The Blogs Left Behind

End of another year, heck, end of the decade. I managed forty blogs in 2019, but there were more than a few left by the wayside. Let's have a look at some of the ones left behind. (I experimented with a few different things to call this post, by the way, the-blogs-that-might-have-been, the-blogs-that-time-forgot, the-blogs-nobody-blogged, or my personal favorite of the not-chosen: The Blogs They Carried.) I did something similar a few years back. 

Ideally I'll whittle down all blogmaking activity into one What If...? type post at the end of every year. It'd save time for both of us. Until I unlock this achievement level, here's the 2019 tour of the Island of Misfit Blogs.

TV

I had planned:

- Most recently, to blog up a bunch of 80s TV Christmas Episodes. I picked five or six with plans to do a second round focusing on sitcoms. Problem was, I never got out of the first round, which included Knight Rider, Quantum Leap, Tour of Duty, Hill Street Blues, and Magnum PI. Some of the episodes ("Green Christmas," Tour of Duty especially) were good, but the others, while not bad (okay, the Knight Rider one is bad) just weren't that interesting, visually or conceptually, to justify blogging up. So the project kind of fizzled. 

- A Top Ten Magnum, PI Episodes post. I finished a "re-watch" of the show more than a few months ago, re-watch in air quotes because I only kind of half-watched a lot of it. But I enjoyed a surprising bit of what I did watch, I just didn't really think of it as something to blog about until I was five seasons into it. I keep meaning to go back and rewatch those episodes that made the most impression on me, but my energies drifted elsewhere, perhaps caught in the Molokai Express, bound for Alaska. So with a certain amount of regret that I never utilized it, I removed this bookmark from my computer. 

In case you're wondering: 

10. "Operation: Silent Night" s4, e10.

9. "A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief" s6, e20

8. "Round and Round" s6, e6

7. "Flashback" s3, e7

6. "Witness" s4, e21

5. "Fragments" s5, e6

4. "The Kona Winds" s6, e6

3. "Death and Taxes" s7, e6

2. "Limbo" s7, e22

1. "Home from the Sea" s4, e1

Number three is fairly or unfairly known as the Miami Vice episode on account of its prominent use of Phil-Collins-sung material ("Mama" by Genesis), night scenes, and Thomas's wardrobe being Sonny Crockett-esque at several points. 

"Home from the Sea" made a big impression on me as a kid. I was happy that revisiting it - several times as it turned out, once with my eldest who ended up watching it twice almost all the way through - deepened my appreciation of it. Particularly one aspect: the way these scenes are cut against each other is way ahead of its time. I remember when Lost was making a splash there was much chatter on how the scripts seemed very influenced (as they turned out to be) by Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Watchmen, particular the way flashbacks intercut with the main story and scenes segued via ironic continuations of dialogue out of context or what not. The same technique is used - and quite well - here. I've never heard anyone describe this technique as Bellisario-esque, but perhaps they should. He wrote a lot of filler, but "Home from the Sea" is an A+ script.

- I had an idea for a little series called:

These would've been screencaps from Dawson's Creek, season 4 (the senior year season). The idea was along the lines of James Van Der Memes, but, I didn't get very far. I discovered that here in the wilderness of my mid-forties, I didn't have the patience or bemusement with the project required to pull it off properly. This strikes me as the kind of realization that Red Foreman would hit me upside the head for having shared.

- An overview of Pan Am (2011-2012) a beautifully designed show with a great cast. Had it come out only a year or two later in the streaming-age, it'd probably still be on the air, but its lack of real-time viewers led ABC to cancel it. I ran into an immediate problem, though, in trying to screencap it. It was designed, visually, to maximize the photogenic nature of its cast. Not in a salacious way, more in an unavoidable way, just as part of every shot.

In plain English - and the above is less than one third of the first three episodes for Pete's sake - there was no way for me to present a visual account of the show without appearing to document a sort of fetish journal for 60s-era stewardesses. And/or Margot Robbie and Kelli Garner. I'm not knocking such things, I just felt a little awkward doing it / not what I set out to do. 

COMICS

The same thing happened to me with a planned series on Frank Thorne's:

This one I had some idea going into that it would probably be a bit over the top. I thought I could find a way to present the sword and sorcery metal without necessarily being overpowered by the softcore she-devil mayhem.

I was wrong about that.

I was keeping a folder called "She-Devil on a Horse" which started off as kind of funny but then made me feel a little uncomfortable as they got more and more pornographic. Why I don't feel uncomfortable doing so for a "Hey I Never Really Blogged It Up" post is unknown. 

I don't mean to suggest it's just softcore she-devil stuff. It's all quite metal and a bona-fide classic of Bronze Age Marvel. It's one of those things that had it been written and drawn by Camille Paglia people would celebrate it as proto-feminist fable. Perhaps it's unfair to not extend to Frank Thorne the same kudos. As with Pan Am, though, I started to feel like maybe I wasn't the right guy to be chronicling Sonja's adventures. The two series couldn't be more different in tone or approach but presented the same dilemma to me, their would-be-blogger.

A pity. Here's some leftover screencaps.

- Earlier this year, after The Heck Ya Mean posts, I'd planned to continue some Scenic Routes for selected series. Among them Kirby's Fourth World (which had a bit more than that, some Kamandi and Eternals, too):

- Another on Walt Simonson, from various titles over the years:

Did Walt refashion Jean Grey after his wife Louise? She is a telekinetic telepath, after all. (Louise, I mean.)

 

- And another on Alex Toth:

That is a serious floor.

This guy needs to stop.

but they all fizzled out for one reason or another. Mostly laziness. I also chose particularly prolific illustrators, each of whom deserved more time and attention than I could give him.

