Mystery solved on Matt ’s seemingly online crankiness October 27. Dear old Drudgemuffin is now 39 years young.

However you feel about his politics or journalistic scruples, he’s accomplished a lot in his almost-fourscore years. Particularly since he was still working the CBS gift shop up to ten years ago. It took awhile to get out from under the shadow of Walter Winchell, and truth be told, there’s a lot people still don’t know about Drudge. (For old time’s sake, check out our FAQs on Drudge Parts One and Two. Sure, the big lug might’ve changed a tad, but not really. He gets a little ornery when it comes to First Amendment issues, but deep down, he’s still the same charming excitable boy we fell in love with.

What with the Norman Bates-style front page today and the “name this Maureen Dowd pic” open call, he’s in a better mood now. Happy B-Week, Matt. Hope you liked the soup.

This is the day we’ve been waiting for in the leak case. It’s almost anticlimactic now seeing the actual indictment headlines, as most of the fun on the Drudge Report was the juicy speculation leading up to this. Not to mention Drudge breaking the New York Times reports hours earlier, indicating Libby was going down. Based on visits to both the Drudge Blog and Drudge Forum today, I’m betting that the Drudge Report is having a big day in terms of web traffic.

And there’s much more fun to come…

OK, HOW ABOUT LOWERING THE PRICES NOW?!?

Excuse Matt’s crankiness today. Wilma’s had her way with his region, he had to call in sick to the radio show Sunday because of laryngitis, and to add insult to injury, the new King Kong movie is 3 hours long. Got gas, dear?

To show our boy how much we care, we’re FedExing him a care package of stuff he can’t stand in line for: a crock pot full of chicken noodle soup with matzah balls. (Oh, Matt, I made half of them light and half cannonball-weight because I didn’t know how you preferred them. Never let it be said Matt Drudge doesn’t have balls.) He can keep the pot — marked with Drudge Blog and Drudge Forum’s URLs –with our compliments.

It’s true, though, that he can’t call in sick to his website readers. Anyone running a time-sensitive news site from South Florida needs a firm contingency plan for inclement weather. You can predict a hurricane but not a power outage or what possessions will get whacked by a falling object. I wonder how many times he has evacuated himself in the interest of protecting his hardware and how many times he’s sat through it all.

Matt Drudge lives for juicy political stories like the CIA Leak case. It is a nice bit of photo editing also…

It looks like Matt Drudge has done away with pop-up ads altogether on the Drudge Report. I’ve watched for several weeks with multiple browsers and haven’t seen any. He has doubled the number of ads on his page to 4 positions. I’m sure his ad revenue will be just fine and he has happier readers now.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Did you know that you can get a free download of C-SPAN segments for up to two years? While you visit the site archives for Drudge’s recent appearance on the 25th Anniversary of Viewer Call-Ins, also check out his recent (annual) appearances on Washington Journal.

But let’s just say you want the good stuff, the really good stuff. And there’s a really good reason to pay for it. I just got my hands on two DVDs from the channel’s 1998 archives. If ever you have a chance to view a rerun of Matt Drudge’s speech before the National Press Club, watch it. Turn on, tune in, drop out of whatever you’re into, because this is C-SPAN’s Greatest Hit(s) right here.

I mentioned before that a transcript was available online, but you simply don’t get the feel of the scene from the text.

Folks, this is a hoot. If I can laugh myself silly after glazing over more Drudgiana than I care to think of, and after reading the text of the speech several times, then all I can say is that this is good TV. Not fake talk-show theatrics, but the real, raw stuff. Take a fidgety young Drudge with a penchant for scintillating facial expressions and pair him with a soft-spoken club chairman who’s not real thrilled about having to host him. Watch said speaker make teasing faces at his friends during his introduction, dramatically remove his hat, smooth his receding hair and don a pair of specs, which he lowers on his nose to read his notes. Add an audience, mix, and stir.

Now that’s entertainment.

Today we get the extra-cool rollercoaster inflation graphic! No expense spared! Keep hands and feet inside while in motion.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

Not everyone can burn the midnight oil listening to talk radio. My own Sunday/Monday ritual involves writing on my laptop while recording a live audio stream of Matt’s Sunday night show. I’m probably paying attention for half of that time. What can I say? I’m a morning person (7 a.m. as opposed to 1 a.m.) and three hours is valuable work time for me.

Many people don’t know that Drudge does a “warm-up” show on New York’s ABC affiliate thirty minutes beforehand. If your bedmate doesn’t want any more Sunday night threesomes with dirty old Drudge, I suggest tuning in online at 9:30 (8:30 Central) to WABC ’s live audio stream and knocking off early if you must. Don’t worry. If anything out of the ordinary happens on-air, you’ll hear it here first.

By RegoPark
Contributing Writer

I recently spent another fortnight across the pond in Europe. Back on a steamer cruise down the Danube when I was thinking about Drudge…

Oh, really. Come on, people! You really think I was giving a rat’s ass about Matt Drudge as I sailed past the cute little fairy tale villages along the Danube River Valley, wind blowing in my hair, the smell of pretzels wafting across the observation deck?

No, truth be told, I was “evacuating” myself from all that Hurricane Katrina coverage. I could run, but I couldn’t hide. The European media was all over the Gulf Coast. Even more unnerving was the fact that I have enough command of German vocabulary and grammar to get the gist of the headlines but not enough to capture its nuances. Thus, I was a more nervous wreck passing the newsstands in Vienna and Munich than if I’d spent all day glued to CNN at home.

German is a powerfully compact language with lots of creative possibilities for a news writer like Drudge. He’d really enjoy expressing himself in Deutsch (but as he remembers very little from several years in Hebrew school, perhaps he’s not a language person.) German makes me twice as anxious when reading bad news. Czech is very understated, French is drawn out…and I’m not even going there with Hungarian.

But there’s something satisfyingly astute about German that can capture the essence of a mood or feeling…or time, place or notion. If Grease is the word, there’s a German equivalent that says it just as well with a few extra syllables tacked on. Weltschmerz translates into contemporary English as “sorrow over the state of the world”, or, according to American Heritage Dictionary(the lexicon to the dirty American mind, boasting a comprehensive array of words banned by the FCC) defines weltschmerz as “Sadness over the evils of the world, esp. as an expression of romantic pessimism”. It translates between the two languages as “world weariness”, or more literally, “world-ache”, “world-pain”, or “world-hurt”.

Of course, there’s nothing romantic or excessive about the Drudge Report. But there was certainly a heapin’ helpin’ of weltschmerz in the German and Austrian media I monitored those two weeks– an achy-breaky vocabulary of pain that could reveal its essence without exclamation points, without flashing sirens, without extra words. But when I thought about it, even the sensational trappings of flash people know Drudge for have nothing to do with his real brand. When I think of the Drudge Report at its best, I think of something that is very simple, wittily sarcastic, and economical in language. I suppose it’s Matt Drudge’s own media speak that came to mind while I scanned those headlines, his own way of conveying weltschmerz in a language he understands.

As reported by several Drudge Forum members, the Drudge Report seems to have been inaccessible for many people around the country today. If you want to join the discussion or have any info, the thread is here.

**Update-
It looks like a network dispute between Level 3 Communications and Cogent Communications is causing the inaccessibility of sites like the Drudge Report for many people.

Despite your attempts to clog this site with spam in the comments, you will not succeed. Comment spam is aggressively managed and deleted here on Drudge Blog. Please find somewhere else to attempt to peddle your services.

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