Introducing My Year of Flops II: The Desolation of Smaug, Coming in 2019!
This guy gets it!
Well, readers, we have made it nearly to the end of another year. What highs! What lows! What creamy middles! It is a time for reflection but it is also a time for looking forward.
2018 was a tough year in many ways. I hate to get political on here, but have you checked out the President? There’s something a little wrong with that guy. But it was also a glorious year as well. The wife and I had a baby! And that baby is amazing! Oh my God, it is ridiculous how adorable my baby is! He’s so unrelentingly adorable, sweet, good-natured and mild that he gives me very little to write about. He’s a little angel-baby is what he is.
My older boy continues to evolve in wonderful and surprising ways that fill my life with satisfaction, joy and meaning. The same is true of my professional babies Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and Nathan Rabin’s Happy Cast. I’m super proud of the work Clint and I did this year for the podcast and the website.
I introduced Control Nathan Rabin 4.0, a column that allows readers to choose a movie I must watch and then write about in March and it immediately pumped a whole lot of new life and money into the site. Pledges to the Happy Place Patreon had hit a wall but this column blasted right through that wall, gave me an even more direct connection to my readers and patrons and resulted in a whole bunch of great articles for the site. This afternoon I will work on my 34th entry in the series.
God willing, I’ll continue to churn out weekly Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 pieces next year but I would like to take this time to announce that in 2019 Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place will be the home of My Year of Flops 2: The Desolation of Smaug.
That’s right: every Wednesday will see the publication of a brand spanking new My World of Flops piece, fifty two in all. I love, love, love this column but I feel like I have not been making optimal use of it on this website. In the twenty two months or so of its existence I’ve written maybe 18 new entries and while I write about a lot of failed, terrible movies for other columns there’s something special to me about My World of Flops. It’s got a history. It’s got a tradition. It connects me to my past when things looked a little bit brighter and not so oppressively, impossibly difficult.
I’m excited about going back into the world of failure and sadness and public humiliation, although I suppose you could say that I never left it.
Now there are generally two kinds of sequels. There are sequels that are the product of passion, enthusiasm and an organic desire to expand a universe veritably bursting with creative as well as commercial possibilities.
Then there are late-in-the-game sequels obviously born of desperation, where the budget is way, way lower and the whole enterprise is coated in an unmistakable layer of flopsweat. If Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part 2 are examples of the first breed of follow-up, Deuce Bigalow embodies the second.
Which will My World of Flops 2: The Desolation of Smaug be? Let’s just say it’ll be a little from column A and a little from column B. The second Year of Flops will actually occupy the exact middle point in quality between The Godfather Part 2 and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. I don’t know about you, but I’m eager to see what that’ll look like.
To make it possible for y’all to play along I’m going to try to give advance notice as to what I’m going to be covering. With that in mind, this is what I have pencilled in for January:
January 2nd: Stripperella
January 9th: Jar Jar Binks
January 16th: A Winter’s Tale
January 23rd: The Happytime Murders
January 30th: Ren & Stimpy’s Adult Party
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m looking forward to reading, as well as writing those pieces. What would y’all like to see me cover for My Year of Flops 2: Desolation of Smaug?
I make my living largely through crowd-funding, so if you would be kind enough to consider pledging even a dollar over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace it’d be
