Original Concept Design September 2003

Boiskov: Where the fuck are you? It's almost midnight and we need your part of the article so we can update the fucking site.
Auto response from Keasbey Mornings: pirate night brb
Boiskov: You son of a bitch.

   When Jon first confronted me in regard to what I thought we should do in recognition of our two year anniversary, I told him what I thought he should do is go fuck himself. "I'm a self-important Internet celebrity," I said. "I don't have time for your bullshit." Feeling particularly assertive, I then bellowed for my mother to bring down a slice of frozen pizza and another Mountain Dew. The evening was young and I'd yet to embark upon the myriad of adventures awaiting me in the far-off kingdom of Norath.

Years later, doctors would tell my supervisor in the home appliances department of Sears that I died of a ruptured coronary, miserable and alone.

The End

Just kidding, friends. In all honesty, I couldn't be more appreciative of having taken part in founding the best website to ever grace this Internet or any of its future incarnations. During the summer of 2003, when talks first started between Jon, Nick, B, Mendal and myself, I didn't quite understand why they'd be interested in taking on someone whose talents as a writer had at the time gone untested (many would suggest such is still the case. These people are encouraged to kindly fornicate themselves with a barbed croquet mallet,) but that didn't keep it from being one of the most overwhelmingly flattering offers to ever be extended my way. I can't say I've made the most of my oppertunity, but for them to look past that and forgive me for being the collosal walking catastrophe I am speaks volumes to their character. My writing this right now shows to me that there's something in myself they saw that maybe I've yet to discover.

At any rate, I'm going to try and keep things marginally short, as all this mushy stuff has already put my reputation of being the resident snarky pessimist in jeopardy. I'm just going to say that I'd be more than honored to know any one of these people personally, and I can't even begin to express the amount of appreciation and respect I have for the amount of creativity and effort they've put forward on a weekly basis for the past two years. To me, that is simply an astonishing feat in itself, and if the world were a more perfect place they'd all be sipping Crystale out of the Cup of Life while being fed grapes by several maidens of comely virtue. For now though, I'll have to stick with letting each and every one of them know how goddamned privlidged I am to be able to call them my friends.

Main Page Design #2 Fall 2003 - Summer 2004

   It's recently come to my attention that I am believed to be the staff member most likely to lose my shit and quit the site in a fit of rage and self loathing. On the one this is ludicrous. Sure, my self loathing is great, but at least I'm not a secret cutter like Jon is. On the other hand it makes sense. Every time I complete a post I do it thinking I'm going to be fired soon. I remember the stories about how Mendal had to be fired, how his socio-political, "No blood for Hitler" schtick just "wasn't what the site was about." Okay... what is the site about? Baseball and video games? I'm the only writer on staff to have never (Sandlot musings not withstanding) written about either one. Unless you count Mark. But wait, who the hell is Mark?

A look through my archives shows that, lesbians aside, a lot of my stuff is pretty hard to classify. And not in that cool, "ooh, look, Emily is so esoteric and edgy, we never know what she'll do" way, but more in that, "I should've written this in my Xanga" kind of way. People have always responded nicely to me, so I'm not complaining, I'm just betting everyone got sick of me incessantly talking about myself sometime last year. Fucking Christ, this is the third time I've talked about how I don't really fit in on staff. FIND A NEW THEME EMILY. I just never got over that feeling that I'm the "Jen" of this site, and everyone is laughing politely because my boobs are on the main page.

WISTFUL REFLECTIONS OF YOUR TIME ON STAFF. Right. Of course. I feel like I can't get through this without saying a personal and profound thank you to Brandon. I told him when we first met (which was... wow, four years ago) that I'd entertained fantasies of being on the Whatever-Dude staff. A few months after the debut of P-boi he, ever the Gina Davis to my little sister Lori Petty, made my modest dreams of internet celebrity come true. He's bailed me out more times than I can count, been my most consistent and loving fan, and is always the one to pull me back from the ledge when I'm too close to becoming CRAZY FORMER STAFF MEMBER EMILY ROWLEY.

