About a week ago, I announced the end of my flagship blog Optigrab. It came after 11 years of helping to shape a career and turning me into the writer that I am today. There was also the promise that soon there would be an announcement, detailing the next phase of my writing career. Well, the wait is over. Tonight at midnight, I will be launching my new endeavor known as The Memory Tourist, where I will still be writing about all things pop culture, but with a very different approach to it. It's a journey that will expand upon what Optigrab was while finding ways to intersect the personal and commercial in an attempt at understanding why media matters to us.
As much as I love writing about pop culture, there was something limiting about Optigrab by the end. I found myself amid the Coronavirus pandemic wondering what exactly I had to say about anything. The idea of keeping up with new trends would soon be falling apart, and I had very little to fall back on. It was then that I decided to take a few cues from other websites and switch the style up. I needed to find ways to be more engaged with what I had to say and, more importantly, I didn't have to rely on current events to give me something to write about. I just needed to go for it.
And thus The Memory Tourist was born. Not only will the style be different, but I am going to try and push myself to update it daily with 1-3 posts that will explore media as it relates to my life. I hope that it's more entertaining and sustainable, branching into territories that I never felt comfortable covering here. While film and TV will still be in the mix, I plan to include everything from music to podcasts, sports, product reviews, and ways to stay positive during a pandemic. I don't have a lot of cures for these troubling times, but I do have the power of the written word.
Among topics that will be discussed in the first week:
-The New Mutants and sympathy for the cursed
-The Madonna Project's entry on the compromised legacy of "Who's That Girl?"
-Hardwood Classics and the love of old NBA games
-Saturday Matinee highlighting the best movie I've seen that week
-Staying positive during a pandemic
-Loving dumb college mascots
-A Wednesday column highlighting writers
-The soap opera of The Houston Rockets
-What's the "Hot Fuss" about The Killers' debut album?
-The frustrating rollout of Sprite Cranberry
And that's just part of it. There's much, much more to come. While this first week will be jam-packed, it is likely that things will mellow out in the weeks to come. Still, I felt it was important to explore as much as possible to give a sense of what I intend to do with this new website. If nothing else, it's the most inspired that I have been in quite a while as a writer. I hope to make it more successful than previous endeavors and possibly make it grow into something more substantial for my career.
Please feel free to join me on my journey at The Memory Tourist. At midnight, everything will begin. Pardon the dust as I redesign the website, adding textures to make the page more appealing to look at. With that said, the writing will be there and ready to go starting at midnight. I hope that you enjoy and thank you for all of your support ahead of time.
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