HERMITOLOGY

Based on the success of last season’s Hermitology Fantasy Baseball League and the fact that I am an obsessive baseball fan and fantasy baseball dork, I think it’s probably a good idea to bring the Hermitology Fantasy Baseball League back for another season.

Here’s the deal:

It’ll be a 16-team, 5 x 5 rotisserie league (the default setting), hosted by Yahoo! and the LIVE draft will take place on Monday, March 26, at 6PM PDT.

Two changes from last season: OPS has replaced batting average as a stat, and we’ve added four teams to the league (because I felt bad that only 11 of you got in on this last year).

There will be no entry fee, and the winner of the league will receive a one-of-a-kind t-shirt commemorating his/her dorkery.

Last year’s biggest dork, Jaime Cassidy (SCC Cougars) will be invited back to defend his title.

Sound good?

Keep an eye on the twitter on Monday morning (3/5). I’ll send out a tweet between 10 & 11 AM PDT, and the first 14 people to respond with “I’m in” will be in.

After the overwhelming moderate success of last year’s Hermitology Fantasy Football League, I’ve decided to do it again this year. I’ll be setting up a Yahoo! league for readers of the blog and/or people that follow me on Twitter. It’ll be a 12-team, head-to-head league. We’ll do a live online draft (WE’LL DO IT LIVE!!!) on Thursday, September 1st at 7PM PDT. If you can’t make the draft, DO NOT sign up for the league. There’s no buy-in, so there’s no prize money, but I’ll make another uber-dorky one-of-a-kind t-shirt for the winner of this year’s league.

Defending champion, Jesse Richman, is automatically in should he choose to defend his crown. For the rest of you, I’ll send out a tweet at some point tomorrow morning between 9-9:30AM PT, re: Fantasy Football- and the first 10 or 11 people to @ reply with “I’m in” will be added to the league. Easy enough, right?

And by “we”, I mean “me and this blog”.

Some of you might have noticed that trawlingthegrey.tumblr.com has been redirecting you to hermitology.com, our new (but in a way, old) home.

Hermitology was a blog I semi-anonymously posted on from 2005 until Trawling The Grey Matter started as a band-affiliated blog back in January. Over the course of the past year, while doing interviews and such, and trying to get the word out about this blog, I’ve realized that trawlingthegrey.tumblr.com doesn’t really roll off the tongue all that well, nor is it easy to remember, nor do people really understand what it’s referring to (nor do many of them know what “trawling” means, without the help of an online dictionary.) I suppose I should have thought before I chose it as a blog name, but apparently “lack of foresight” should be added to my ever-growing list of shortcomings (also see: occasional snoring, gas, faulty short-term memory, an affinity for poop humor, etc.)

That said, we’re (I’re) going back to Hermitology. Effective immediately.

On: Hermitology and what it means to me. I think like a lot of creative folks tend to be hermits by a mixture of choice and necessity. That’s definitely been the case for me since writing music became such a huge part of my life, and it’s definitely helped me be more productive in writing both music and text over the past 10+ years. It’s not so much about being insular or anti-social (although I suppose that’s arguable), but more about making sure you take time for yourself, in an effort to help you focus on your creative endeavors. That’s Hermitology to me, and that’s always kind of been the impetus behind this blog.

Over the next few weeks the blog will get a makeover and the name on the header will change, so please bear with me as I fiddle with HTML and such. For those following Trawling The Grey Matter on tumblr, nothing should change. That will still be used as the backend for Hermitology and should show up on your dashboard as such.

Sorry for rambling, sorry for the blog schizophrenia, and thanks for reading.

-Riley