Several weeks back, comedian Marc Maron announced that he was ending his trailblazing podcast, “WTF,” which he’s been doing since the comparatively carefree days of 2009. I’ve been a devout fan of Maron’s for quite some time and a regular listener of his podcast for several years, so I was disappointed to hear it, but I can’t say I was that surprised. Marc’s an intense guy, and takes his work very seriously, so I can totally see how he might be a bit burned out from it all. He’s not done just yet, though. He’ll keep posting episodes into the fall before bowing out with a final show. The podcast’s vast archive of previous episodes will remain online, as I understand it, for fans and newcomers to enjoy, but that’ll be the end of it. I know I, for one, will miss his regular presence and bi-weekly insights.
While it’s not really that comparable in terms of content, production value, quality and audience size, this here blog actually predates Maron’s “WTF” by four years and today marks the goddamn TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY of Flaming Pablum. Believe me, I’m just as astonished as you are. I’ve been digitally scribbling this inane nonsense here for two whole decades.
I’m not going to bother re-hashing the blog’s banal origin story or attempt to re-explain the indefensibly stupid name of the thing (antiquated lingo for trite writing that incites anger). If I could re-christen it, it would probably be something just as preposterously pretentious like Grognard’s Hiraeth or something, but it’s kinda too late, now. The fact that the blog’s URL has zero to do with the blog’s name has never helped clear up any confusion, but what’s done is done.
I wouldn’t say I’m in quite the same headspace that I was in July of 2005. At the time, I was a still relatively freshly married, newly christened father of one, working a vampire shift at the TIME Magazine News Desk. Shortly after launching this blog, I jumped ship from TIME and decamped to MTV News Online, only to get laid off from that concern a year and a half later (but not before having a second child). From there I scrambled onto the good ship MSN for two nervy years as a homepage editor before landing at gig at MSNBC Digital to write, edit and orchestrate content for the website of the TODAY Show. Four twitchy years after that, I was unceremoniously ejected and was “on the street” for many months before mercifully landing the job I now hold and where I’ve now been for almost a decade.
I’m still happily married, and my kids are both young adults. My eldest is a breath away from graduating college. We still live in the same diminutive apartment we did when Flaming Pablum was hatched. On a personal level, I feel like I’m aging more like milk than like wine. Catch me in the right mood, and I’ll quickly recite a litany of medical grievances that all seemed laughably unlikely in 2005. But that’s nothing unique or unusual.
I still warm to pretty much the same subject matter that I always have, which is reflected in the content here. I’d like to think I’m maybe a little more discerning about it, which explains the wider lapses between posts, but maybe I’m just being lazy.
Back to the Maron comparison (and it’s only that – a comparison, not a competition), while I don’t feel quite as burned out as Marc might be feeling and don’t intend to stop any time soon, I cannot imagine that there’d be quite as much fanfare surrounding the demise of Flaming Pablum as there is around the end of “WTF.” I’ll probably just stop one day.
….but not today.
For those who’ve stayed on this train since it first left the station, thanks for sticking with it for the past 20 years.
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