19 June 2019

10 Years Gone

Well folks it's been ten long years. More like ten short years - it feels like just the other day I decided to start jotting down all the insane pop culture ideas in my head for the whole Internet to enjoy. Technically our first post was two days ago, but most of those early posts were just random collected thoughts that I had written elsewhere. There are lots of formats for a retrospective, and we've done the "Look back at our best posts" kind of thing before.

Sandsuckin Motherfuckin MonsterTruckin Devastator

During the Seven-Year I just did a word count test. And just to update that here, let's rank again. A few early posts felt too long so I split them up. What folly. As usual, here is our Top Eight:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015): 3757
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): 3981 (two posts)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017): 4250
The Dark Knight Rises (2012): 4488 (three posts)
Seinfeld (post from 2009): 4557 (three posts)
Prometheus (2012): 4607 (three posts)
Avengers: Endgame (2019): 5410
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017): 5598

But let's travel back to June 2009. The major things I remember was being super into Parks and Recreation and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I really have a problem with how much I was amped and then subsequently liked that movie. It's objectively moronic, but there's a gleeful fun to it that I responded to.

The origins of Norwegian Morning Wood lie in a series of Facebook notes I wrote that all wound up in those early June 2009 posts. I'm not sure how exactly I settled on "Norwegian Morning Wood" but I did want to turn my favorite Beatles song into a boner joke, thus setting the stage for the cultural interplay this blog would represent. I would take something beautiful and make it stupid, and likewise take something stupid and elevate it to high art.

If you look at posts year after year you can see that we've never quite matched that initial outburst of creativity in 2009 and 2010. Since then we've been pretty steady. We got into a good rhythm of weekly Road to Blockbuster rundowns and Summer Jam Countdowns. I'd like to end Summer Jam in 2020 at the 10-year mark of that column because its exhausting, but also honestly pretty fun. Even if it's totally the least popular column ever.

To be honest, 2019 has been a year full of so much life that this blog has fallen HARD by the wayside. End of year re-caps are still one of my favorite things to do ever and I always want to doll out impressions of whatever I see in theaters. I can't even say that it's tough to come up with material, because it's clearly not, but it is hard for this blog to remain a priority when real life happens. There's been a substantial difference in my life at 32 than it was at 22 and kind of doing nothing all day.

To some extent I think my tastes in movies have changed as well. I'm hesitant to say that movies themselves have changed, because I think that's where nostalgia takes over and our biases are corrupted. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is and always has been incredibly stupid. I'm not sure Power Rangers (2017) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) are any different strictly in terms of quality, but maybe there is some derivation, exhaustion, or laziness there? I'm not exactly sure, but I have no desire to watch any of these films.

I remember the moment it happened to - Warcraft (2016). That was the first blockbuster (okay, I use that term pretty loosely for that bomb). I had no desire to see that and join the cultural zeitgeist and conversation. This is coming from a man who will still sing the praises of The Lone Ranger (2013). Even though these films were terrible, I always wanted to be part of that conversation. I suppose two things: 1) That conversation has shifted so that shitty movies like Warcraft aren't actually a part of the online dialogue any more and 2) It takes a much higher degree of creativity to appeal to me. I'm more a Swiss Army Man (2016) and Sorry to Bother You (2018) kind of absurd, surreal move-goer now.

This is probably worth its own post. But I'm proud of what this site has down in ten years and I hope that it may continue in whatever form it takes for the next ten years. I have vowed to not go more than a month without a post - I think it would just slip if that happens.

Are there any topics ya'll'd like to see covered in the future? Is it weird that I enjoyed Revenge of the Fallen so much more than Bumblebee (2018)? Leave a comment below!

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