Fang's Bites

Follow Friday VIII

Time for another edition of Follow Friday and it’s the 4,000th post on Fang’s Bites! Did not have time to do one last week so I’ll make up for it this week. To check previous Follow Friday’s, click here.

Amanda Bruno is a freelance writer for the Springfield Republican and has written for the Boston Globe. She has her own blog which I stumbled upon last week through Bleacher Report. I then looked through Batter-up with Bruno and found it to be well-written. She has stuff on the Red Sox and some musings on the sports media in Boston. I’ve linked to it a few times since finding it. Amanda also does some work on Sox & Dawgs when Ian Bethune is away from the computer so do me the favor of bookmarking her blog and putting the RSS feeds into your browser.

Cameron Frye is a Boston-based blogger who loves her hockey. She’s also a fashionista and sometimes does cross-blogging with her friend, Wrap Around Curl who has been given a Follow Friday shoutout here. You may remember the story of Cameron who was unceremoniously dumped from blogging about the Bruins at Comcast SportsNet’s New England website due to some things she wrote for Deadspin. Cameron started her own site and has been blogging since January. She has an edge and she’s also on Twitter. Check her stuff out. I always laugh at her cutting humor.

Sportspoop is a relatively new site having started in May, but it’s grown quite fast. It focuses on sports, women and humor. I also appreciate the site’s help in boosting my numbers on Ballhype so I ask that you follow the site and visit often.

Lisa Horne writes about college football for FoxSports.com. She covers all types of issues and was a very good source when the Pac 10 conducted its media days. Very good writer and enjoyable to exchange Tweets with.

Patrick Gordon at FanIQ loves his Boston teams and isn’t afraid to speak his mind whether it be on his blog or on Twitter. I’ve come to enjoy reading his thoughts. And even when I disagree, I find his writings to be quite entertaining.

Three sports media writers to follow and all are on the West Coast. I mentioned him before in Follow Friday, but I’ll give him another mention. Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News not only gets blogging, but he embraces it. He has a great media blog and he’s one of the few sports media writers who will leave the office and cover stories. Neil Best of Newsday is another. Tom has tried broadcasting a minor league baseball game, curling, and has written some fascinating essays on Los Angeles’ past sports history. Tom has also linked to this blog on occasion, but that’s not why I’m giving him a second Follow Friday mention. He’s a very good writer.

Tom’s crosstown rival, Diane Pucin of the Los Angeles Times is one of the few women to write about the sports media. In fact, I think she’s the only newspaper sports media beat writer. She started to cover the beat this year after the Times tried to find a successor to long-time writer Larry Stewart. Diane has done a great job taking over the beat and she has become a go-to link here. Diane is also a tennis fan which I appreciate as well. I don’t know if the Times has officially given her the beat, but here’s hoping she stays there for a long time.

Jim Carlisle of the Ventura County Star is a good read giving another West Coast perspective. He has Friday media columns as well as general sports columns on Tuesday. Since I started doing the Friday megalinks, Jim has become a mainstay and has e-mailed me a couple of times here and there. Very good columns.

To our non-sports recommendations, I have found another good web series for you to try. Seeking Simone is a new series on the trials and tribulations of Simone trying to find love through online dating in gay Toronto. The lines are funny. The acting is good. And even if you’re not gay, you can relate to Simone’s problems in dating. I really enjoyed the first three episodes.

And for those of you who are fans of the Whedonverse (creator Joss Whedon who produced Buffy/Angel/Firefly and now Dollhouse), you’ll know the name of Felicia Day. She’s not only been in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but she’ll have an expanded role in Dollhouse this upcoming season. Felicia is one of the busiest actresses not only acting on TV, but also producing the web series, “The Guild” which has one of the largest followings online. Every time I look at her Twitter page, she seems to be working on a new project. If you haven’t seen her on Dollhouse, make sure you do so this season.

That concludes this week’s edition of Follow Friday. The megalinks are coming up.

Follow Friday VII

Time for another edition of Follow Friday where I recommend several sites to visit and if you so choose, start following regularly. To see past recommendations, go here.

