I had nothing to do with the creation of Garbage Pail Care Bears. BUT @tommer and I have for some time now thought our conversations worthy of more scrutiny and exploration. Narcissitically we mulled a podcast (that no one would listen to), but have instead landed on a blog (that no one will read).
Grantland is the true origin story for me and this project. Grantland was a sports and pop-culture blog owned by ESPN. It ran from 2011-2015. It began as a collaboration with Mcsweeney’s1. This mix of sports and literature, highbrow and lowbrow, created what made Grantland special. A site with smart, sometimes bold, sometimes weird, irreverent essays on sports and pop-culture. I found I loved reading these smart contemporary essays that didn’t pretend to be anything they weren’t. Basically what I found was good writing could be about anything. I wanted to write things like this, and I wanted my friends to write things like this.
This isn’t a sports and pop-culture blog site. It’s an Anything site. I’ll write book reviews, I’ll write about simulation theory, atheism, existential dread and the transience of all things, relics of the bygone aughts, the movie Heat, being an Uber driver. Madison, then and now, but in my heart always a land of pawnshops and cash advances. Whatever. I’d love to develop a rivalry with a local paper, figure, barfly 2. business, etc. Organically of course.
If one day someone or some thing (e.g., said local paper, or business) is forced to reckon publicly with something written on GarbagePailCareBears.com—if that happens, if that day comes, I will sail West with the elves having fulfilled my purpose.
- though Mcsweeny’s is now a full-fledged publishing house, it began as a literary journal and was founded by Dave Eggers, of whom I’ve read one book, A Hologram for the King. The coolness of this literary journal is hard to overstate. It’s based in the Holy Land of Hipsterdom, SF, with contributors like George Saunders, Zadie Smith, and the Pope of Late Stage hipsterdom himself, David Foster Wallace.
- no names but there is a specific individual and @tommer knows who it is
2 responses to “Origin Story 2”
Are we nobody?
You and I would absolutely listen to our podcast. We’d maybe end up having one original episode with every subsequent episode being a critique of the one before it, because we’d listen and realize we didn’t like some or all of what we were saying, or that we had new takes or more to elaborate on.
Also, I just read your post, and you read mine.
I don’t think we’re nobody.
Think of it as a future endearing symbol of our humble beginnings, our version of hanging up our our first dollar bill. When we reach one-million readers we’ll frame this parenthetical and it will be a lovable footnote to our success.