Monetize. It’s a term that is at once attractive and repellent. As mental gymnasts continue to attempt to figure out a way to make money from creating content for the web, realists have already given up hope. Even porn, which was the first and ultimately, the last “earner,” is suffering revenue attrition worthy of the makers of “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Bush-Cheney” bumper stickers.

The fact is, no matter how good the content is that’s produced, the over proliferation of folks who do exactly what I do, navel- and pop culture-gazing, makes it difficult to envision how to stand out enough to make a living from it.

On the macro level, sites like this one can establish themselves as barometers of the cutting-edge, and bellwethers for trends that are still germinating in some kids’ dorm room in Berlin. In that way, they can parlay their influence into becoming destinations for both marketers and like-minded individuals. They wield a power that is difficult to quantify, despite the page-view and click-thru data. Because sometimes, it’s not about people, it’s about the right people. Like you, friend.

But on the micro level? It’s kind of pointless to try to earn a living at blogging. Everyone is a writer these days and you do not need to pass a test to set up a Blogspot account.

I had a cab driver today from Cape Verde, Africa who was telling me about his blog. He plays cricket in a league in Queens and he mostly writes about that and his life, so his friends back home can read about it. He enjoys it and that is that.

I am the same way. I just write here because it’s fun and it’s an outlet and I need me some outlets, let me tell you what. Not only that, I have a lot of friends from all over the world who can keep up with me without those excruciating phone calls on which I am so uncomfortable.

Okay, there is another reason, but keep this one a secret: a while ago I was promised a belt from these Selectism.com people. Although now that you mention it, I am, as of yet, belt-less.

See what I mean?

I was watching a TV special last night, chronicling the life of Senator Edward Kennedy, 77, who passed away a couple of days ago. And I was struck by two things: 1) Has there ever been a family that has given so much to this country and suffered so acutely for it? and 2) had he not left Mary Jo Kopechne in that car as it sank to the bottom of the pond on Chappaquiddick Island forty years ago this year, we would probably be sitting here awaiting the funeral of a former president.

Unlike other families (Bush…cough…cough), the Kennedy family’s legacy is one of public service and the old, “to whom much is given, much is expected” adage. Through epic, Shakespearean drama—murder, drug overdose, plane crashes, cancer, et. al—the family kept moving forward and trying to advance the causes of the people who are voiceless. And that number is increasing daily. If some older, entrenched politicians and noted conservatives get their way, we will all be voiceless, save for the special interests that raid our country’s coffers like gold from the Gringott’s Bank.

Ted always seemed to be the last line of defense, the sentinel guarding the door of decency. And now he is gone and we are left with guys like New York’s jackass governor, who is far more embarrassing than the last guy, the one with the black dress socks.

Some of you will laugh at that, wondering how I could possibly see fit to lionize a man who looked only to his own safety, at a time when it really mattered, and let a young woman die. I respond that, after forty tireless years of public service, one must look at his life as a whole, and let me tell you this: there has never been a man or woman who has done more good for this country than Ted Kennedy. Yes, not even his own brothers.

If there is even a hint of redemption in the afterlife (and I called ahead and spoke to Ba’al, and he said, “don’t worry about it, bro, I got this,”) Ted is sitting in some Adirondack chairs with his brothers Jack and Bobby and watching as Obama tries vainly to establish universal health care and bring some sense of morality to our actions in the world, and they are smiling.

Because, in my opinion at least, if anyone deserves a happy ending it is the Kennedys. For real.

Just say thank you. Those four words are probably the four most important I have ever heard, besting even the “here come the cops” that I may have heard from time to time when I was younger. Ahem.

I was notoriously bad at taking compliments, for pretty much my entire life. If you said you liked something I had written, I would disparage it, saying it was crap. Or I would claim you to be crazy. Or dumb. (Charm, brains and looks—I got it all, in spades.)

But then I worked for a guy named Larry who was slightly older version of me. It was at a magazine called Toy & Hobby World, and he taught me many important lessons, but towering above the rest was when he told me that whenever someone complimented me, I should just show appreciation. And to shut my fat face for once.

And I largely have. Now whenever compliments me I turn red on the inside, but on the outside I just smile and nod. And for those of you out there afflicted with the same malady—of which there are quite a few, including you—I offer the same advice. Just say thank you. Okay?

You’re welcome.

I was somewhat taken aback at the number of emails I received praising my marriage advice column. Okay, it was high double digits, but to me, that’s like a million. And so I decided to provide a few more gems, but this is it: I need to keep a few secrets to myself.

