If Akismet, the weblog comment spam-filter, did not exist, I wouldn’t allow comments on this blog. This morning, I saw the message on the accompanying screen grab: “Akismet has captured 60,000 spam for you since you first installed it.” In the past few weeks, there have been days when nearly 1,000 attempts to comment-spam old rexblog posts have been caught by Akismet. In the old days, I used to review the posts it caught as “potential” spam to see if there were any false-positives. Now, I delete everything it captures with no review, so apologies to any comments that may have been mistakenly deleted. And thanks to whoever works on Akismet. You are part of the good-guy team.

Longtime readers of this blog know I am a bluegrass fan. One of my bluegrass-fan highlights of the past year was seeing the Grascals at the Station Inn. (Franky, all of my bluegrass highlights of the past year had something to do with the Station Inn.) Last night Nashville blogger Sista Smiff (and Tweetster) slept with one of the members of the Grascals — on the night the group won its second straight “Entertainer of the Year” award from the International Bluegrass Association. Sorry, nothing sordid here: Sista Smiff’s husband, Terry Smiff Smith, plays bass (and comic relief) for the Grascals. Congratulations all around. And thanks, Sista, for blogging and tweeting the award.

By the way, if you are in Nashville for the next couple of days, the Nashville Convention Center is center of the bluegrass universe.