On this day, twenty years ago, the first two posts appeared in PopCult.

It’s hard to wrap my brain around that fact. The idea of doing ANYTHING for twenty years is a bit…confounding. I don’t feel old enough to have done this much stuff. It’s one of the pitfalls of feeling younger than I really am.

For those of you new to PopCult, this blog started out as part of The Gazz, an online version of the entertainment section of The Charleston Gazette. It bounced around the various web versions of the Gazette and Gazette-Mail until I exited stage right from that sinking ship five years ago, dragging all my previous posts along with me (save for most of the images from the first year or so, which had been lost during one of the many Gazette-content portings). And I always have to pause and thank Douglas Imbrogno for hiring me to write this blog in the first place, and giving it the name it has now.

While I’m perfectly content to enjoy all the credit, when it comes to blame, Doug has to bear some responsibility (I kid…go see his band, Through the Trees, opening for Ron Sowell Saturday at Pumzi’s).

I was going to say that the first two posts were nothing to write home about, but then it hit me that this is far from the first time I’ve written about them. And I work at home.

Like I said, last year, The first was a silly little bit of wordplay about buying an eBow on eBay. The second was a short plea for tips on where to find good Won Ton (or crab rangoon, to some folks) in Charleston.

That second post carried my first reference to a bit of actual pop culture, and also mentioned that I was “seafood-phobic,” a condition of which I have since been cured. On Tuesday Melanie and I had our anniversary lunch at Red Lobster, in fact.

And that first post has a deep, dark secret that only now, after two decades, will I confess: I didn’t really buy my eBow on eBay. I got it from Sam Ash.

Those were just test posts, really. I wasn’t sure exactly what this blog was supposed to be (sometimes I still wonder about that), but they do mark the humble beginnings of a blog that has reached and shot past seven thousand posts and has lasted many years past the typical lifespan of a blog.

There were a few more test posts before I jumped in whole-hog. The official launch of the Gazz Blogs, was the first week in September, and in that week I wrote about The Charleston Playhouse, Hasil Adkins, Kroger, local wrestling and WHCP, which was not yet owned by WSAZ’s parent company, and was just moving some operations to Charleston after having previously broadcast out of a Port-A-Potty in Portsmouth, Ohio.

The first Monday Morning Art

Since then, I’ve covered toys, comics, movies, TV, music, local music, theatre, travel, Myasthenia Gravis and anything else I feel like writing about. It’s been fun.

Monday Morning Art first appeared on September 8. I didn’t make it a regular feature for almost a year.  Instead I was originally posting my art a few times a week,  faster than anybody was bothering to look at it. It was a little shock to finally do the math and realize that I’ve posted over 1,000 original pieces of art (and two guest entries) in this blog over the last two decades.

Twenty years on, I’m still pretty much covering the same beat, though the media has changed quite a bit and a lot of the cool places I wrote about aren’t even places anymore. Life goes on. I’m still basically writing “Hey, this is really cool, check it out.”

We now have our sister internet radio station, The AIR, as well as our regular weekly features: Monday Morning Art, STUFF TO DO, The PopCulteer, The RFC Flashback, and Sunday Evening Video. I also run Kickstarter Alerts and review toys, comics, theatre, books, movies and TV shows, plus I whine about having Myasthenia Gravis a lot. And every November I kill myself cranking out The PopCult Gift Guide. This year will be the 21st PopCult Gift Guide.

I have pulled out all the stops to make this anniversary week something special, and I’m not done yet. If all goes according to plan later today you will get a photo essay from a cool place we visited early in the month, plus a photo review of a cool toy.

The author, still not dead yet.

Tomorrow will bring another photo essay in The PopCulteer, as well as radio notes on new episodes of MIRRORBALL and Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, and we will wrap up the week with the return of The PopCult Bookshelf.

Over the weekend, our chronological presentation of The Radio Free Charleston video show conveniently arrives at a landmark episode, as I also mark the 36th anniversary of Radio Free Charleston, which premiered on broadcast radio over Labor Day Weekend in 1989. You can expect a 36-hour marathon on The AIR, beginning Saturday at Noon.

Sunday I’m recycling that Jerry Lewis Telethon post again. I think I’ve earned a day to phone it in. I mean, blogging since 2005, blogging daily since 2013, posting over a thousand pieces of original art, and juggling an armload of anniversaries every August deserves a day of rest now and then, doncha think?

Thanks for reading PopCult. I’ll be here ’til I drop.

—your humble blogger, Rudy.