Is there a way to use wildcards in block restrictions first? I know that for restricting blocks to only certain pages you can do a path such as:
blog/*

I'd like to know if anyone knows a way to do a path such as:
*/blog

Basically, due to views not being able to use contextual links as the first URL argument (www.example.com/%/events is not a valid URL but www.example.com/events/% is) - I would like to be able to have an * first since I plan on having multiple contextual views that would have different first terms, but the same second term.  It would just allow me to write one line of restrictions vs. a line or 5 for each view.

Anyone know if this is possible in a Drupal 7 environment?

Thanks!
You can use the Rules block visibility module for this. Here is a quote from its project page:


  The Rules block visibility module allows Rules components to be used to control block visibility. This provides Drupal administrators and developers extreme flexibility in controlling when blocks should be displayed on their websites, in addition to the default visibility options provided by Drupal.
  
  The general idea is that if you can do it with Rules, you can use it to control block visibility, so the possibilities are limitless.
  
  Need to show a block only for users registered more than a month ago?
  
  Perhaps you have a block that must be shown only between 8am-5pm on weekdays?
  
  What about displaying or hiding a block based on current weather conditions?
  
  All of this can be done by using Rules block visibility.


With that, and as per the "if you can do it with Rules, you can use it to control block visibility" above, you've reduced your question to making Rules "check the path of the current page" (so that the block is only shown on those pages that have a path ending with "/blog").

For an illustration of how to use this module, refer to my answer to "How to stop a Views block from displaying to administrators, such as user/1?". It includes a Rules Component (in Rules export format), which you should replace by this variation of it to make it match your specific question):

{ "rules_block_visibility_show_on_selected_blog_pages" : {
    "LABEL" : "Show block on selected blog pages",
    "PLUGIN" : "rule",
    "OWNER" : "rules",
    "REQUIRES" : [ "rules" ],
    "USES VARIABLES" : {
      "module" : { "label" : "Module", "type" : "text" },
      "delta" : { "label" : "Delta", "type" : "text" },
      "result" : { "label" : "Result", "type" : "boolean", "parameter" : false }
    },
    "IF" : [
      { "text_matches" : {
          "text" : [ "site:current-page:path" ],
          "match" : "\/blog",
          "operation" : "ends"
        }
      }
    ],
    "DO" : [ { "data_set" : { "data" : [ "result" ], "value" : "1" } } ],
    "PROVIDES VARIABLES" : [ "result" ]
  }
}