23 June 2016

Six Days Ago Was Our Seven-Year Anniversary

That's hard to believe!

I also don't care too much about anniversaries. I used to. We had a one, two, and three-year anniversary post, mostly recounting my favourite pieces of the previous year. My Jurassic World (2015) post was on our Six-Year last year and we celebrated Year Five with 22 Jump Street (2014). Neither had an acknowledgment of our accomplishment.

But Seven Years is a ridiculously long time to be blogging as semi-often as I do. It's kind of amazing to me to look back at the 726 articles I've posted on this site, especially as idiosyncratic most of them are, straddling the line between importance and ephemeral debate. I love going back and reading random things like my thoughts on Extract (2009) or when Lady GaGa and Katy Perry both had weird saxophone videos in Summer 2011. Doesn't that seem so damn long ago?

This particular post was spurred by a random thought I had the other day, though, which actually really coincidentally aligns with this anniversary, as semi-late as it is. I had a feeling as if my ramblings here have become longer and more incoherent, especially as this blog has devolved into a weekly round-up of Summer movies (re-reading my first Road to a Blockbuster post was interesting - I was apparently originally inspired by THOR [2011], which is amazing) and Summer Jams from May to August, end-of-year wrap up lists in December, and Oscar coverage from January to February. That's really the mold we've settled into. Of course, this blog has rarely been about anything traditional, and we've been fairly careless in picking up and dropping a lot of ideas both good and bad. Of course we're also rarely beholden to anything, which means shit can change at any time. Still, there's something freeing about just finding a place on the internet to riff on both franchise potential and how much I want to see The Shallows (2016) over Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). That post is actually coming out tomorrow. This blog can be anything, which is why it's a special distillation of whatever's in my brain that week.

But that's totally off target. My random thought the other day that the previous paragraph alluded to, was "What has been my longest post?" After some digging, there's no real direct answer, although in a more simpler way, this is that direct answer:

On December 19th, 2015 I spent 3757 words on Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015). That should be no surprise to anyone, and by a solid (but not crazy) margin, it gets the nod for the longest rant in one space on one topic. We get into trickier territory when I have spent a bit more words on the same topic spread out over multiple posts:

Technically these were two distinct posts because I saw the film in question twice in theaters and just found that much more to say about it, but I spent a whopping 3981 words on Transformers: Revenge of the Swollen (2009) within the first month of this blog's history - on June 25th and July 5th, 2009. I only talked about Dark of the Moon (2011) for 3103 (again over two posts) and Age of Extinction (2014) for 2211.

I beat that mark in 2012 when over the course of three posts in four days I discussed The Dark Knight Rises (2012) over the course of 4488 words. Looking back on that last one, I really thought I had misspelled "health." This feat was actually surpassed a month prior when discussing an even MORE derided film, albeit one that I very much enjoyed at the time, which I'll get to in a bit. 2012 was a busy summer.

In 2009 when this blog first started, it would appear I had even more to say about nothing...Posts About Nothing in particular... It was as if I had finally found an outlet to my brain so it just poured all over the Internet. Spread out over ten days time were three posts about Jerry Seinfeld's character on Seinfeld, first on September 29, then on the 30th, then on October 8th. These came to 4557 words in total.

So back to 2012, for some reason I found it necessary to talk about Prometheus (2012) over a whopping three posts (with only one viewing in theaters) that amounted to 4607 words, which is the most I've ranted about a single film, album, television show, video game, sporting event, or whatever else Norwegian Morning Wood gets up to. For the record, these were on June 13th, 14th, and...14th, 2012. Man, I write a lot in June.

The biggest contiguous series, however, dwarfs all that. This was a series of posts I originally made on Facebok that I added here to give the fledgling little NMW a heafty content boost at its launch. For some reason back in April 2009 I made nine ridiculously long posts analyzing literally everything on TV at that time. There's actually no better Spring 2009 Television capsule that exists, and it's pretty impressive. They were posted to the site in June (of course), and despite the horrendous amount of broken, unhosted images that now plague each post, they're pretty good. No. No. I can't lie to you good people. This is terrible. But these copy n paste jobs gave us the site's most post-heavy month ever (18! It's never been matched!) and can all be found here with progressively more ludicrous titles:

Bryan Loves Television Part 1: Reality Bites
Bryan Loves Television Part II: The Flat and the Furriest
Bryan Loves Television Part III: 2 Flat 2 Furriest
Bryan Loves Televison Part IV: The Flat and the Furriest 3: TV-MA Drift
Bryan Loves Televison Part Cinco: Drama Day Care
Bryan Loves Television Part Seis: Drama Day Cable
Bryan Loves Television Part G: Dr. Strangelaugh or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Comedy
Bryan Loves Television Part H: A Jokework Orange
Bryan Loves Televison Part 9: All That Other Shit

Holy shit, I actually just straight-up posted URLs into the text. What the hell is wrong with me?

Notice the numbering - like, with sequels within the sequels to the series and casual switching from Arabic to Roman to Spanish Words to letters. Going from "3" to "Cinco" really throws me off, even though it's actually "Part IV" to "Part Cinco." What the hell, Bryan. It's amazing that this wasn't accessible or didn't catch on!

This all comes out to 13,273 words which is about three and a half times more than I cared to spend on The Force Awakens. It's a weird read for sure, decently undeveloped, and riddled with awkward sentences and horrible structure. We surely this day don't have that issue any longer beround these parts.

So we're seven years in. At some point last year I wasn't sure if I had yet set out to do everything I wanted to do with this blog. I mean, Best Movie Swears? The Straight-To-DVD Drawn Together Movie? What else is there? That latter post actually got a ton of hits because of its somewhat racy image. Of cartoons. Internet, baby!

We've certainly had a dip in posts, especially last fall and this past winter. I don't totally care about that, really. This might be a nice chance to break out of our Summer Jam - End of Year Lists - Oscar Prediction rut we're quagmired in right now, but then again, that's all I really want to do unless something fanciful like Mortal Kombat X strikes me again. I don't totally see a reason to stop doing this, though. I wouldn't really feel complete without it at this point. Getting shit out of my brain and on to the Internet for everyone to see forever (except the broken links, images, and taken-down / account information changed YouTube videos) is therapeutic, energizing, and damn fun.

So here's to seven more years, then seven more, then maybe like, three or four after that.

What say ye, loyal reader - what do you want to see more of in the next seven years? Leave one below.

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