To the rest of my fellow writers... I love you all, I really do and I don't tell any of you that nearly enough. You guys have made this site what it is, have given it the momentum to grow past what any of us expected, and I'm so pleased and grateful to have been toted along. To the comic artists... the three of you do something I can't, and I'm incredibly envious but totally pleased to have you all beside (well, just underneath) me on the staff page. I want to sit on all of your faces until my winking eye of God sings with pleasure.

... heh, damnit I knew I couldn't get through this without mentioning my vagina.

   I came to Progressive Boink in the fall of 2003. I was looking for NBA Jam cheat codes, based on the childhood rumor that it was possible to play with Bill Clinton’s head as the ball, make Scottie Pippen perform “nudalities” on Detlef Schrempf, and so forth. I stumbled across B and Jon’s NBA Jam article on Whatever-Dude and busted several guts over the course of reading it. This led me to read the rest of B’s W-D archives and buy his book, and I was very disappointed when I came to the end of everything written by B. I never ventured into the forums, so I don’t remember exactly how I came to realize there was to be more at the newly-founded Progressive Boink, but I eventually made my way over.

I loved the new articles, but I also decided to start reading the forums, where I found the most tight-knit forum community I’ve ever seen on any site. I had been members of various sites’ forums before, and it seemed like they’d fall into one of three categories: those abounding with gimmick posters and nonsense humor, those whose entire member list consists of people saying the site has lost its touch, or those that are so huge that no one gets to know one another and the boards become a haze of threads that read, “Help! My girlfriend dumped me and now I want to kill myself!” followed by a few posts that can be summed up by “ur gay,” then when you hit refresh, they’re on the fourth page, bested by twenty threads just like the first, along with others full of passive aggression and tales of alleged real-life coolness.

Progressive Boink’s forums defied all of these categories and seemed more like a distinctive community than any other I’d seen. So I lurked. Then I joined. Recent forum additions who have been met with my scorn and derision over slightly lame jokes or presumed body odor problems might be surprised to realize that my first post was an overly-long, terribly embarrassing one in which I disclosed any information about myself one might conceivably ever want to know—that I, like B, was from Lynchburg; I’d worked at the same Blockbuster he had; etc.

Jon made fun of me and it was too much for my fragile heart to handle; I disappeared for a few months, returning to post only twice, once to show my appreciation for new staff member Bill, and once to request that the list following the Best Family Guy Moments be about Mr. Show, as opposed to Cowboy Bebop, which I suggested was a show for fat people who wear green trench coats. I finally began regular posting very auspiciously in July of 2004, with a comparison I drew between poster Illinois Smith’s appearance and that of Ted Nugent.

Over the following months, my combination of ruthlessly insulting posters I considered less funny or intelligent than myself—or otherwise beneath me in some capacity—and attempting to hit the ground running as regarded inside jokes and the like surprisingly led to the “forum elite” quickly accepting me. By late fall, I too was counted among the forum elders and could start a thread about how grumpy I was on a particular day without fear of rebuke.

At the time during which I was becoming more a member of the forum community, I was also enjoying watching as the main site became better and better. More relevant to my presence on the staff is that at this time, I was doing a comic strip with my friend Jonathan Green for my college’s newspaper. I got the impression that Squeezedale was pretty universally hated at a school whose comic pages have always consisted of limp humor that only makes sense to other UVa students, but I enjoyed doing it. That lasted until about midway through the year, at which point a big controversy over one of our strips and the continued sense that no one appreciated the comic other than my own friends was starting to wear on me. I would discuss this at length in the forums, until finally all my complaining made former forum member Charm suggest that I start doing a weekly strip for Progressive Boink. I was somewhat surprised, but certainly very pleasantly so, when all staff members agreed.

So I came up with a few ideas, settling on one about Aeneas entering the Internet for my first strip. This established a pattern of inscrutable, literary humor that I soon abandoned for broader subjects when I realized the comedy nugget of “Chaucer is a perv” is only so large. And that brings me to the present.