1) Send her flowers often, but NEVER to home. She regards those as a wasted opportunity to make you look good to her work friends.

2) If she wants you to meet people, meet them. There is a reason.

3) If she doesn’t want you to meet people, insist on meeting them. There is a reason for that, too.

4) One surprise weekend away every three years.

5) Don’t buy her trampy lingerie. She doesn’t want you to, and let’s face it: you aren’t exactly looking out for her comfort. Instead, buy her a slip or nightgown from La Petit Coquette in NYC or one of those umpteen places on avenue Montaigne in Paris. (Go on the web, fool.) Something nice and expensive. And her size. Trust me.

6) Don’t sleep on the couch, ever. It’s your place, too. She wouldn’t. That’s for damn sure.

7) Find out what her favorite thing to do is and suggest it from time to time.

8 ) Don’t get a dog until you are prepared to do 75% of the walking and most of the feeding, too.

9) Trust her. Jealousy is pointless. Self confidence is an appealing characteristic.

10) No naughty bookmarks. None.

11) Smile for photographs, jackass

12) If you are out together, never get too drunk to handle your business, if need be.

13) Keep your nails clean.

14) Uh, do I need to say, no hard drugs? Okay, cool, I didn’t think so.

15) Don’t criticize her looks, but tell her if she looks stupid, i.e. fly is open, food stuck in teeth.

I have very definite opinions on music and they are completely arbitrary. I will listen to everything from Darkthrone to Shonen Knife and will happily tell you why I think Dave Matthews has always sucked and the Rolling Stones have been rock’s rotting corpse for over 30 years. I have never really had any interest in going along with the popular musical trends. I mean, Darkthrone. And Shonen Knife.

Really.

But I don’t pretend that I am the barometer of quality. I just like what I like. There are bands whose greatness I recognize, and yet who I would never really choose to listen to. Whose talent is undeniable and whose imprint on our culture will last into eternity.

Radiohead isn’t one of them, despite the consternation and barely controlled fury of my circle of friends, one of whom I once remarked, liked the band so much he would……oh, never mind. Suffice it to say, it involved Thom Yorke’s dog and I feel really embarrassed for having suggested it.

I can understand why everyone loves them, I guess—their obstinance and refusal to cave in to the pressure and go for the commercial moneygrab. Yet they just do not resonate with me. I am more about the music than the intent. I won’t mock their fans, except when they get that look about them as if your ears are not sophisticated enough to “get” the band. Like, what?

Before we go any further, let me just say that I have seen the band live several times, under ideal circumstances and, according to their fans, at their best. And I have probably heard every song they have ever released. And…much of it sounds undercooked and meandering, drippy and emotionally hollow, punctuated by the ghostly whining of the band’s leader, Thom Yorke.

There was an article where someone asked Noel Gallagher about how Radiohead does not like to play their hits live and Gallagher (who sucks far, far more than I wish he did) derisively referred to them as “university boys” and said how he and his knuckle-dragging brother preferred to play the songs that built their swimming pools.

I really liked that, even though I do not feel that Thom Yorke purposely ignores the songs that built his empire to be a dick. I think he does it because he is a dick; a smug, rich, ginger dwarf who feels that artists should be tortured and so he mopes about his mansion in his feetsy pajamas and feels the world quite sensitively. For a mega-gazillionaire.

I realize that many of you have your panties in a twist right now and are deleting your bookmark. You are angry, for reasons I am unclear of: why do you care that I do not like your band? I don’t like branzino either. I would advise against saying anything further to me on the subject, as it will probably cause me to lower my opinion of you. And that wouldn’t be good.

Just ask Thom Yorke’s dog.

Once in a great while, I will come home from work and fix myself a drink. Gin is my spirit of choice. Used to be Tanqueray, now it is Hendricks—as dry as Bob Newhart and as British as Frank Bruno. With tonic and a lime (preferably two). And if I am able, I throw in a splash of bitters.

I am not a big drinker, but I can handle a lot of liquor. I generally don’t like being out of control drunk, because I am usually the one in the group to concern himself with security. And also because, depending upon who I am drinking with, I am always concerned about inadvertently saying something inappropriate.

From time to time I do that. I do not mean to. That’s what inadvertent means, I guess. Now, anyone who knows me well would say that they have never seen me behave like that. Like they’d know, those drunks. I have a great difficulty hiding my true feelings, when I have had a few. If someone asks me what I think of their boyfriend/girlfriend/writing/music/photography, the words fly from my mouth like bats out of a belfry, and are equally as pleasant. So I try and watch my step.