One of the more interesting social experiments is happening all day Friday into Saturday. It’s the 24 hours of StarburyMarbury Marathon. Yes, that’s right, Stephon Marbury is on the internet streaming live at Ustream and he’s answering your tweets. Sometimes he raps, sometimes, he sings, sometimes he holds his fashion drawings up to the camera, but overall, it’s just him sitting in front of his computer and a camera answering questions. There are times when the audio or video goes down, but when it’s up, it’s pretty compelling. So for your Friday, the 24 hours of StarburyMarbury is our first site recommendation today.

Real Clear Sports does what I do, links you to a series of articles each day. It does a morning and afternoon edition of links, but it’s not just sports media, it links to whatever the story of the day is. In addition to linking to newspaper articles, RCS also has some writers offering exclusive columns, so it has some very good content. Plus, it was a sponsor of the original Blogs with Balls conference in New York in June so it’s quite interested in the relationship between mainstream media and blogs.

A couple of links if you’re a Big Ten sports fan. There’s the Big Ten Network which is gearing up for football season. If you have BTN on your cable or satellite system, then you know that the network brings you Big Ten Conference sports, not just football, basketball, but also Olympic sports as well. The site provides all types of updates on Big Ten news and also keeps you up to date on programming.

For Michigan fans, the MGoBlue site, the official site of University of Michigan athletics (don’t worry, I’ll recommend other Big Ten sites down the line, I know Big Ten fans get angry if they don’t see their school) is a very comprehensive site offering news on the school’s teams. The content is there, although the colors are a bit too bright for my tastes, but the MGoBlue site is done quite well if you overlook the splashes of yellow.

Gunaxin is a site which mixes sports, gadgets, humor and of course, the obligatory shots of women, but they’re all done tastefully. It’s a site that doesn’t require heavy lifting, but then again, the site doesn’t want you to do a lot of thinking. It does the thinking for you. Good site to go to especially after a long day at work.

TheOBR or The Orange and Brown Report is a site that is devoted to my beloved Cleveland Browns. Plenty of blogs, reports and video content to bring you everything that you need to know on the fastest rising team in the NFL. Ok, I made that last part up, but I can dream, can’t I?

The Two Cents from Beantown blog provides thoughts on Boston sports. I just found this a couple of weeks ago and it’s being given my stamp of approval.

And the Without A Curse podcast hosted by Alex Reimer is up at The Sports Stuff site. Alex had gained notoriety especially on a late night talk show for being one of the youngest to ever host a podcast. He’s 16 now, but he’s been going strong for the last couple of years. I’m not endorsing this just because I was a guest earlier this week, but because Alex knows his stuff. Plus, he has had many Boston sports media heavy hitters on his podcast so make sure you download Alex’s podcast off iTunes.

As usual, two non-sports sites for you to visit, one with New England ties, the other without.

First, there’s Olivia Munn’s official website. She’s the co-host of Attack of the Show on G4. Olivia provides videos, blogs and pictures on her site, not just of herself, although she has her own gallery. And yes, she’s on Twitter as well.

Last but not least, Kay Hanley, the former lead singer of Letters to Cleo, is someone you should check out. Not only is she a devoted Red Sox fan, but she’s got a great singing voice as well. Check out the latest on Kay at her site and at her Twitter account. When Kay gets angry about the Red Sox, it’s tremendous reading so if you haven’t joined Twitter, just signing on to follow Kay is totally worth it.

That concludes this edition of Follow Friday.

Follow Friday IV

Time for another edition of Follow Friday. This is the weekly Twitter tradition in which members suggest others to follow and if you like what that person, you hit the “follow” button. I’ve written three previous Follow Friday’s here so you can take a look at what has been recommended here.

I’ll do bloggers first.

Jason Clinkscales is a writer for the New York Beacon newspaper, a publication geared towards the African American community. Jason also maintains an excellent blog, A Sports Scribe. He can delve into stories and issues that he cannot in the newspaper. I’ve come to know Jason both through e-mail and Facebook. He’s a very good writer and he’s good enough to be writing for a major newspaper. This is my call for an editor to hire this man.

