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Social and Emotional
â–  Shy or anxious with strangers
At the very least, The Awl often does not play well with others.

â–  Cries when mother or father leaves
Especially dislikes when David Cho is "out at meetings" (consuming Korean beef products).

â–  Enjoys imitating people in his play
Oh, sure.

â–  Shows specific preferences for certain people and toys
Mm hmm.

â–  Tests parental responses to his behavior
Cough.

Repeats sounds or gestures for attention
No doubt.

Cognitive

â–  Explores objects in many different ways (shaking, banging, throwing, dropping)
Shaking; bangin'; throwing.

â–  Finds hidden objects easily

â–  Begins to use objects correctly (drinking from cup, brushing hair, dialing phone, listening to receiver)
I'll let you know when I finish this newly-legal cat stiletto smush video.

Language
â–  Pays increasing attention to speech
Hmm....

â–  Responds to simple verbal requests
You ask, we e'splain!

â–  Responds to "no"
Or responds with "no"?

â–  Babbles with inflection (changes in tone)
Definitely!

â–  Uses exclamations, such as "Oh-oh!"
Quite regularly!

â–  Tries to imitate words
I mean. Is there anything else we do but imitate words?

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See more posts by Choire Sicha

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One year ago today exactly we were all giddy with anticipation for the launch of The Awl. (I was also giddy with liquor, which continues to be the case even up unto this moment.) I can recall the mixture of pride, anxiety, and perhaps a bit of arrogance as we gathered together around that Herman Miller conference table in Meeting Room B of the Awl offices and prepared ourselves for the endeavor we had pledged to undertake.

We were younger men, then, a bit more naive and excitable, but we were men with a dream: a dream that the world was ready for-nay, craved-a smart, well-crafted website that refused to pander for traffic. We all earnestly believed that there was a readership out there hungry for the kind of intelligent takes on New York City, politics, knife crime, bear videos, gay gripes and corrupt Italian prime ministers which they were not at that point being served. One year on, has that dream been realized?

Well, how would we know? Because we built this site instead. But I am happy to pretend that all our dreams have indeed come true. And while this project has been remarkably successful from a financial standpoint, thanks to our unbearably sexy audience of city-dwelling professionals with graduate degrees who Tivo at least 4.5 hours of TV a day and screen more than 40 movies a month, I am tired of David holding up the conversion of the diamonds and rubies with which we are paid by our fine Brand Partners™ into cash.

Sure, our extreme awesomeness hasn't come easy. The site is a work in progress, and sometimes we've veered off course. Sometimes we have been guilty of the same traffic-baiting we decry in others. (I am thinking particularly of our coverage of the foliage of Washington Heights.) We have occasionally been too passionate about certain subjects, fraying our own relations with each other, which have resulted in fisticuffs (Choire) and crying jags (me). And the frequency with which we turn down David's exhortations to be more esoteric and focus less often on issues that might appeal to those under 23 has caused him, I know, much hurt and distress.

Even though we have suffered those tribulations, I feel as though we have earned the right to point to this site with something somewhere between "shame" and "glee." This is in no small part due to the efforts of our contributors, whose generous offers of free content have kept the site humming during those moments when Choire and I were at each others' throats over whose turn it was to not mention that famous golfer who got in trouble with his wife. I'm especially thankful to Dave Bry and Maura Johnston for picking up the page and putting it on their shoulders, as well as that traitorous crazed wonder-skank Mary HK Choi who ditched out on us for her dream job, but this has indeed been a group effort for which its two main editorial staffers can claim only but a small bit of the blame and/or credit.

As we move forward into Year Two of The Awl, what changes should we be looking at? I've been hard at work coming up with several verticals to expand both our demographic reach and topic selection. They are, in no particular order, as follows:

Awlchick: Our female-skewing vertical will lean heavily on stories about menstruation and makeup. I mean, more so than the main site usually does. There's a lot of advertising out there that I want a piece of. Plus, you know how the broads like to yak. Pageviews are gonna skyrocket!

