For some that will mean sheer torture — while for the one person who says they really enjoy my opinion pieces and thinks I should write more, well, they may have second thoughts about putting this idea in my head.
The only reason I'm putting this resolution in writing is I've seen a couple of instances where people don't understand the difference between news and opinion.
My Pop Tart gun column comes immediately to mind as not being the least bit newsworthy and several people commented on it being a waste of space. At the time it was newsworthy and I will stand behind writing it and eating the toaster pastry into the shape of a gun.
Somebody was also a bit confused about the bald column when someone else shared it via their Facebook page. “This was in the local news?” a commenter asked. Yes, it was in the news, but on the opinion page.
Opinion pages and newspapers go hand-in-hand, kind of like young'uns not liking slimy vegetables.
When the caveman ancestors of William Randolph Hearst started the first newspaper, they included an opinion page and most editorials were complaining about why that braggart Grog invented the wheel instead of the typewriter. “There are no cars,” one editorial writer chiseled into a 50-pound rock, “So what in the flat world do we do with a wheel?”
Of course, back then, most of the news focused on domestic violence, Crag dragging Ulga out of the cave and sometimes the other way around. There were the occasional photos of young'uns posing with their first kill during dinosaur season. Of course, back then, it was sometimes the other way around.
All this is to say a newspaper, even one online, should have an opinion page — if not to share ideas, then as a way for the columnist to meet super models and get a key to the Playboy Mansion.
The editorials on rrspin typically deal with local issues where we weigh our opinion on school merger, the theater and other matters. They are the official stance of the paper and there's usually no wavering.
That's why I'm probably too cautious in not having more of them because I have to be swayed by an issue to support it rather than just writing an editorial for the sake of writing one.
Columns are more personal and most of mine tend to deal with comfortable socks, bad drivers or being bald. I tend to throw caution to the wind and write more columns than editorials when I should probably restrain myself to avoid humiliation when one falls flat.
Being a meager disciple of the great Dave Barry, my columns tend to be humorous in my mind because I feel like a little levity in this day and age is a good thing and could lead to syndication or me driving around in a Porsche with swimsuit models.
At any rate I am going to try my best to have a column or editorial a week. The biggest hangup in writing these is ideas, although I have one in the bank already about men wearing Capri pants. I think it will be classic Lance Martin.
I talked myself out of writing a column on the banality of pre-school and kindergarten graduation ceremonies because of the wrath I got when I tested the notion on my Facebook page. I still think they are pointless because what do they celebrate? Napping? Snack time? Playing with blocks? On second thought I should have given myself the green light on that one and endured the bloodletting from parents who somehow think they are significant.
I have a feeling caveman kindergarten was much more toiling because you learned how to kill a T-Rex and field dress a saber-tooth tiger instead of learning how to sing London Bridge — not the Fergie version — and how to play at recess.
Somehow, however, I still think the one person who reads my drivel is going to wish they hadn't put this notion in my head — Lance Martin
