20 Year of Blogging!

Today is this blog's 20th anniversary! Where does the time go!?

I started posting here on April 23, 2005. 

That was before my 18 year-old son was born, before I created The House Between (2006 - 2009), and while George W. Bush was still President of the United States.  

I was eagerly anticipating, at the blog's start, upcoming releases including Serenity (2005) and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

It was a different world.  

Since my start on April 23, 2005, I have written 11,935 blog posts here, which is crazy to me, and I have had, over that span of the blog's life, more than 11 million readers pay me a visit (that's 11,494,694 as of this writing).

Blogs and movies themselves both played a more central role in our popular culture in 2005 than they do now, which I think is probably not a good thing. The internet has also, I feel, become a much meaner place than it was two decades ago, when I began.

Over the years, most bloggers have either called it quits I guess, or moved to YouTube, Facebook, Tik-Tok or other social media to become "influencers."  

However, I still believe there is a certain place, a certain sweet spot, that is fulfilled by a web-log like this one. 

And so I still write here when I can. 

I accept -- after 20 years -- that this blog, like all my work, and all of life itself, goes through different phases. 

Whenever I've thought of ending the blog, something has held me back. I know I can jump on blogger, write, connect, and get my thoughts to the world instantly. There's a value in that, and I find it priceless.

No, I don't post here as much as I used to, it is true. 

In the blog's heyday, from 2012 - 2017, I was posting over a thousand times a year.  Ironically, 2023 was the blog's biggest year in terms of readership and audience, however, which convinces me there's still life in blogging.  

So, I'll just quote This is Spinal Tap (1984) and note, perhaps, that my appeal as a pop culture writer is not diminishing, just becoming "more selective."

Where and why have I shifted my focus? 

Well, in honesty, I am way out of tune with the modern era of film, not being a particularly big fan of Disney live-action remakes or endless superhero movies. Those productions bore me to tears, and I just can't devote energy to writing about them. By the same token, I don't want to be the cantankerous old guy who doesn't like anything new, or who constantly lives only in a place of nostalgia.  

That's why, since 2023, I have focused largely on creating my own universes in audio drama format (Enter the House Between [2023]), in fiction (The Subway Game [2024], with Alicia Martin) and in a comedy web series, the award-winning Abnormal Fixation.  

In terms of my traditional nonfiction, Horror Films of 2000-2009 came out not long ago, and Horror Films of the 2010s is done, and incoming, any minute now...

Making the jump from literary critic, pop-culture commenter to content "creator" is not necessarily easy but I feel committed to it. 

I remember back in the late 1990s, before I found an agent, a prospective agent asked me why I wanted to make the jump from non-fiction to non-fiction when I was so well-known for non-fiction film reviews and movie writing. He said it was a trick I simply wouldn't be able to pull off, so I shouldn't even try.

I hope that's not true, and it was incredibly rewarding in 2024 and now, in 2025 to see our web series, Abnormal Fixation pick up so much audience recognition (26 awards won so far, and 12 nominations) and so many views on YouTube.  I hope if you haven't seen it, you'll give a whirl.

That said, this blog is not going anywhere, at least not any time soon, and for the next several months, I'll celebrate this milestone by re-posting some of my most popular articles.  

In fact, I'll be counting down from the 10th most popular post to the 1st most popular post (at least in terms of views) in the blog's history.

So stick with me, please, as I celebrate 20 years of blogging, starting TODAY!