Announcing A New Blog!: The Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru

Attention dear readers:

If you're one of the many anonymous blobs of matter who has, over the years, sporadically enjoyed perusing this ragtag collection of deranged musings known as Cosmic American Blog, well, the cold hard truth is, you may not be able to enjoy it, or at least any new content from Little Earl, for much longer.

But slow down that accelerating heart rate of yours, take a nice breath of fresh air (or whatever gaseous substance you're fond of inhaling), and don't dial that suicide hotline just yet.

Quit blogging? Who, me?

Fear not, as Little Earl is merely embarking upon a new phase of his dastardly mayhem. Prepare yourself, if you can, for a sleeker, more modern, more groundbreaking, more experimental work of unparalleled blogging brilliance, the likes of which the internet may have never seen before, and may never see again. One adventure ends, as they say, and another begins. 

Allow me the pleasure of introducing to you: a great humanitarian, a brilliant entertainer, a fellow blogger, and my dear, dear friend of 41 years:

The Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru.

The Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru means business, and you know how I can tell? Because he's on WordPress.

Initially, I was skeptical, but after the Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru (PTBPCG?) approached me in good faith, pitched me the general concept behind the blog (discussing his favorite albums and films of the '60s and '70s, but with the unique twist of discussing them from a part-time Buddhist point of view), and asked for my input, I have to say, I found the project simply too good to pass up. And so, I've agreed to help out behind the scenes, under terms that I am legally and contractually forbidden to disclose here, but suffice to say, I will most likely need to devote my full energies to the enterprise.

The truth is, Cosmic American Blog was never meant to be my "forever blog."

A little history. In January 2007, my good friend from college suggested that I start a blog. He said it was a laughably easy thing to do. It was so easy, in fact, that, one night, he created a blog on blogspot, and added a couple of posts as a joke. Soon I began adding a few posts of my own. We were essentially "instant messaging" each other that night, through the guise of a blog. There was no grand agenda, no central objective. We were just dicking around.

That said, I was a young man with plenty on my mind, and so was he, and after about a week of dicking around between the two of us, we shared the link with friends and family, and began to take the notion of blogging a wee bit more seriously (and I mean a wee bit). That college friend went by the blogger name of Yoggoth. Because we had initially met as DJs at our campus radio station, where my DJ name was Little Earl and where one of my many radio shows was named, I believe, "Cosmic American Music" (another show title: "Nuke the Whales"), he dubbed the blog "Cosmic American Blog" and chose Little Earl as my blogger alter-ego.

I feel a slight amount of pity for anyone on Google over the last 15 years who might have been searching for a blog that they were hoping would discuss, in great detail and tremendous affection, late '60s and early '70s country rock, happened to stumble upon something called "Cosmic American Blog," assumed that their prayers were answered, and instead found themselves face-to-face with endless posts about Debbie Gibson, Starship, and Stock Aitken Waterman. I'm sorry. I'm really, truly sorry. Blame Yoggoth.

So, for the first five years of the blog's existence (let's call this "Phase One"), it was essentially a "blog about nothing" (a la Seinfeld), without any specific raison d'etre, although we flirted with two large series ("Best Movies of the '80s" and "Best Albums of the '90s"), suggesting both the potential for something more substantial, and the format I partially hope to follow with my upcoming blog. During that very first year, one of my friends from high school (with whom I shared the enterprise) began to follow the blog more closely than almost anyone else, constantly leaving his thoughtful comments on practically every post and expressing great enthusiasm for our magnificent nonsense. Yoggoth and I huddled, and, after much deliberation, decided to grant our biggest fan co-blogging access. That fan ... dubbed himself Herr Zrbo.

Phase One continued on into 2010. Yoggoth gradually began posting less and less frequently, claiming to be attending something called "law school" (whatever that was), but I didn't mind that so much as long as he continued to read my posts and Zrbo's posts and add his peerless commentary at the bottom. But soon Yoggoth ceased even reading the damn thing - he stopped reading the blog he had co-founded! Losing a bit of the fire myself, I began to wonder where this beast was headed, even posting an amusingly frank entry titled "The Blog Is Dying." If I'd been in a more financially and professionally stable period of my life, I might have done then what I've decided to do now: start a brand new blog, with a more clearly defined thematic focus, more legitimate marketing presence, and more modern web design. Imagine if I'd spent the last 10 years writing about the subjects that had truly meant the most to me.

But nope! Not what I did.