BOOKS

Man, do I miss my old commute. Even the increased crime on the CTA in the few years since I switched jobs, negating the need for the commute - forty-five minutes in each direction, which gave me oodles of blog-reading time - wouldn't deter me from picking it up again, solely for the enforced reading time. I try to sneak it in wherever I can - making my tea, doing the laundry, inspecting the commode, baby-watching (when possible) - but it's a lot harder to wipe out reading projects these days. 

- Take for example this idea I had for a series of posts called The Blog Offices of Boulle, Ludlum, MacDonald, and Wyndham. 

That likely would've been shortened to just "Boulle, Ludlum, MacDonald" or "Boulle, Ludlum, and Wyndham" depending on which author I finished first. I bought all these books used and still plan to read them all someday. But yeah, thought it'd be fun to make my way through them all in an organized way and blog them all up as I go, and I liked the law office-sounding name. (There's a pet supplies story near my wife's old apartment named "The Paw Offices of Barker and Meowski," which I always thought was a damn fine name.) Each would have had some kind of "Have you been hurt in an accident? Are you in a structured settlement and need cash now?" sort of intro but tailored to the plot at hand.

Part of what killed the project was I read The Ostermann Weekend and it started strong but ended weakly. And the movie was kind of a mess. Though in an interesting way. That started things off a little sluggishly and I just never found my way back to it. I brought some Wyndham with me on a work trip to California and ended up reading something else. Still mean to! But as a blogging project, probably not going to happen. 

- Finally, for this section, I'd planned a holiday post earlier this month called Ten Books for the Conservative on Your Shopping List.

Not necessarily these books. But some of them, sure. 

You might have a person with differing political views on your holiday list. If that person is left-of-center, you'll have little trouble shopping for them. If that person is right-of-center, though, chances are they don't necessarily want some coffee mug with "Liberal Tears" printed on the side. (Although they might - in which case, case closed.) So I thought I'd make an annotated list of ten to fifteen books that a conservative, male or female, gay or straight, white or black, Vulcan or Terran, might actually want to read. 

But: nothing I wrote - even the above - was coming out right. And then it came too close to the holiday to make an effective list of suggestions. So here's an abridged version of the list; print it out and keep it handy for any birthdays to come for your proverbial conservative uncle or aunt. 

For the military history buff: SOG by James Plasser. (Every chapter of this needs to be four or five movies. Riveting read. Tour of Duty season three seems to have lifted some story ideas from here, but this is much more in-depth.) 

Or this one that I bought my Dad, who is not a conservative at all, but just while we're doing military history. Or Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, though chances are they've got that one already.

For the history buff: Garibaldi by Jasper Ridley. (Incredible read. I wish I had time to read it again and take proper notes. One day!) Or Coolidge by Amity Shlaes. (Ditto.) Or Truman by David McCullough, which covers a wide swath of pivotal American events of the twentieth century. It's not like conservatives just want to read about conservative people. Most of them, anyway. 

For anyone who wants the culture war explained to them by someone who a) didn't vote for Trump, b) understands why he won, and c) understands the what, whence, and how of Trump Derangement Syndrome and why it is to be avoided:

For the political biography buff: No Higher Honor by Condoleeza Rice, With No Apologies by Barry Goldwater, or McCarthy by Arthur Hermann. 

For promising spy thriller stuff: Between Two Scorpions by Jim Geraghty. 

For carefully footnoted ragefuel: Justice on Trial by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, Ball of Collusion by Andrew McCarthy, The Smallest Minority by Kevin Williamson, or, if they want to take the longer view on the twentieth century (and have a sense of humor):

I would also recommend anything by William F. Buckley, Jr. particularly any of those collections of his editorials and commentaries from the 60s and 70s, like Executioner's Eve or The Governor Listeth. But you have to know your audience on that one; Buckley's style isn't for everyone. 

MUSIC

I'd started and taken some substantial notes for a couple of overviews that didn't materialize. One on Genesis (the entirety of which I will summarize by linking only to one song: "Keep It Dark") and another on Budgie (and likewise, "Stranded". Cued up to this spirited finish here.) Both bands deserved a better overview than I had time for in 2019, but I do enjoy the two playlists I created so hey, personal victory there. 

That about covers them, I think.

BUT WAIT!

Here are some pre-emptive cancellations for 2020!

- Roy Thomas at DC
- Doctor Strange in the 80s

I'd gotten a little ways into blogging up the Doctor Strange. I had all my preliminary work done:

I had a friend generously donate digital copies of the Defenders issues I didn't have, I bought the Marvel Fanfare Doctor Strange appearances I was missing, and I'd screencapped about five or six issues, including the Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men annuals, both of which held up quite nicely. 

But I just don't see myself having the time to really do it. These kind of things are fun if they don't linger on too long, and it would likely take me two to three years. Ditto for Roy Thomas at DC, which was a lot of material. These seemed like fun and worthwhile projects, but having done a few of those read/blog-every-appearance-over-a-decade projects, I know the time and reading involved. One for the robot body if it ever gets delivered from North Central Positronics. 

One reading project I still plan to do though not on any timetable is:

I won a couple of eBay auctions for Hard Case Crime lots, and I have just about fifty. So it seemed like a fun idea to read them all and blog them up as case reports. This one will happen - and I'll have to come up with a better header than that one above - I just didn't want to tie it to 2020. It might take the whole decade, who knows. Looking forward to it - bless you, Charles Ardai. 

~

I write this on December 25th at ten of nine pm, so it's still Christmas for a few hours more. Happy Holidays, folks.