The 7x7 Link Award

If I may toot my own horn for a moment, two of the Monkey's favorite bloggers, Laura of "Who Can Turn The World Off With Her Smile" and Sophie of "Waitin' On A Sunny Day," have simultaneously bestowed me the newly-minted "7x7 Link Award."

Hooray for me!

What's the 7x7 Link Award? Glad you asked! Here are the rules:

* Tell everyone something that no one else knows about
* Link to one of my posts that I personally think best fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, and Most Pride-worthy Piece
* Pass this award on to seven other bloggers

I guess the proper pose here would be one of blase nonchalance, but to be honest, I like winning awards. But more than that, I like promoting my fellow bloggers. If you haven't already visited Laura's and Sophie's blogs, you really should. Go ahead. We'll wait.

Okay, on to the answers:

Tell everyone something that no one else knows about
To quote John Lennon, "There's nothing you can know that isn't known"—at least by somebody. This is the 21st century. There are no secrets. Big Brother is watching, and his name is Google.



1) Most Beautiful Piece Let's face it, "beautiful" is not a word I often associate with my writing, unless you consider 12,000 word essays about the Marx Brothers "beautiful." Instead, how about a post on the beautiful Deborah Kerr that I wrote for Sophie's Darling Deborah Blogathon?


2) Most Helpful Piece We're nothing if not helpful here at the Monkey. Here are three very helpful posts: "Silent Cinema Stocking Stuffers;" "Christmas Movies You May Have Forgotten Are Christmas Movies;" and "A Starter Set: Twenty Silent Movies To Cut Your Teeth On." I suggest printing them out, lamenting them and putting them on your refrigerator. Unless people don't do that anymore, in which case, put them on your Smartphone's speed dial.

(By the way, do they have Smartphones? I'm still using a decidedly dumb phone myself ...)


3) Most Popular Piece In terms of hits? That would be "Popeye The Sailor Wishes You A Happy Fourth," which has over 25,000 hits since I posted it on July 4, 2010. But in terms of comments generated, it's more like "Revolution Is Dissent" from January of that same year.


4) Most Controversial Piece Like beauty, controversy is in short supply here. Consensus is the order of the day—admittedly, a controversial stance in some corners. The post "Cognitive Dissonance" was about controversy though—is that close enough?


5) Most Surprisingly Successful Piece "Citizen Kane: Best Ever" which actually won a contest the blog True Classics hosted last November. I wasn't writing to win, just to say what I thought. All modesty aside—and I never truck in false modesty—that it won was a most pleasant surprise.


6) Most Underrated Piece Katie-Bar-The-Door says it's the Jean Harlow banner I made for the ongoing favorite actress tournament, but I'll admit I buried it in a flurry of 20+ other banners, so it was easy to miss. So I'd say it's part 2 of an essay I wrote about Fritz Lang and the classic crime movie M, which received nary a comment. (Interestingly, over the past couple of years, part 1 of the same essay has been the post most likely to get spammed. I'll bet fifty comments have showed up in my spam folder aimed at that post. Go figure.)


7) Most Pride-Worthy Piece Pride worthy? As in worthy of my pride? Not sure, but "Cary Grant Has A Cold" was the most fun to write.


As for picking seven more blogs ... well, you've got my three fellow hosts of the Favorite Actress Tourney—Monty of All Good Things, of course, who masterminded this whole thing; Desiree of Rosalind Russell, Dazzling Star; and Dawn at Noir & Chick Flicks—and four blogs and bloggers you are perhaps not aware of: Ginger Ingenue of Asleep in New York who stays up all night writing stories about Harpo Marx; Top Movies, an alternate Oscar site like this one only more so; Screen Snapshots, which is about movies of the early 1930s; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, who on second thought you most surely are aware of—not only did he host the fabulous Dick Van Dyke blogathon last year, he sent me a copy of Piper Laurie's autobiography Learning to Live Out Loud, which I can definitely recommend.

Which is hardly an exhaustive list. If you're not on it, you should be mad.

Tomorrow, a recap of Round One (Part Two) of the Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament.