On my panel in Vegas about two months ago now, one of my esteemed colleagues made the point that to succeed in this blog game, it would behoove one to have funny Photoshopped images or YouTube videos within the context of your posting content. A nice design doesn’t hurt either. Fair points for sure, but my brain was already spinning with a retort.

“This isn’t always the case,” I said in a mumbley low tone I’m sure only I could understand. “Take a look at a site like Fire Joe Morgan. They use an old Blogger template that’s no longer available, it’s almost completely text-based and they’re absolutely hilarious. It’s probably my favorite blog.”

Last night, sadly, Fire Joe Morgan announced they decided to close their doors.  Hey: they have real lives and families. And Ken Tremendous (Michael Schur) writes and produces “The Office,” which is a show I quite enjoy. So that’s comforting. (Pam’s back!)

But yes, that’s what made FJM so great: they eschewed any common blogging practices and just did their thing. They created their own style, a style that’s been aped by everyone under the sun: take a MSM baseball column or article, cite a graf, rip it to shreds in your own words right under that graf and continue to do this until said column or article came to its merciful conclusion. Rinse, wash, repeat.

There’s nobody that does this better; there is no one that can do this better. Not only were they unbelievably funny — I recommended this site to non-baseball fans and it always came back with glowing reviews and plenty of lols — but they were right. They were right to question the old media guard, because oftentimes there’s a lot of awful, stupid and baseless writing out there by people in high positions. Cough Bill Plaschke cough. They taught me that just because someone writes for a well-established, large circulation paper, they might actually suck. Suck real bad.

But, above all, they succeeded in being a MSM watchdog. These guys had gone unchecked publicly for so long, had written so much boneheaded, inane things for so many years — a site as well-crafted as FJM was needed. Today I wake up knowing I won’t have a go-to spot to read about the latest ridiculous Woody Paige column. Sad, really.

Farewell, dak, Junior and Ken Tremendous. I will now watch “The Office” in hopes KT sneaks a food metaphor or two in. If nothing else, another Mose Schrute sighting will do.