The Awlple: All Steve Jobs, all the time. Can't miss!

AwlBall: Our sports vertical. All we need to do to make this work is find someone who knows anything about sports. Can you feel it?

AwlBalls: A site written from the perspective of testicles. This will both help us make further inroads in the male demographic and prove the perfect solution to the knotty problem of My Cock being considered the intellectual property of Gawker Media.

NotAwlForWork: Boobies, blowjobs, you name it. Nudity. There is money to be made in porn, especially if we add the same nontraditional take we bring to the subjects we approach on the main site each day. Let's see if Chris Lehmann is up for a column called "Jizz People Things." I see possibilities.

In fact, I see so many possibilities that I am more encouraged about the success of this project than ever. I only regret that I will not be there to see it through with you both. That's right, suckas, I am OUT OF HERE. I'm gonna put on a dress and stealth-market personal data devices to unsuspecting drunk dudes. Good luck with your esoteric little blog posts, schmucks! It's Balk Time now.

Best, etc.,
Balk

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First, let's let Mr. Ware set the scene of the time, the hot and bothered 1840s. This is an incredible passage.

IN THE MIDST OF THEIR HILARITY!

And now let us look a bit at the progress of industry and the conditions of the working person-which resulted in an outcropping of radical publications. One complaint was that the efficiency of the machines was adding vast wealth to the owners of those machines and was providing not so much for those who would now operate those machines.

You don't say!

And now, let us turn to this examination of the shoemakers of the time-and their exquisitely well-named publication. (This section is a condensed version of the chapter, with some omissions.) If you have the time, it is a truly great read.

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See more posts by Choire Sicha

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So how was your first five months and sixteen days at The Awl?
Excellent! I've finally found a medium commensurate to my peculiar metabolism. That sounds believable, right? I revel in the immediacy, the responsiveness, the real-time-ness. I used to be the impatient type. Now I'm the serene type. Because I've started drinking in the mornings! No more waiting around for bars to open or Choire to run out for cigarettes so I can sneak a quick shot. I put the bottle right out there on the table and pull from it pretty much throughout the day. Plus I'm working with a brilliant young staff and a superb executive editor, Cat the Cat, who runs the show.

How's traffic these days?
Beyond our wildest hopes when we started last April. We closed September at a million billion monthly unique readers and 35 million trillion page views, which is up 70 percent and 220 percent, respectively, since our first month. It took me two years to build my Tumblr to less than half that number. And the readers are loyal: 60 percent of them come back again within 24 hours. Lord, do they ever. It's like they NEVER STOP COMING AND NEVER SHUT UP. Of course, keeping 'em satisfied is a 8/5 task. I know what the tireless blogger Andrew Sullivan means when he told me last summer that he sometimes gets so high on weed he can see through time itself.

Do you read the comments?
Each and every one of them. I embroider the wittiest ones on pillows in my spare time. We have well over 40 zillion commenters who have each commented over 500 zillion times! There's one called Cho who often weighs in with a contrary view on doing posts about Lauren Conrad. Earlier this year I was introduced to a Tuvan throat singer who was visiting New York, and he told me he liked The Awl. Yeah right, I thought, until he suddenly blurted out "Grrrrgrgrgrglllgrgrglll!" It's all about undertones with those people.

I log onto The Awl and find bear videos alongside Chris Lehmann's column on the grotesqueries of American capitalism. What's the big idea?
That's the big idea. Bear videos, rich people things-it doesn't matter, as long as both are covered with a sharp, original, Awly take. Or we need a post.

What's with you never being on TV?
Nobody asks. Why am I NOT ON TV? I'm FUCKING GORGEOUS! This face could sell anything! Why won't any of those bitches book me?

Any new developments?
It's been nothing but new developments round here. Last week we emptied the ashtrays for the first time in three months. We looked like coal miners! Oh, the fun we had.