I’ve said it before in the forums, but it’s insane that I can say without hyperbole that I believe Progressive Boink to be the best site on the internet. It certainly isn’t more useful than Google or more valuable than Amazon, but I consider sites like those to be of a category whose worth is quantifiable, not really “better” than other sites in terms of content. For me, Progressive Boink is the most consistently creative, hilarious site I’ve ever been to, and it’s been nothing but an honor to get to do something I enjoy for them and to get to know the other staff members and members of the forum community. If I’m ever abrasive or unaccepting in the forums, it’s only because I love this place so much that even the slightest hint of change in a direction I don’t immediately like makes me defensive.

If Progressive Boink was a lady, I’d make it a nice chicken dinner and seduce it to the sounds of Edith Piaf.

Main Page Design #3 Fall 2004

   This website has been a decent chunk of all the staff’s lives, but it’s been a little different for me, I think. You see, I’m the youngest on staff by a large margin, so two years ago I was nothing but a sapling.

Jon had gotten me involved in writing, through the now hallowed backwords.150m.com. 150 megs of storage for free! I’ve yet to see anything like it in the world.

Here, Jon really stuck out as the predominant writer. His posts were longer than the rest of ours, and to cut through the thick of it, they were a lot funnier. Kid had talent, and he surely was going to take us to states this year.

Well where he took us was a lot better than states.

Before the site started I had already mixed in rings about the internet, mostly in the form of forums. I remember looking at the staffers there and seeing them as more than people. My favorite website was Whatever Dude, as any pubescently-struggling teenager would tell you. My favorite writer, B, was more than my favorite writer. A collection of friends and I would carry around burned discs with every article of his on it, as many of the computers in our school did not have internet. “B=Best!!1” my book covers proudly wore.

I remember a friend telling me how he had spoken to B over Instant Messenger. How many times had I thought about rolling internet dice in a chatroom with B, and this kid had just IM’d him out of nowhere? Is that even allowed? That very day I went home from school and sent him a message. The conversation went along the lines of:

rageguitar99: hey B you’re god
NotAGoonie: No I’m not.

Yeah, I felt like a complete DB. I honestly don’t even remember what other possible reaction could have come from that statement. I didn’t care, though. I went to school the next day and told said friend that B earnestly suggested I run for president.

Now imagine participating alongside your idol in whatever field they are accomplished in. That’s exactly what I was allowed to do when the website launched, and it really was one of the proudest moments I’ve experienced.

As the site progressed (pun intended) we underwent many changes. We lost staff members and we gained staff members. I feel as though the staff we gained just sort of fell into our lap. The ratio of talent we received to effort we put into finding talent is astronomical. I still have no idea why Bill and Emily are writing for us and not the USA Today.

At this point I was as proud as could be of the web site and how it was panning out. The forums were well-established and several of the writers were being linked all over the internet. It seemed as if it couldn’t get much better. Well, it got a lot better when Mike Fireball jumped ship on Pop Rocks and Coke to join our site. He completely redesigned the entire web site and brought with him a small fortune in writing. He has added on to this pile since being here. It goes without saying that the web site you are familiar with now is the artwork and brainchild of one Fireball.

While I’m handing out due comeuppance, I’d like to point something out to all of you. After completing this week’s update (of course!) please redirect yourself to Jon’s archive page. Notice how since the start of the web site he has compiled about 600 more entries than the rest of the staff combined? That isn’t easy, and shouldn’t be taken for granted. If you enjoy this site as much as I do, I think it’s only proper to let him know how thankful you are for it. Though each member of the staff is valuable in their own way, I give the
MVP to this guy.

This web site, from the start, has been one of my favorite web sites. I anxiously await updates from the other writers. I think these guys, as a whole, are the funniest team on the internet. I’ve never seen such consistent humor from any other site. I’m really proud to be a part of this site. I’m really proud to call these people my friends.

TWO YEARS?! IT FELT MORE LIKE FIVE! SMELL YA LATER, NINTENDO NURDS!

Main Page Design #4 Winter 2004-2005

   Y'all are a bunch of windbags. Or I'm just brief with words. Either way is cool. Here it is:

I don't remember how or why I found Progressive Boink. What I do remember is how much I marvelled at what I had found. That sense of amazement with what the staff members of Progressive Boink accomplish grows with every week. The quality and consistancy of the funny you find at P-Boi is unmatched anywhere else. I'm not saying that as a staff member, I'm saying that as a fan. I remain in perpetual awe of what the six writers and two other comics artists accomplish. Each week brings something new and incredible, and to have two years of that is simply astounding.

