The BathTubYoga Saga

The story behind the story. I provide the story, you ponder its legitimacy...

Gather round young men and I will tell you a tale of power and corruption that will make you wish that you had never heard the word blog (ok, that's not possible, but read on anyway).

It all started for Rich with the loss of a coin toss. Rich called heads (seemed rather obvious), and the coin landed tails. Dan blurted out "Tails never fails!" and Rich did "the Rich face" while cursing his bad fortune on the inside. What was kept secret then will be revealed now.

The creators of BTY originally had only one man in mind for the character of Mark. The foremost Bobby Fischer historian in the Blogosphere: Eric. But since they had no idea what he looked like, they decided to hire Satya as the actor and attempt to hire Eric as his blogger. But they did not realize that Eric's self-imposed Icelandic exile would be such a sticking point in negotiations. Eric responded to their submission of a contract with the terse e-mail: "Ne6! Are you crazy? I play Qc4 and the rest is history." It was time for Plan B. Sadly enough that was the last time that anyone this side of the Atlantic has heard from Eric.

Once Eric was out of the picture, the creators knew that they wanted a Berger to blog for them, but which one? Dan may have been the so-called "genius," but Rich was a more reliable contributor. Rather than make this difficult decision for themselves, they allowed fate to intervene and steer BTY down a dangerous path. With Rich on board, future BTY readers and viewers could anticipate a string of short posts with links to articles about crazy people and an attempt to pretend to be British. But don't worry folks, there were still hundreds of millions of thousands of tens of pennies to be made. Or not made.

Not long after Reelblogs finally "went live," Rich finally "got a job." This made his blogging (on BTY) even more sporadic and unreliable. In addition, Rich began working on a secret project (code name: Beriched: How one face made a blogger a minor celebrity among his friends and family or How I learned to stop worrying about the future of the blogosphere because I knew that the Delino crew would help save it...for short, it was called Project Ca Ca and given the easy-to-remember acronym B:HOFMABAMCAHFAFOHILTSWATFOTBBIKTTDCWHSI).

Besides Rich's less-than-100% effort on the written blog, the actual vlog of BTY may not have been quite up to the level necessary to draw in thousands of diverse viewers from all over the internet. But who really has the authority to decide that? After a multiple week "holiday" from BTY in December and January, the creators were ready for Season Two. That was when Rich received the fateful call. He was at work and pondering his own minor celebrity status when he was jolted back into reality by the vibrating of his cell phone.

One of the creators was on the line and he told Rich that he was very excited about season 2 and the "new direction" of BTY, focusing more on technology and various internet social networking stuff, etc... Rich knew what was coming next, but rather than say it himself, he waited for the creator to state the obvious: "We're looking to go in another direction with the blogger for Mark..." The news hit Rich like a handful of feathers. The new blogger was none other than the creator himself! Quite a turn of events indeed.

Some important questions arose from Rich's brief and relatively uneventful tenure as blogger to the minor stars. Would Eric have made BTY profitable? Yes. Do some of the people who read Not About Marquis Grissom read BTY? Yes (they noticed the occasional cross-posting). Is Rich suited for a slightly more mass audience? The jury is still out on this one. We're not sure about his writing, but his acting has excellent potential.

Rich now spends his time plotting out how he can become a cast member of The Surreal Life. He's a moderate Jew from New York...what's not to love?