But every now and again, the day catches up with me and I need to slow it back the fuck down with a drink. I have friends who have had drinking problems, and some who I believe currently have drinking problems (no offense), and they all started out by having a few drinks after a hard day at work. Am I vigilant? Uh, that’d be a resounding ‘no’. I think at this point, the die has been cast. I won’t ever be a fall-down drunk, despite my precarious sense of balance.

Besides, my hands are already full with candy, Twitter and “Intervention.”

I root for the underdog in almost every situation. I liked Jerry over Tom; Indians over Cowboys; JP Morgan Chase over the Goldman Sachs Yankees. I mean these are my favorite sports teams: Vikings, Mets, Knicks and Rangers. As my wife bemoans often, “why don’t your teams ever win anything?”

Because, I explain, if they ever win they won’t be my teams. My faves have won one title per decade—Knicks in the seventies, Mets in the eighties, Rangers in the nineties—and that gives the Vikings about six months to claim the 2000’s. Are they going to? Reply hazy, ask again later. That’s the best I can do.

But it makes no difference, really. Would it be great if they win? Beyond my wildest imagination. I actually have trouble thinking about what it would feel like if the Vikings won the Super Bowl. I think the closest thing I would feel is relief. Total and immense relief. Would it change my affinity for them? Nah. Because it would be an isolated incident. Once a decade I get lucky, remember?

I am talking to you, Vikings players.

My love affair with female mixed martial arts began and ended this evening when my girl Gina Carano got her butt kicked by this Brazilian “woman” who was one of the three scariest people I have ever seen in my life. Cris Cyborg had a chiseled body, a serpent tattoo covering her entire back and a face that looked like an Oxycontin-addicted Susan Boyle had sex with Halloween’s Michael Myers and they created a bouncing baby girl, looked at it and said, “she looks like a Cris Cyborg.”

Gina was too good to be true: a girly-girl, modest, cute-as-hell and even a bit demure, while still making a living with her fists, owning the title as the baddest woman on the planet. For a while Gina was just that. But tonight she ran into a woman who looks to be about two Testim shots short of a fruit basket.

I have to say, watching GC laying prone getting skewered by the Brazilian was difficult. I wanted her corner to throw in the towel. (I also wanted them to shoot Cyborg with a tranquilizer dart and cover her with a big net.) Thankfully, the referee stepped in at the last second and saved Gina from any permanent damage. Eventually she hopped up and appeared to be crying in her corner, adorably, and I changed the channel promising not to watch it ever again.

Except if she asks nicely.

My friend woke up yesterday morning dreaming about starting a magazine. Even in this economy. During my sojourn I would play around with FOB (uh, front of book—sorry) maps for big boy magazines to see how much better they could be. For fun. (Don’t tell GG this; she thinks I was on a self-improvement quest.)

There is a certain type of person that still loves the business of magazines—the paper, the retouching, the red-assed art directors that you have to stroke like Dr. Evil’s cat Mr. Bigglesworth, in order to get anything shipped after 7. Even through publishing’s recent bubonic plague, where I saw half of my friends stare into the abyss, I still entertain conversations with people that begin with the phrase, “what if we did something like the Purple of (fill in the category’s blank).” I don’t begin them, understand, I entertain them. There’s a difference.

It was what many of us where trained to do: ship pages. Grudgingly, when some weren’t fully baked. Never-endingly. And yeah, for the most part, happily.

Literally, happily. For a few of us, anyway. But I am past the point of thinking that the mainstream magazine industry, for the newsstand anyway, has any sort of future beyond a passel of Condé titles and the heavyweights at Time, Hearst and Hachette, and ESPN the magazine (duh.) The rest are like two-foot crutches, of middling use until grown out of. Because the generation below you has no interest in reading printed matter beyond menus. To them, a magazine is archaic as a bi-plane or that fired/not fired guy from The New Yorker.

This makes me sad, but then again it made me sad to realize that my ankle will never fully heal from an injury I suffered ten years ago. Bah.

Now, if I could just combine my sarcasm with the design aesthetic of Purple, I would…..look, just entertain the idea for a minute.

Tired of worrying about swine flu and the economy? Here are five other things that we New Yorkers should instead fret over.

1) The Freedom Tower is still a hole in the ground. The humiliation continues.
2) Despite repeated brush offs, Giuliani is still milling about.
3) Al Sharpton is single and, according to published reports, ready to mingle.
4) Your kids are learning Chinese. And there are several words in Chinese for “old age home.”
5) Ten rats per person. Officially.