Happy Anniversary, P-Boi. Thanks for everything.

A brief story: I went to a wrestling show once, and Mick Foley was there, signing autographs. I picked out which 8x10 I wanted him to sign, and when he asked me what the name was I told him "Well, it's not really a name. Well, it is, but not really. I want you to write "B=best" on it for me."

"You want me to write what?" he asked me, genuinely confused.

"See, I have this friend, and often instead of complimenting him we just say B=best, with several exclamation points, only because it's a text based joke, the last two exclamation points are..." I trailed off, because clearly explaining the joke wasn't going to get me anywhere.

"What do you want me to write?" he asked.

"The letter B, then an equals sign, then the word best." And so he did. "Thank you," I said, "Now if you could just write exclamation point exclamation point one one, after it. Well not write it like spell it out, but two exclamation points and the number 1 twice." He did it slowly, unsure of what he was doing or why he was doing it. But it was done, and so I thanked him and left, slightly embarrased but happy.

"hey man you haven't updated in a while"

   "I know. I've been doing sites for some other people, plus I'm looking around for a real job."

"oh...

you should write an article about count duckula!"

(ungh) "We'll see."

It had become a chore just to post something. It wasn't even "writing" back then. Not to me. Not in the way that you'd list "writing" among your hobbies. I wasn't a writer. I was a communication major with a glorified blog & a knowledge of Paint Shop. Big deal. But my friends liked it, & eventually I'd get into the sites like Whatever-Dude & X-E & Seanbaby & Robot Frank enough that I said to myself, "Hey, I can do that. Let's make a website like that from scratch & see how far I can take it."

And that's how PoprocksAndCoke.com pretty much started the X-E knockoff movement. Sure, there were a few before it, but I was inexplicably the one that got the secondary credit after Matt. Then in 2003, after a year & a half, I found myself out of college, searching for a real job & making websites on the side for some musically talented friends. I took a break from the site because I just didn't have the time to devote to my stupid nostalgia tribute site. And frankly, by the time it got hacked, I'd forgotten how fun it was. So I just kind of let it sit there. I was tired of being called unoriginal, but at the same time, I wanted to get back into doing something.

Then Christmas came & my inner child's heart grew 12 sizes like it does every year, & with Matt's blessing, I tried my hand at a countdown to the birth of our Savior in which I'd write about my favorite holiday specials. There I was, hustling & bustling around Google searching for screen caps to gank.

"hay whats next on the countdown?"
"Emmet Otter. I'm having a hell of a time finding screen caps of it, though..."

"Oh here we go... ah, crap. It looks like this page was just written. That wouldn't be right.

"Wait a minute...

"This page is hilarious. What site is this on?
Progressive Boink? Never heard of it. Nice name, though. And this is just about the funniest thing I've ever read on the internet. Let's have a look around.
Hey, is that the same B who used to write on Whatever-Dude? I liked his stuff. I wonder why he stopped writing there."

There are no rules to Calvinball, except to have fun and be original.

"Man, this site is awesome. It's just what I've been missing. A unique approach to the things I love."

So after I finally got around to finishing my little commission projects for the bands, I decided that I was done. No more websites for other people. It's time to get back to doing something for myself again.

"Hey guy, we were wondering if you would redesign our website for us."

Son of a bitch.

Ok, one more website for other people. It was P-boi who got me back into wanting to do something for me again, so the least I could do was make their site a little better looking without having to get too fancy. What these guys did was special, & to have it lost behind a fancy schmancy web design would be an awful shame.

And B saw that I was struggling. He knew.
"We make fun of sites like yours, but the truth is your stuff is a lot better than 90% of the others like it. So post more. I demand it. Well, I don't demand anything, but I would really like it if you to."

That's not verbatim, but the gist is there.

