Well, yesterday I finished the fourth and final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH. It didn’t end the way I thought it would! Checked in with Jimmy, but he has only recently cracked open volume three, so I have no one to talk to. But that’s not why we’re here, is it? As sorry as I am to admit it, today marks the 20th anniversary of the "blog." What a waste of time! What a monument, indeed, to the wasting of time. Just in case you don’t want to go back and read all 6,455 previous "posts," I am going to attach "hyperlinks" to the single greatest "post" from each year. Ballots were sent to Nobel prizewinners, movie stars, and rulers of nations. Results were tabulated by an army of robots. 2006: I mash my middle finger while attempting to get the suitcase out of the trunk. 2007: I think I see a spider on the hand soap dispenser. 2008: I drop a French fry on the floor. 2009: Emily shows me her wisdom teeth. 2010: G. Gordon Liddy’s commercial for gold. 2011: Is it 2011 already? Many (ha ha!) would assume my big long list of books with owls in them to be the obvious choice here. But there’s a problem with that! Though initiated in October 2011, which date it retains, the owl list has been regularly updated ever since and so cannot be said to belong exclusively to that year. The list of books with owls in them is for all time! And all people! And all owls! No, the greatest "post" of 2011 was when I eavesdropped on a conversation about someone who displayed dinosaur bones at her wedding reception. That being said, remember when I cleverly observed that James Ellroy simply can’t resist the term "night owl"? Well, I was too busy to tell you, but last week I was reading a different James Ellroy book than the one which provoked the comment, and I have to admit this one is comparatively light on night owls. He’s exercising uncharacteristic restraint! In the 300 or so pages I’ve read so far, he does use it twice with a hyphen ("night-owl"), as an adjective. So that’s exciting. 2012: A guy pulls my teeth while telling me a story about B.B. King. 2013: A cool name for a dog. 2014: I out-crazy an authentic New York City crazy. 2015: Lawrence Welk’s sexy daughter-in-law. 2016: Scarlet fever isn’t all that. 2017: Critiquing a quip that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes to a dead alligator. 2018: A bone falls out of the sky (photographic evidence included). 2019: An omelet named after my novel has been taken off the menu. 2020: Counting wienies. 2021: We sit around the house talking about Jonathan "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Edwards. 2022: What they put on pancakes in Sweden. 2023: The New York Times throws its considerable weight behind Skippy brand peanut butter. 2024: Prayed over by a fudge manufacturer in an airport. 2025: The fork I’ve been eating with for close to sixty years is lost forever. 2026: Ending on another bummer, as seems appropriate, I leave my hat behind at my parents’ house. So many things lost. Forks, hats, omelets, time. All right! There it is, the "blog" in one neat package. See you on September 27, 2056, for the 50th anniversary. In hell! (Pictured, the hat, in 2019, at the Los Alamitos racetrack with Pendleton Ward.)
