cause it's a CLIP SHOW! (Well, more like a clip show with the director's commentary track playing.)

Ready? Cue the wavy screen effect!

*****

Favorite Overall Post: "The Curse of Sports Night"
A no-brainer for favorite overall. I knew I had to post something on my blog about breaking my arm, but I delayed writing it for several days because I didn't want it to be another straightforward injury story (see the "Most Helpful Post" winner). I finally came up with the idea of turning the only photograph of the incident, which was taken after the drama had played out, into a structural device for the narrative, and then, like most of my favorite blog posts, it practically wrote itself.

Honorable Mentions:

• The 'Leaving Ann Arbor' Series ("Five Days," "The Unmovable Bank," "This is Where We Used to Live," and "Saying Goodbye")
• "Busy Schedule" - I liked the conceit of this one - TV commitments as college courses. (The locker in the picture is number 2009, chosen because I wrote it at the beginning of 2009. Not that anyone noticed.)
• "Young at Heart," "Shout Out to My Roomies," "Home Alone," "Why the Jazz Matter to Me," "NERD!"
• "Free Stuff Finds Me" - One of my quickest posts, written while waiting for the bus at Pierpont Commons. I loved it because I saw the two cashiers in question a few days later and they each told me that they had made the photo in the post their profile pic on Facebook and they had written in their respective statuses about how jazzed they were at being featured on some random guy's blog.

Most Helpful Post: "Injuries Afoot"
The picture of my lumpy foot in this first Sports Night injury-related post led to an intervention in the comments section, without which I might not have gone to the doctor and learned that my foot was broken.

Honorable Mention: "The Glasses Menagerie"
I was so glad to get input from so many friends, and I really did factor it into my eyewear decision.

Wackiest Post: "The Ties that Bind"
One of those posts where you hit publish and then wonder, "Did I seriously just publish that?" I started working on this right before bedtime, but I ended up staying up ridiculously late (read: 3 a.m.) as I feverishly "photoshopped" (read: "MS Painted") the tie on to dozens of famous figures from the past - I seem to recall doing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, President William Henry Harrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe among others (unfortunately, the location of the unused pictures is unknown). I limited it to just four pictures for the sake of brevity, but also because I wanted someone to try and breath some meaning into the pictures that I did select.

Honorable Mention: "Draft Night Thoughts **Live**"
My most stream-of-consciousness-y post, including thoughts on the draft, Michael Jackson's death earlier that day, mixing ice cream and cereal, and a "course evaluation" for Breaking Bad season 2. I even took a jogging break and returned for more live blogging afterward. I tried it again during the next year's draft but I couldn't capture the magic and it remains unpublished (although it did have some good material about Mathnet.)

Favorite Poll: B-Vitamin Poll
Not that I do a whole ton of polls, but I loved this silly poll to determine which B-Vitamin would make the best band name. As I imagined, Riboflavin won handily (63%), followed by Folic Acid (27%) and Niacin (9%). I feel bad for poor, voteless Thiamine.

Favorite Post Title: "How I Gave My Student a Panic Attack"
Honorable Mention: "Eets makelijk!"

Favorite Picture Post: "Saving Fish From Freezing"
Honorable Mention: "In This Home on Ice"/"In This Home on Ice II: The Meltdown"

Favorite Music Clip Post: "To My Dad on his 64th Birthday"
Honorable Mention: "Star of the East"

Favorite Sesame Street Tuesday Post: "SST: Name That Food"
Without Sesame Street Tuesday, I wouldn't even be close to this landmark - SST accounts for 59 of my 250 published posts posts. Sometimes I'll just throw a clip up just because I like it and want to share it, but most of the time I try to use the SST clips as an angle to explore what's going on in my life, such as my road trip to the South.

Honorable Mention: "SST: The Magician's Diary"
This SST post shows me at my most economical. Concision is hard to come by on my blog - just look at this post.

*****

The final wavy screen of the clip show reveals us all back sitting around the fireplace wearing wool sweaters and drinking hot cocoa, laughing warmly about all the shared memories. Roll credits.

Seriously though, thanks for sticking with me through the first 250 posts*. I get a tremendous amount satisfaction out of sharing my life, my thoughts, and the things that I love with all those who follow Brian Presents:**. I hope you'll stick around for the next 250.

*I have published 250 posts, but I must acknowledge that only 249 of them were written by me - "The Jazz Suck" was written by guest author/account hacker Jessica Allen.
**I do have a second blog, What Dreams May Come, but at my current rate of 11 posts in 22 months, it should take me roughly 40 years to reach 250 posts.