On the site itself we've rolled out four new verticals: Contributors, Most Viewed, Most Commented, and most recently Read On, our new "extended post" feature. The gorgeous photography and photo galleries that you see on most sites, by the way, have been something we've talked about doing, but we haven't yet been bothered enough to actually look into it. We need to train our readers to blindly click through anything, which hasn't happened yet. A few more bear videos might dumb 'em up, though.

Where's the advertising?
Hey, don't be so impatient! We were lucky in a way to start in the deepest recession since 1929. Our business plan required us to focus on traffic first, then in the second half of the year on advertisers-which was a good thing because there weren't any. Now we have started to reel 'em in, led by our business manager and digital guru David Cho. From our small start with fart jokes, we've ramped up to, I dunno, whatever you see to your left. There's lots more in the 2010 pipeline. We have literally seven hundred bazillion ads coming in! David Cho, our advertising manager, co-originator and one of the sharper minds of the three of us, has challenged us to think beyond the troubled banner ad, and we are well on our way. He's planning a nudie calendar for Christmas, but so far I'm the only one who has volunteered.

What has been your top moment and one you'd like to forget?
One I'll never forget was the high of two weeks after our launch when we were both like, You know what, fuck this, let's take the afternoon off and go have lunch. Which we did. Separately, of course, because we don't want to spend one more second in each other's presence than absolutely necessary, but it was still a great, great afternoon.

And we've had many great highs since. I'm particularly proud of the contributions from [Can we have an intern fill this slot in with the name of every columnist ever? What? We don't have an intern? Well why the fuck not? Oh, right, like I'm the only sex harasser here. Fuck you, I hate you!] Doldrums? Hmm, not many. Except when a friend like Benson the carp dies and you are as close to the grief of the readers who comment as you are to the throb of political excitement when it catches.

Are you and Nick Denton still on friendly terms?
You betcha. Last time I saw him he actually said "Go away" to me rather than just giving me that two-fingered salute that means "fuck you" in England like he usually does.

I heard you have a Secaucus bureau? What's next, Hoboken?
No Secaucus bureau yet, thanks. The whole notion of bureaus is so 20th century. Get me a smart blogger with a laptop and an iPhone in Jersey City or Fort Greene and The Awl is in business. I realized how fast good foreign journalists will find you during the Iran elections right after we launched. We had a constant stream of great pieces on the crisis from terrific Iranian journalists who were on the ground. I mean, sure, we ripped them straight off of Twitter, but that counts.

Are you still writing print's obit?
Yes. Yes I am. Suck it, print, you dying motherfucker. I hope you choke on your ink bottles. I will bury you deep in a hole in the ground, rape your corpse, and then defecate on your violated carcass. I will-I'm sorry, what was the question?

How often do you come into the office?
Every goddamn day. It's like entering a crackhouse, only with worse lighting.

Which story are you more obsessed with, Silvio Berlusconi or Sarah Palin?
I am sick of both of them. But it's safe to say that Palin's got a better rack.

Who's more dangerous to the world?
Neither, if The Awl has anything to say about it. Because we are THAT IMPORTANT. We're the ones who came up with the phrase "Summer of Death," you know. Did you know that? Because we did.

Anything else?
I want to thank our hard working staff, our columnists who do excellent work for no pay, the rich people who are probably chomping at the bit to give us a gajillion zillion dollars, and our wonderful readers for your enthusiasm, repeat visits, commenting obsessions, video addictions-and a fabulous first five months and sixteen days. You too, Cho. Ya traffic-whoring DB.

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Our corporate structure is set up in such a way that editorial is only privy to negotiations when they achieve top-level status, so I consulted with Senior Head Of Business Development/VP For Content Integration Opportunities David Cho to see what the deal was. Unfortunately he was unavailable, but his away message ("Suck it, bitches! Maybe if you're nice you can come smoke my crack with Tim Armstrong and all my hos on the bigass yacht I'll be buying with that sweet AOL money.") may provide something of a clue.

*The number is 0.

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