The internet is a virtually limitless realm of possibility. And a number of innovative and entrepreneurial Phillips Academy students have taken advantage of this realm, producing blogs for our entertainment. Easily one of the most respected bloggers of the community is Phillips Academy alum, Nate Flagg ’07. Flagg’s blog, nate-notes.blogspot.com, is not your typical journal. Flagg said of his blog, “It approaches the use of a blog in a totally new way, and I think it has a truly developed mission and some serious aspirations.” He added jokingly, “In other words, it is the flagship blog of the ‘Avant Garde.’” Nate Notes express Flagg’s daily musings with a witty 10×10 cartoon image that he creates on Microsoft Paint. Posts are mostly comical with the occasional recurring character. “My blog serves as a chronicle for my ideas, and hopefully can provide insight on my own life and the lives of others … My blog is an experiment exploring humor and what makes things funny to people. I want people to engage in the making of the joke just as much as I do. And when that succeeds, then the audience laughs at it all the more since it’s their joke, too,” said Flagg. Flagg’s blog originated as a series of experimental notes on Facebook, and he decided to move to Blogspot to attract a broader audience. Unlike many, Flagg has kept up with his blog for about a year and a half to two years because “the experiment isn’t done. As long as I continue to come up with [drawings] there will be a place for them.” While discussing his inspiration, Flagg said, “When I’m alone and no one’s around, I make weird sounds and sing to myself. I suppose that my posts are the same thing, only expressed visually and verbally.” Another rather unconventional blog from the Phillips Academy community was created by Danica Mitchell ’09 and Nette Oot ’09, a Phillipan arts editor. Their blog, 37oclock.blogspot.com, features mini-comics drawn with their left hands, even though they are right-handed. Mitchell described it as “special because it’s drawings, not writing, and it’s not just any drawings… it’s left-handed drawings.” This concept is adapted from another site, lefthandedtoons.com, but as it says in their “About Us” section, “We are different from them because…we are girls.” Inspiration for their blog is no different from the conventional blog, however. Mitchell said, “Basically, inspiration comes from daily life, namely odd interactions between Nette and myself.” Julian Danziger ’11, Murphy Temple ’08 and Yisa Fermin ’08 also keep their own blogs which embody the word in a more conventional sense. Danziger’s blog, nobodyridesforfree.blogspot.com, provides readers with suggestions for good fashion, music, art, movies etc. They offer Danziger’s point of view on such topics as well. “Music, movies, art and fashion all inspire and are very important to me and I wanted to express my feelings about them through the most popular information source in the world, the internet…I hope that my readers can truly take my recommendations to heart and try listening to new music, broadening their fashion horizons, looking at unique and interesting art and watching great movies. I want my readers to find out about something awesome that they would not have known about without my blog,” said Danziger. Temple and Fermin keep a blog together as well. Their blog, Un Chien Andalou (French for The Andalusian Dog), at unchien.blogspot.com, shares a name with a French surrealist short film. The blog started as a way for them to keep in touch over the summer, and, like Julian’s blog, for them to “provide notes about art/music/life that other people might enjoy, too,” said Temple. Since its beginning, not much has changed about Un Chien Andalou. Temple said, “We haven’t really written in it much, and it’s still the same conglomeration of random quips and clips.” The common consensus between the bunch for inspiring bloggers is that blogspot.com is the best site to use. Mitchell said, “[People] should use the same site that we use- blogspot.com… The site has a good visual layout that’s extremely easy to design.” As Flagg said, “Blogging is going to be big in years to come, and like its relative YouTube, and vlogging , it’s a splendid new mouthpiece of the people.”