Instead, in the fall of 2010, I found myself becoming absurdly and irrationally obsessed with '80s music. I knew that Zrbo loved '80s music. I knew that Yoggoth didn't care for it so much (at least not the "Top 40/MTV" side of '80s music), but Yoggoth had stopped reading the blog anyway, so screw him, and Zrbo was still into it. Hence, I made a fateful decision. I decided to blog about my newfound love of '80s music, essentially aiming my writing at Zrbo (to paraphrase a Vonnegut quote, "Try to write with one person in mind; if you open the window and attempt to make love to the world, you will only catch pneumonia."). Did I have any idea of how long I would be blogging about '80s music? Pfft. I just thought I would dive into the deep end and see where the topic took me. Thus began Phase Two.

Well, eleven years later, I woke up in a dumpster covered in George Michael's leather jacket, Madonna's cone bra, Kate Pierson's beehive hairdo, and Al B. Sure!'s unibrow, wondering what the hell had become of my life.

The thing is, although I made it all the way up to 1990, in a sense, I didn't actually "finish." As outlined in my introductory post (now - Jesus Christ - 11 years old?), my original intention was to cover "both" sides of the '80s AKA spend some time on the aforementioned "Top 40/MTV" side of '80s music, and then eventually transition over to the more "alternative" side of '80s music, which I enjoy almost as much as I do the mainstream side. Picture, if you will, lengthy, in-depth series on alternative acts both American (Husker Du, the Minutemen, the Meat Puppets, R.E.M., the Replacements, the Butthole Surfers, the Pixies, Beat Happening, Bongwater) and British (the Cure, New Order, the Smiths, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, the Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, the Associates, Felt).

Well, since it took me 11 years to blog about the "Top 40/MTV" side of the '80s ... your mental picture of those blog posts might just have to do. 'Twas a beautiful vision, but I think we're going to have to let the second half of that plan slide a bit. I do recall feeling a sting of deep uncertainty as to whether or not I should have included the Pet Shop Boys in my "Summer of '88" series, or R.E.M., the Cure, Depeche Mode, and Tears for Fears in my "Herbert Walker Memories" series, given that the official "plan" was always to include those acts in separate, future blog series, until I realized, "Fuck it, I'm never going to get around to it at this point." But at least I managed to lightly brush those acts' catalogs.

Oh, I could keep going! Is there some secret rule, agreed upon by Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos in a vast underground lair, that a blogger is required to maintain only one blog at a time? The thing is, I have, like, a day job. Sure, I could keep going ... if I were independently wealthy, or possibly retired (give me about ... 20 more years?). The truth is, at the moment, I think I can only handle one blog at a time. And wrapping up the "Top 40/MTV" side seemed like a suitable place to stop the madness. But if I unexpectedly find myself with more time on my hands, then who knows?

While the last 11 years' worth of blogging may have suggested otherwise, I should probably mention that the '80s isn't actually my favorite decade of music (!). Which, in a sense, made it easier to write on, given that I didn't have nearly as much to say about it as I had to say about the '60s and '70s. But I always felt a bit uneasy with the notion that my ultimate writing legacy might consist of excerpts from a fake Phil Collins autobiography and microscopically granular analysis of every facet of Belinda Carlisle's entire recording career. Look, it just ... happened. Even less apparent over the course of Cosmic American Blog's run, perhaps, is my deep passion for 20th century cinema.

I knew I would have to make the transition someday, but, as a friend of mine recently pointed out, addiction was certainly a pervasive theme of '80s life, and so perhaps it was fitting that I found myself addicted to continuously posting about '80s music and being terrifyingly unable to quit. But I now announce to you, with pride, that I've finally emerged from '80s blogger rehab clean and sober.

That said, although I have little intention of adding new posts to Cosmic American Blog going forward, it'll still ... you know ... be here, in all its low-tech, 2007-era glory. Welcome to the magic of the internet. Keeping an old blog online costs me absolutely jack squat. I see no reason to "close" it somehow, or alter the posts as they already exist. It's not like it takes up space on my hard drive.

I also suspect that Zrbo may still plan to publish his usual "Favorite Songs of the Year" posts every once in a while, which I imagine might appeal to a slightly different audience, but how he decides to approach that is honestly up to him.

So, if you're that rare music and culture aficionado who adores reading about '80s music but has absolutely zero interest in '60s and '70s music, or '60s and '70s film, then perhaps I'm breaking your heart. Otherwise, the Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru beckons.