Goodbye, Fare Thee Well

Well, my friends, all things must end, and as it goes, so it went. Here we are. End of the line. So long baby, goodbye. 

It says "2011 to 2021." It should be 2010 to 2021, and I don't think the 2011 posts (there was one about some Lego PS2 game and another about The Hunger Games, I think) are even up anymore. 

The blog started in earnest in 2012 when I decided to catch up with Stephen King and post the journey online. From there we covered all the Berman/Braga-era of Trek, lots of comics, lots of movies, Cheers, Conspiracy, Mansons, TV Proms, Canadian invasion, you name it. I used to have a subtitle up there "Your Definitive Source For My Various Preoccupations." I tried to live up to it over the years. 

Along the way I got married and had three children, switched jobs, endured a pandemic (outside the normal Chicago pandemic of violence and chronic stupidity), and lost some good friends, including my best one in the world Aharon Klum. I like to add to the Labels so his posthumuous Google-count goes up each time. 

His blog is still up, and it amuses me that his little piece of internet real estate is devoted to an obsessive spell he had with Grand Theft Auto. He did have his rabbit holes. But of course our legacy is not the blogs we self-publish on Google's largesse but those we write in people's hearts.

But: we are not here to praise Klum but to bury Dog Star Omnibus! Someone will ask when I put this up on Facebook (rather than click to read it themselves) "Why did you give it up?" I thought about posting all my "L"s online, in answering that question, but the long story short is that we have reached the point of diminishing or diminished returns. 

I'm reminded of the WFBJR quote (two quotes, actually, mashed together)

"What haunts the musically isolated sailor is the inability to share. It is as though you were sitting there hour after hour repeating to yourself silently all the amusing stories you had ever heard but husbanding them determinedly to yourself. This generates a masturbatory sort of sadness... This is the ultimate loneliness: to fail to communicate to others who are close to you the excitement or pleasure you take from certain experiences which are, then, left for you to enjoy alone in in the anonymous company of others who arrives as strangers to the same concert chamber; or every now and then with that odd friend who shares your enthusiasm.”

My buddy Bryant's and my blogging fortunes were linked, somewhat, over the past few years, from collaborating on things often enough to the generous commenting on each other's blogs. (Greatly appreciated, my friend. More than I've ever been able to convey to you.) To me, this is not just a happy thing but an association of which I'm most proud. He's on a hiatus now, but hopefully he'll be back soon. Even more hopefully, I hope some media-empire scoops him up and pays him to do what he does currently for free. 

I like to tell the story of my old band and how the one time we booked studio time, the owner of the studio ended up giving us the time for free so long as we promised to never return. Alas, this is the common denominator of my creative efforts, musical or blogging or otherwise, thus far: a down-the-rabbit-hole plunge that generates a lot of material but fails to connect to a wider audience while equally alas) alienating those friends and family initially willing to read or listen. Ah well. Sometimes you get the bear and all that. 

I'm a happy guy and don't mean any of this morosely. Just ready for the next chapter and to learn from this past one. And now we got to Museum mode. 

I'll be doing in 2022 what I was doing in 2021 and all the years before 2010, too: what you've gotten at Dog Star Omnibus is, for better or worse, who I am. I was keeping lists of my favorite movies and books in the 80s - never sure why, and I can remember showing them to friends who were like "Uhhh... what the heck is this? Who does this?" This guy, with the two thumbs! That's who. (Just wait!) 

Heck, before we got married, I sent my wife a four page, handwritten review of TNG's "Devil's Due." (And she still married me! Don't remind her.) Maybe it's time to move on to other things, I don't know; odds are, I'll probably still be sending out reviews and rankings and lists, just no longer with Dog Star Omnibus as a delivery mechanism. 

The blog will stay up as long as Blogger decides to keep such things around. No new content after this post, but I do plan on reading it all from the beginning and will probably leave responses/ new comments, maybe even an edit or two, along the way. 

This has been Radio Dog Star; this station will now cease transmission. Go forth and preach the gospel. Over and out. Fare thee well. 

~