Clark Matthews and his family are at Disney World this week. Because of this summer event, I get to write this week's Peace, Love and Thunderstanding. Yep, I get to write about basketball again. Hooray.
Actually, screw that. I'm not going to write about basketball. Here's why:
For those who don't know, before there was ever TheLostOgle.com, I had a website called HornetsCentral.com. This obscure online local sports destination was a message board and blog dedicated to all things Hornets. Once a week, I would write a weekly column called "“ don't make fun of me too much "“ "Hornet Pat's Take." Yes, my internet handle was Hornet Pat. Ghey. Clark Matthews wrote a column, too. I can't remember what it was called, but it was probably really long.
Fortunately, the site was known more for its message board than the high-quality sports blogs that Clark Matthews and I produced. In fact, during the first year of the site we didn't technically even blog. The front part of the site was designed in Dreamweaver, and we would just simply write articles in plain text and upload them to the site as HTML pages. Today, that would be the equivalent of using a Bud Light box and duct tape for a vent window in your 1995 Chevy Cavalier. But in 2005, this style of web construction was still kind of acceptable.
Owning and operating a sport-themed website was an interesting experience. As the site grew, we eventually got a couple of advertisers, transitioned from Dreamweaver to Word Press, and in a now semi-ironic twist, even formed a partnership with the Sports Animal. Yep, each Wednesday night at 8:45 either Clark Matthews or I would participate in a segment on The Sports Animal's NBA show HornetsWeekly. In turn for letting us come on air and promote our message board and talk Hornets, we let The Sports Animal advertise in our forum. Unfortunately though, the fun of owning and writing about the Oklahoma City Hornets came to end when the team officially announced that they were returning to The Big Easy. When that event took place, suddenly blogging and writing about the Oklahoma City Hornets really wasn't very interesting.
Around the same time that it looked certain the Hornets would leave us, I found myself reading more and more blogs...blogs with snark like DeadSpin, WWTDD, and Gawker. After a while, I thought it would be fun to create a website like those, but only make the focus of it Oklahoma City. I asked Clark Matthews if he would be interested, and although he didn't really know what I was talking about, he said he was down. I also contacted a local obscure social blogger to see if he would be interested in joining us on this new endeavor. His name was Tony, and he seemed to think it was a good idea. A couple of weeks later the domain name TheLostOgle.com was registered on GoDaddy. The rest, as many people say, is history... in very minor, obscure "” and other than a few pictures of Jessica Alba with white sharks photos "” irrelevant way.
