My pal Mary dancing the jitterbug with an old codger at a swing dance in Lincoln Center.

I call this one, “Kerkel Goes Out for Drinks With Coworkers, But Doesn’t Feel Drunk Until He Arrives Home.” Hic.

If you’re reading this, you’re on the new site! And you’re probably thinking to yourself…that’s it?! Well…yeah.

For those of you who like to get my posts via email, add a comment to this post, and check the box that reads “Notify me of new posts via email.”

Also, the first time you comment, I’ll have to approve it. After that it should remember you.

Let me know what’s broken!

Getting ready to flip the switch on an updated site. Within the next few days I’ll move from Posterous to a self-hosted WordPress blog.

Don’t get too excited, though. Although it’ll have a redesigned look, it’ll feel about the same. It’s easy to go overboard with WordPress, but I think it’s important to keep this site simple, not only because of its basic concept, but because I don’t want to find myself knee-deep in code every time some 3rd-party widget mysteriously breaks.

For the nerds in the audience, here are the main reasons I chose WordPress over Tumblr:

• Importing my old posts was more straightforward, although I did have to make adjustments to all 300(!) by hand to get them to look nice with the new theme.
• I was able to keep the URLs the same for all my posts. Not that anybody was linking to my individual posts, but broken links drive me nuts in general.
• With regular backups, I can easily change web hosts without starting from scratch.
• I bought a premium WordPress theme; can’t let that go to waste! But it’s already proven to be worth it; the theme designers maintain a support forum where they answer questions and guide you through modifications. As a non-programmer, it’s saved me a ton of time I would have otherwise spent Googling without a compass.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it. For you, the only painful part will be signing up for a new account if you like to comment, but I’ll try to make that as straightforward as possible.

It’s funny to think that my childhood exposure to comedy legends like Lucille Ball and Andy Griffith was constantly interspersed with cheesy regional celebritards like The Credit Man, who–unlike my favorite stars–probably still roams the earth, driving his Mercedes with peripheral vision and grinning like an idiot.