From time to time I peel back the curtains — AUNTY EM!!! AUNTY EM!!! — and reveal what goes on behind the scenes here at Not Now Silly. The first day of the new year seems an appropriate time to sum up the previous one, doncha think?

Since starting this blog I have published 420 posts, 207 of them in 2013. When I started this blog I swore I’d post something every day. Little did I know how hard that would be. This past year I took a few weeks off here and there to recharge my batteries, research some bigger articles, and go on a road trip for research.

A year ago I was still doing regular Fox “News” snark with my 3 weekly series, Fox “News” Spin Cycle, Judge Not, and Chow Mein and Bolling. However, I got bored of those. Not to mention that compiling and formatting them was very time consuming. Which is the biggest reason I dropped ’em. I found meatier things to research and write about.

Such as Trolleygate. My first post on that topic came on January 27, 2013, with An Introduction to Trolleygate. I first learned of this story through a secret source, my Coconut Grove Deep Throat, who has tipped me to several stories now. However, I would never have won their trust had it not been for all my previous writing on Coconut Grove, and more specifically West Grove. When I learned of Trolleygate I called it racism, straight up:

As much as Coconut Grove is used to being ignored by Miami City Hall — which ironically is in Coconut Grove — Black Coconut Grove is used to being ignored by everybody. […]

Meanwhile, Black Coconut Grove gets stuck with all the negatives of a diesel bus garage from a neighbouring city. Furthermore, while it gets the increased traffic and pollution, the residents will not even get what is normally a benefit of a bus garage: a bus stop. Having a bus stop might allow Black Grove to get on the bus and ride to Merrick Park, or Miracle Mile, or any of those other swank places, including any multimillion dollar project by developers named Astor. It reminds me of how Robert Moses, who built the Long Island Expressway, purposely built all the underpasses too low to allow for buses. That’s so the ‘great unwashed’ couldn’t go to his beaches at Fire Island and Jones Beach.

Skip ahead to November: None other than the U.S. Department of Transportation confirmed what I had been saying all along. According to the US DOT, the lack of public notice and input contravenes the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It has ordered Coral Gables, the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County to come up with a plan for retroactive consultation with the affected communities. I don’t know how that’s going to work, but those three entities are going to submit a plan.

Meanwhile, just to wrap Trolleygate up in a nice bow: Coral Gables is currently suing Astor Development to get out of the deal it struck that resulted in Trolleygate in the first place. The residents of West Grove, who lost their first round in court, are planning to appeal. With the US DOT now involved it’s become one of the most confusing series of intertwined lawsuits that you can imagine.

Miami taxpayers owe it all to [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Mark D. Sarnoff. Sarnoff seems to have skated away from all responsibility [so far] for sticking the city, county, and Coral Gables with this White Elephant that will never be a “government operated vehicle maintenance facility.” There’s still the Smoking Gun email that was discovered and people continue to investigate who was responsible for telling Astor Development to remove the word maintenance from its 2nd application to build this garage. Speculation says it leads directly to Sarnoff.

Bring on the depositions!!!

Another brag: As 2014 closed, Not Now Silly had its best month ever. The blog had 13,719 clicks in December, which is an average of 442.5 a day. That beats my previous record of 12,067 from August, 2013. I don’t know where all those people come from, but I wish they’d leave some comments. As you can see on the graph above, the monthly numbers go up and down, but I’m happy with the steady progression of onwards and upwards.

This is also the year I broke the lid off a Watergate story hidden in plain sight all these years. It began with my post Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News” and continued with a review of Rosen’s book in Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka? To be BOTH “fair and balanced,” I also told the other side of the story with James Rosen Responds To Me, Sort Of and with the follow-up Serial Liar James Rosen Responds To Me Again. Long story short: I have rejected his explanations until he produces some evidence. My theory is on the table. He has yet to disprove it.

Another media bun fight I kept alive was versus the Coconut Grove Grapevine. I’m finally willing to admit that some of my feelings is sheer jealousy. Tom Falco gets advertising dollars for producing his reviews, event listings, and promotional bumph. While I have some Google averts here — AND CLICKING ON THEM WILL BE A GOOD THING! GO AHEAD — they produce pennies per post and my storage fees for the pics are higher than that. However, the other part of my frustration with the Grapevine is that it has a very large readership. Falco could be writing and/or researching and/or publishing news of importance to the people of Coconut Grove instead.

Mark Koldys during happier times

Sadly, I’m still fighting The Johnny Dollar Wars, a feud I never started and only kept alive by The Flying Monkey Squad.

Believe me, I would have ended it with Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person, posted 20 months ago. However, for reasons that only a psychiatrist and powerful psychotropic drugs would be able to determine, Mark Koldys and Ashley Graham (@JohnnyDollar01 and @Grayhammy on Twitter) have continued to cyber-bully me long after it made any real sense.

Dr Keith Ablow, whose motto is NORMAL OR NUTS, would have a field day with these wackos because they are still carry on this crazy
cyber conflict more than 3 years after they began it.

They latched onto me merely because I was a writer at NewsHounds — the motto of which is WE WATCH FOX SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO — and I refused to slink away like all the others they’ve cyber-bullied over the years.

Johnny Dollar’s site has a motto, too: CABLE NEWS TRUTH. I’m strill trying to get someone to explain what part of my alternative lifestyle came under that bullshit rubric.

I have a motto as well: READ THE TRUTH ABOUT JOHNNY DOLLAR. My last three J$ posts are, I believe, the ones that best sum up these crazy MoFos. If you’re going to read them, read them in this order: The Smoking Gun ► UPDATED! followed by Does Fox “News” Support Johnny Dollar? with Anatomy of a Cyber-Feud bringing up the rear.

To make a long story somewhat shorter: Nearly every day Mark Koldys and Ashley Graham spend hours on Twitter smearing me with lies and half-truths or having cute little circle jerks all about me.  The time they devote to it is legendary. Meanwhile, once a month I dash off a post about their mendacity that makes me laugh and, hopefully, entertains my readers. It seems to be working.

A moment in time: The All Time Top Ten with J$ at #8 with a bullet, and another J$ post bubbling under at 307 hits.

I’m building my reputation off Johnny Dollar’s back, one click at a
time, and it feels great. The first Mark Koldys post has recently
entered my All Time Top Ten and is moving up fast. [Check the current
All Time Top Tell in the column on the right.] The next highest is
bubbling under at 307 clicks. I’m content to continue writing about
Johnny Dollar, especially if it keeps getting those kinds of numbers.
The more people who read about Johnny Dollar the better, as far as I am
concerned.

You might have thought that some logic would have penetrated. You’d think they would have figured out by now whose brand is being tarnished by this silly Cyber War they started. Not Now Silly, as a brand new Rest Stop on the Information Highway™, had nowhere to go but up. J$’s reputation had nowhere to go but down. You really would think they’d stop already.

Last but not least: When I launched the serialization of my book Farce au Pain, I never anticipated how much work it would be to format the chapters in a way that pleased the eye and my exacting standards, especially within the limitations of the Blogger platform.

I thought I’d manage to post a chapter every month, but now it’s looking like every 45-60 days for me to get it all right. Here’s the way I figure it, to look at the glass as half full: If you are willing to wait that long for the next exciting episode after the cliffhanger, then I’m doing my job as a writer. If not, then I’m not sure it would have mattered had I posed the whole thing at once. But, we’ll never know, will we?

So . . . as we end this exciting episode of Unpacking The Writer, we have a brand new year to look forward to. Here’s to all the political muckraking, fights, and feuds to come in 2014!!!