Standing on his tiptoes

The blog community is large and in charge, as anyone who has even dipped his or her toe in knows, so we could all benefit from some method of sorting through the straw and mining the gold. Enter the Weblog Awards, a still far too large but ultimately very helpful assortment of blogs to watch out for. And seeing as how I have a mountain of papers to grade, I have decided some of my time could best be spent perusing the nominees for the 2007 awards and broadening my blog horizons and becoming all that I can be...and sharing the results with my tiny band of loyal readers, all of whom have less time than I do and are more diligent about spending it in productive ways.

In the interests of full disclosure...or something...I should probably say that my findings below are based on only a rudimentary sampling of the offerings and that I am not really wowed by cutesy, high-concept blogs. I like 'em simple, folks.

And so, of course, I start with Funniest Blog. And I found Jon Swift's explanation on how to be funny, which you should all read. Go there, right now. You will laugh.

And then I decided to check out the nominees for Best Celebrity Blogger. And I have to say, this list all by itself was so disturbing I couldn't really pursue this line of inquiry any further: Ross Mathews (Ross the intern? no? too bad...); Rosie O'Donnell (i cant stand it); Kanye West (he blogs??); Mark Cuban (he's a celebrity??); Donald Trump (we already know what it says); Jenna Fischer (umm, okay); Curt Schilling (see Mark Cuban); Gilbert Arenas (I had to look up Mr. NBA, so see Cuban again); Wil Wheaton (he is still boldly going where no one has gone? who knew?); and Jon Mayer (who is cool and posts on food he makes). This list is too confusing for me to process. Must...get...away.....

So, on to Best Food Blog. This was tough, and all the entrants are worthy (if occasionally much too visually busy) contenders, but I am going to go with Coconut and Lime because it's clean, inventive, has great pics, and includes helpful commentary. Plus, the blogger's from Baltimore.

Now, Best Literature Blog: This was a tie, between Maud Newton, who should be rewarded for the simple volume of material she collects and comments on, and Writers' Block, for sheer variety of entries. They even have contests!

Then, because I am me, I checked out Best Medical/Health Issues Blogs and found helpful Kevin, M.D. who includes a useful feature every Thursday rounding up other medical blogs that have had "an exceptional week" in his humble opinion, which seems pretty reliable to me. (But I was really tempted to choose Stirrup Queen just because of her title!)

There's lots more there, of course, including some of the blogs I myself link to, so happy surfing if you've got the time.