Then I ganked one of his jokes because I forgot that I didn't think of it first. That was it. That was the line. How many other jokes had I told that I thought were mine & I really just got them from somewhere else & forgot? I was finally starting to do a little something more than "LOOK AT THIS PICTURE I TOOK," & the time had come to quit the internet.

"We were wondering if you wanted to write for our site."

Are you fucking kidding me?

I just made myself look like 12 times more of an unoriginal douchebag to this guy, & the web design I made them wasn't even that great either, & now they wanted me to write with them. Oh well, worse romantic comedy endings have been written. Why the hell not?

The next day my best friend sends me this collage that she made for my birthday...

I'd already started my thing on the Admiral Bird. Getting this gift was a personal sign that I'd better pour my liquified-turned-digital media heart into it by the time it was done.

And I've never been happier with myself.

Or more frustrated that more of my old readers don't appreciate my new home. This place has become my honest to God home on the internet, & a lot of people "don't get us." Look, I don't get all of B's wrestling jokes, either. But he explains them to me & then I see what he did there & get an honest appreciation for it. It's not that hard, friends. You don't have to like baseball to laugh at the screen names in the Dugout. All you have to do is click. All you have to do is read. There are some wonderful moments tucked in among the text on this website, many of which make me giggle out loud like an idiot.

In the last year, I've made some of the best friends I have in the staff here. They love what I do, & I love what they do, & we keep amazing & inspiring each other as we keep coming up with these crazy, stupid little stories. And they give me stupid titles like MVP & President, but they're the ones who helped me find something in me that I probably never would've found on my own. I am forever grateful. You deserve this way more than I do...

<3. LESS THAN THE NUMBER THREE

And to those of you I dragged over here, the ones who "get me," & especially the ones who motivate me to equal most good!!11 even if you don't think you do it outwardly all the time, you always do, in one little way or another. I wouldn't be the best Fireball I can be without you. It sounds cheesy & cliche, but come on. I started a website by talking about cereal mascots & things in NES games that looked like boobs. You have to just let me be predictable sometimes.

And God bless us, everyone.

Main Page Design #5 Halloween Week: January 2005

   We've now been around for two years. That's 104 weeks. Take away the four weeks I can remember us taking off, and that gives us around three hundred features. I try to imagine the nights I spent working on my post until 9 AM, taking a shower, getting dressed, and going in to work all day. I try to imagine B during those times he said, "Don't worry about it, I'll give everyone the week off and do it all myself if you'd like", like some sort of fucking comedy-writing factory. I try to imagine Emily finding room in between full-time work and full-time school to write posts that are often longer than mine are. I try to imagine Bill forcing himself through brutal writer's blocks to make deadline, and Nick helping us out despite a billion hours of schoolwork per week and living in potentially the most distracting environment this side of Terrell Owens in training camp juggling sparklers and blowing on a noisemaker while riding a unicycle. I try to imagine occasionally signing on at 4 in the morning and seeing that everyone has an away message up but Mike, who has been spending the last few hours putting together a new page design.

Anyone who knows me knows I can get worn out, lazy and apathetic after working for too long without the necessary encouragement. I generally burn out easily. My two major online writing attempts ended because I burned out. So when I first started playing with the idea of starting up a site of my own, I immediately doubted myself. As can be plainly seen by looking up 90% of the writing entertainment (for lack of a better term that didn't sound lame) websites on the Internet, any asshole can start up a site. Webmasters often get really excited at the site off the bat, put together an amazing-looking, dynamic site design, and lose interest soon after, leaving yet another ghost site to add to the millions already out there. It's something I don't understand: why do something that you're not going to do all the way? If you're not going to make something the best you can possibly make it, why are you even bothering in the first place?

This is why I doubted myself. The worst-case scenario sounded too much like something I would do. I can credit a few factors for saving me from that fate: starting with some really great friends, or working alongside B, who is among the most driven people I have ever known in my life. But it was most likely due to the fact that we didn't have what a lot of those abandoned sites do: a flashy site design.

