Note: In light of yesterday’s event at the Boston Marathon, I was going to hold off on posting this and launching this new blog until next week. I then realized:
- I really need an outlet right now
- I’m, like a lot of Bostonians, feeling pretty defiant today. I’m sad as hell and will carry the grief of that day for the rest of my life, but I’m not about to let whoever did this do any more harm to me than they’ve already done. I’m going to go move forward, more determined than ever to make the world a better place. And that starts with this stupid little blog.
On with the show.
Hopefully you know me from somewhere. If not, hi, I’m Rob. I make art, I make web sites, I’ve written a couple of books and I used to write a lot about movies. This is my new blog. I’ll post my own art and photos and I’ll post about art, movies, books, sports, technology, history, travel and books.
And anything else I fee like talking about.
It’s also my old blog. I had a blog at my personal site, DrunkenFist.com, for 12 years and this new blog contains a lot of that history as I pulled over the on-topic posts. There’s a lot of cool stuff if you’re interested in what I’ve been up to for the past 12 years.
That said, this is a new thing.
Why do a new thing?
Well, Drunkenfist.com itself is 13 years old now and any site that old and that big (hundreds of static pages) gets to be a beast to maintain if it grows on organically on what’s basically 10 year old architecture. Adding on a blog, on a different platform, makes it basically impossible. I would think about working on it as a megasite and then I would just want to hit things.
Because it’s hard to maintain a beast like that and because I wanted to be able to relaunch blogging after my lost year (2012) I decided to calve off the blog onto a new domain. That way I could get it up and running and then get back into the business of redesigning DrunkenFist.com so that it’s ready for the next dozen years of it’s life (25th anniversary party, FTW.)
Relaunching it also frees me in some ways editorially. I know I could have just switched gears at any point before, but starting a new thing makes it feel like a slightly neater transition.
The Name?
It’s directly from the song Upgrade (A Baymar College College) from the Deltron 3030 record (Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, Kid Koala.) I love that record. The vibe of it fits with a lot of what I do with my art and the general feel of it lyrically is right in line with what I’d like this place to be from an editorial perspective. Art x technology x science fiction x a big culture bomb. That might not make the most sense, but that’s almost the point.
On this thread, the highest praise I can offer certain kinds of music is to say that it should be the background music for some of my favorite bande dessinée by people like Moebius, Ennki Bilal or Alejandro Jodorowsky. I’m not promising that this blog will read like The Beast Trilogy (Le Sommeil du monstre) or The Incal, but that’s the stuff that most inspires me, so it’s out there as an influence.
So, to wrap up, the name is from a sci-fi concept rap record that reminds me of French comics.
If I get halfway to that ideal with my writing and art here I’ll be happy.
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