A Post-it of the Artist as a Young Man

Hi, I’m Justin Drummond.  You might remember me from such Tumblrs as A.J. Ellis Facts and such Twitter interactions as I AM NANCY BEA.  By day I’m a low-level employee in a mid-level bureaucracy, but by night when I’m not asleep I’m an aspiring writer/humorist and an avid Dodger fan (I’m also a fair to adequate softball player).

I’ve been actively tweeting about baseball and the Dodgers for a few years now and telling jokes on the internet for even longer than that (Try and find my old American Idol recaps on MySpace.  I dare you.).  If you count A.J. Ellis Facts I’ve technically been a baseball blogger before, but this I think is the year I finally expand my horizons and write more than one sentence at a time.  Also, by horizons I mean character limit.  Let’s take a look at a recent tweet of mine:

This is admittedly a pretty great tweet.  It’s got baseball, an old pop culture reference, multiple puns…and exactly 140 characters.  If you’re not familiar with the rules of Twitter, that is the absolute limit.  One more character and the entire enterprise falls apart.  I often toss completely great material simply because I can’t make it fit without compromising the soul of the joke (I type this realizing that I may be presenting myself as a huge douche, but humor is something I take VERY seriously).  Well, no more do those jokes have to suffer that fate.  WordPress has no limit that I’m aware of.  In fact, I’m currently at 275 words for this post with no signs of slowing down.  I’m literally figuratively drowning in my own words and it feels pretty wonderful.

So, what should you expect to see here at Beyond the Valley of the Daals?  I’m honestly not entirely certain.  I’ve kind of jumped into this without a specific plan in mind.  There will be Dodger things and general baseball things…and we’ll see what else pops into my head.  I love all of the new analytics employed in baseball, but I am myself am not much of an analyst so mostly I hope to put a humorous spin on what’s going on with the team.  Occasionally you may see some longer essay-type pieces and maybe even some fiction (non-erotic).  I’m generally not a very spontaneous person so this is all a bit frightening.

I can say more definitively what you won’t be seeing.  The internet is full of wonderful sites that do game threads and nightly recaps (my personal favorite was the wonderful Mike Scioscia’s Tragic Illness which is now the even more wonderful Dodgers Digest).  At this time I don’t feel like I have anything additional to add to that arena, and honestly I don’t think I have the time (and currently I don’t even have a legal means to watch any games, so…).

If you’ve gotten this far you’re probably wondering about the very long and tedious to type name of this blog.  When I was first getting the urge to start this blog and spitballing names I was set on using wordplay to combine a pop culture reference (the Roger Ebert penned cult classic film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) with the name of a random former player (left-handed wispy mustache haver and two-time Dodger Omar Daal).  I feel like I’ve done that and a little bit more.  If Chavez Ravine is the metaphorical “Valley of the Daals” then I feel the title gives you, the reader, the sense that hey, this is a Dodger blog but may also explore topics outside of just the Dodgers.  Trust me when I say that when this popped into my head I was like, “Yeah, that’s the stuff.”  If you’re curious, alternate titles I considered were That’s So Ravine! and crazysexycool-a-coo.  I didn’t register those so they are free for you to have for your very own blog.  Just promise to pay it forward.

When I teased the blog I thanked EephusBlue (from Twitter and Paint the Corners) for creating the artwork for the header/logo.  I would like to thank him again now.  I think he perfectly designed something that both mimics the original Beyond the Valley of the Dolls movie poster and doesn’t infringe upon Omar Daal’s personal image rights.  Thanks again Eephus!

Let’s recap:

(1) I started the post with a strange hand drawn self-portrait and

(2) shamelessly embedded and overpraised one of my own tweets.

Oh yes, we are off to a very strong start.

With any luck I’ll be at this for a very long time, look back at this post years from now and feel deeply ashamed.

I’m an optimist.