Steve Scafa is the man behind I Had To Turn It Off When…. Some interesting background on Steve. He was involved in the famous college baseball game between St. John’s and Yale in which Frank Viola and Ron Darling pitched. Steve got the first hit against Darling after St. John’s was no-hit for 11 innings! Steve now looks at New York TV and radio from a former athlete’s point of view. Go visit Steve’s excellent blog.

One of the growing number of sports humor blogs is tonyblogs. This gives a humorous look at sports and also gives picks on certain games. Tony Arnoldine definitely has a different take on sports and it’s quite funny.

If you want to keep up with women’s tennis or just want to keep up to date on what the women on the WTA tour are wearing, head on over to the Women’s Tennis Blog which has gained quite a bit of notoriety over the last few years for its no-nonsense reporting of the WTA. This is run out of Serbia by Marija Sivlak and her writing is quite good. English is not her first language, but you would not know it when you read her posts. The WTA rankings are there along with the latest tournaments. I found the blog when I did a couple of posts on Bethanie Mattek’s attire two years ago (When Female Players Attack and Bethanie Mattek as a French Nanny?) at the U.S. Open. It’s been one of my favorite destinations ever since and you’ll notice it in “My Favorite Blogs” listed on the left as you scroll down.

Not related to women’s tennis is Sharapova’s Thigh which is a mix of sports, entertainment and women. Ever since Blogs With Balls which creator Matt Clapp did not attend, I’ve had the opportunity to exchange tweets with him and he’s a very sharp guy.

To get a good perspective on the Philadelphia sports scene, the 700 Level blog is one of the better blogs out there. The blogs loves all things Philly, the Phillies, the Eagles, the Sixers, the Flyers as well as its college teams. I love what Enrico, Matt and Kulp do there. Before Boston teams started winning, I felt a kinship with Philly with the suffering it endured with its sports teams. And now that the Phillies have won, you have a feeling that the tide is turning in the City of Brotherly Love. But the edge Philly sports fans have is nothing like anywhere else in the country.

Three sports media writers you should follow are Ken Schott of the Schenectady Gazette, Pete Dougherty of the Albany Times Union and Ken McMillan from the Hudson Valley Times Herald-Record. All three are from outside the New York Metropolitan area, both Ken and Pete write with an upstate New York perspective. Ken Schott is a big Philadelphia Flyers fan and also covers college hockey quite well. Ken McMillan has been in TV and radio and offers that perspective in his writing. Add all of their blogs to your RSS readers.

To get the latest on the Celtics and the NBA, Jessica Camerato does a bang up job following both for WEEI.com. She’s also on Twitter so you can catch up with her posts there as well. I had the opportunity to meet the lovely Jessica at the Blogs With Balls conference in New York earlier this month and she’s very delightful. Besides my thoughts on Jessica, she’s a very good writer as well so make sure you read her reports on the Celtics at WEEI.com.

I mentioned the Play Ball podcast at ESPN Radio’s website last week, and I’m going to mention it again this week. In this week’s podcast, Amanda and Melissa interview ESPN Radio Los Angeles host Dave Dameshek and they also read an e-mail sent in by yours truly, but they also misidentify me. They get the name of the blog right, but for some reason, I’m named “Paul” despite me signing “Ken” on the e-mail. I don’t know where they got Paul, but it’s not important. The mention is after the interview just to give you a heads up. Visit their site and download their podcast every week.

Don’t forget to visit my new site at Boston Sports Media Watch. Follow that every day, not just on Fridays.

Two non-sports sites, for the latest and greatest in lesbian entertainment and media, head over to AfterEllen. This is the best site to find out what’s going on in lesbian culture. I would not have found the best web series on the net, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye if it were not for AfterEllen. Editor Sarah Warn leads a great team of writers and bloggers who give their opinions on TV, movies and the media.

The next site has not been updated since February, but anything on one of my favorite TV actresses, Kate Walsh, deserves a mention. Kate-Walsh.com is a fansite and has a very nice photo gallery of the star of Private Practice. I can look at Kate Walsh all day. In fact, I’m looking at her picture .. never mind.

Ok, that’s it for this edition of Follow Friday. Make sure you visit each site.