The PopCulteer
May 13, 2016
Tomorrow marks a little personal milestone for me with this blog. Back in August, 2013, following the death of my uncle for whom I was serving as caregiver and medical power of attorney, I decided that I would try to post at least one item in PopCult every day for as long as possible. Tomorrow will mark 1000 consecutive days with at least one PopCult post every day. Even with my output somewhat diminished by some recent medical issues, I will easily make it to the 1000 days posting mark. In fact the truth is, PopCult is already written through next Thursday. I don’t normally write PopCult this far in advance but I will be hopping a train tonight for my first non-working trip of the year. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.
I didn’t really have any mandate to do this. It was just something I wanted to see if I could do. I’ve seen many blogs come and go and I’ve watched as they’ve started out strong and then petered out going days, then weeks, then years without an update. Finally you go to see what’s new and find out the most recent post was from 2011.
I didn’t want that to happen with PopCult because to be honest, I really have a lot of fun writing this blog. Lately, with all the new programs I’m producing for The AIR, it’s been a really handy place to drop in my playlists, show descriptions, and that nifty little embedded player.
However, I do want to get back into the thick of things with the PopCult Toybox and the PopCult Bookshelf very soon. That’s more a case of me not having enough time to edit Toy Fair video or read many books or comics, than not having time to write. That will change soon.
One of the obstacles to getting PopCult back up to speed and resuming production of the Radio Free Charleston video show has been my recent diagnosis of myasthenia gravis, which has not been even close to debilitating but which has become a bit…cumbersome.
I’m very lucky in that I have an extremely mild form of the disorder and am responding very well to the treatment. However, more than three weeks in, my body is still adjusting to the medicine and I have the occasional day (like today) where typing has become difficult. So I am relying on my lovely wife, Mel Larch, to take dictation.
Even with that minor glitch, I have gotten to a point where it’s possible to get far enough ahead on PopCult to take the better part of a week off to go to Chicago to run around town and catch a couple of plays. On my return, I have cleared my desk and will finally finish the wrap-up video for this year’s Joelanta and the Great Atlanta Toy Convention. Not getting that done in a timely manner has been bugging the hell out of me, but with all the medical hijinks it couldn’t be helped. Following that, I will leap headfirst into the pile of video that we shot at Toy Fair in New York last February and hopefully that will carry us through the rest of the year.
But the big deal for me is reaching 1000 consecutive days of fresh content in PopCult. Eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed a couple of days that seemed to be missing. By way of explanation, in late 2014 and early 2015, I wrote two posts concerning a person’s attempt to fraudulently manufacture and market a fake pop culture icon. My articles were 100 percent accurate and could easily have withstood any legal challenge. However, the person perpetrating this fraud had very deep pockets and was perfectly willing to file a nuisance lawsuit not only against me, but also against my publisher, the Charleston Gazette.
With his fraud exposed and his counterfeit icon rendered unsellable, I made the decision to remove those posts from the archives without any apologies or retractions to spare myself and my publisher the expense and trauma of defending ourselves in court against an expensive, vindictive and totally frivolous lawsuit. Even though every legal consultant I checked with assured me that such a case against me would have no merit, I didn’t really want to tie up years of my life and risk losing my house to put their legal opinions to the test.
Even though those two posts are now missing, they were indeed posted and published, so I’m counting them among the 1000 consecutive days. Since many days I post more than one item, the total number of posts here in PopCult since August 18, 2013 is actually around 1450, I have not yet decided when I may take a day off from PopCult. It might be next week, it might be next month, it might be some time after my next 1000 consecutive days. But as long as you folks keep reading PopCult, I will keep updating it on a regular basis.
That’s this week’s PopCulteer. For the next five days you can expect an RFC Flashback, A cool documentary about Swing Music, plenty of reminders of the programming on The AIR and of course, Monday Morning Art. Thanks for reading.
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