On Monday, the Youtube channel “TopTenz” listed what it thinks are the “top 10” sites online that give out humorous “awards” — here’s the video:
I’m honored (I suppose) that my True Stella Awards came in #4 (starting at the 8:00 minute mark, if you want to skip to it), and that the guy pronounced my name correctly. It made me look at the Stella site …and lament that it was so freaking ugly: I hadn’t updated the look since I retired the Awards, and it looked, well, kinda turn-of-the-century.
Challenge Accepted
Figuring that the video would drive some traffic to the site, I took a half-day to modernize it. While I was at it, I updated the Stellas’ Overall Awards page to say “what happened” with the various winning lawsuits, which was possible now that it’s been quite awhile. I got the resolutions for every case but one — and the plaintiff in that one is dead. Though I can’t imagine she won anything….
I rolled my eyes that the Darwin Awards only came in #2; they’re #1 in my book, even though their site is quite irregularly updated: there’s an entry dated last month, but their “Daily News” is dated April 28, 2018. Oh well, but I sure understand that kind of project can get old. I retired the Awards since my Stella book covered everything I wanted to say on the subject.
TopTenz (somewhere in the Top 10 of awful site names) gave the #1 spot instead to “The Razzies” aka the Golden Raspberry Awards for bad movies. Eh: boring. Still, it’s amusing that the True Stella Awards came in #4 considering I closed it down after the 2007 Awards — 12-1/2 years ago(!). Either there aren’t very many still-running “awards” sites these days, or the ones that are running are spectacularly bad.
Maybe you need to look into it again. Surely in almost 12 years, some Obliviot has done something meritable. Just an idea!
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Oh, I don’t doubt that stupid lawsuits have continued, but then we run into “I retired the Awards since my Stella book covered everything I wanted to say on the subject.” -rc
You can certainly skip to #4 directly, but then you’d be missing the previous ones, which are all interesting.
Oh, and Randy? Simon Whistler being British, he is multilingual and can correctly pronounce names and other words in many languages, as I found out for myself from following Top Tenz for two years now.
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Indeed, but people are impatient. Yes, while I’ve not seen Simon before I did detect his accent, and since my name is British I’m certainly not surprised he pronounced it correctly. But it’s still a pleasant surprise when it rolls off someone’s tongue so well. He’s clearly a pro. -rc
I very much enjoy Simon’s “Today I Found Out,” too, since he often researches far more deeply than would seem necessary for many of the topics; I get it in email form, though, since it’s too easy to waste time on YouTube going from one video to the next.
I watch “Top Tenz” occasionally, too, since I’ve been introduced to lots of other interesting things that way. The title may be silly, but Simon is an interesting guy. He’s probably great at trivia! He also does a podcast with an American partner, but it needs a lot of work — too much rambling that makes it unnecessarily long. But I’m glad to see someone still looks at and apparently likes your Stella Awards, too — I’ve always enjoyed legal silliness.
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You made this comment as I was recording my own podcast. One of the reasons I decided to drop the co-host and do it solo was to get the focus and tightness that allows, which means at least as much info in significantly less time. -rc