Check that shit out. That design holds a special place in my heart, but it has all the "wow" factor of a piece of toast. When we started, one of us was already a hugely accomplished Internet writer, and I think the rest of us were still pretty good. But we didn't know the first thing about actual web design. And actually, now that I think about it, it was the perfect way for a site to start. Leave a group of good but technologically incompetent writers to completely fend for themselves. No fancy design, no "friends" section made up of about 40 million 90x31 images linking to some comic strip about pixelated Marios and Links saying "OH MY GOSH!" to each other. We had to rely on our own writing for recognition and personal satisfaction, because it sure as hell wasn't going to come from anywhere else.

Sure enough, it stuck. Well, for about two months, anyway, at which point we sold out and got a professional-looking design going, as you've seen already in number 2 up there.

If it sounds like we're elitists, that's because we kind of are. We really believe that what we're doing is some of the best stuff on the Internet. I don't feel like there's anything wrong with saying that, either, as long as you really believe it. I wish I could offer more of a humble attitude, but at the moment all I can offer in the way of humility are the following two items:

1. In middle and high school, I was a good-field, no-hit second baseman who usually reached base by bunting on. Sometimes they would use the DH on me instead of the pitcher.

2. There is no chance I would still be doing this without the support of
a) the people who I write with, who have become some of my very best friends.
b) the people who read our website. Sometimes I feel a little selfish when I write things that are completely out there and retarded, and seem to me that I'm the only one who's going to get it. You readers have a great deal of patience to put up with some of the things we, and especially I, write. I liken myself who makes everyone at the party shut up for twenty minutes so I can tell this big long elaborate joke. I'd say a lot of those people made some sort of excuse to leave, ranging from "oh you know what, I forgot to turn my stove off", to "your a faggot get of the internet". But to those of you who stuck around, laughed, and have asked me to tell another joke, I'm extremely, extremely grateful. I do this to please myself, but I mean that in the most selfless way possible.

Main Page Design #6 Spring 2005

   For the last two months I've been unable to write. Dealing with multiple problems on multiple ends, any creative efforts in my mind were pushed to the back burner. Farther than that. They've been pushed to that little clock that's never set right. That creative block has not suddenly alleviated itself for this anniversary, though for the record it's almost done I swear don't fire me :-(

However, I can at least say this: Roughly a year and a half ago I haphazardly threw together a pathetic 800 word document about Billy Mays and his stunning resemblance to Zangief and sent it in to the folks at P-Boi on a whim. Perhaps with a clearer head I never would have tried, but I was growing increasingly frustrated and depressed by not having any sort of creative outlet in my life. I didn't draw, I didn't paint, I didn't sing, I didn't blow glass. I had images floating around in my head whose cries for expression were beginning to drown out my regular trains of thought. So, when I saw that they were looking for writers, I threw caution to the wind and sent my work in. Not a great deal of caution, actually, looking back on it, but dammit it seemed like a big deal at the time. It was an agonizing wait to hear back from the crew, considering I had no real frame of reference for whether I was any good or not and faced the very real possibility of being laughed out of the proverbial room. But finally and at long last I got that fateful letter from Jon:

"hey this is okay but its kinda short you think you could write another one but longer"

That son of a bitch.

So I haphazardly threw together ANOTHER, slightly longer document about some faggy genre of music that no one else listens to and that became my first article posted on Progressive Boink. From then to now, P-Boi has served as that outlet, that form of expression I had been looking for all those years. My output has not exactly been torrential, but all the same it has been an important part of my life and, at risk of sounding melodramatic, the only thing I do that has any real value. So I thank everybody here for putting up with me and helping to contribute to the second best website on the Internet. The first being Mahir Cagri's home page. That guy's so crazy.

   My impression, perspective and memories of Progressive Boink are, at this point, still more so that of a fan rather than a staff member. I maintain the idea that no matter how long I am on staff that I will always be first and foremost a fan. As the newest member of staff it's hard for me to reach into the bottomless memory bag and pull out impressions of the beginning of the site or how far it has come because I haven't been around that long. I guess a privilege of being the new kid is that now that I've written about Indiana Jones fighting a big, bald nazi, I get to live out my other fantasies in the Disney MGM studio, like playing basketball with Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

As many of you know, there is one single person responsible for me clicking over to Progressive Boink. Yes sir, that man is none other than Ronald Regean. Had it not been for his presidency in the 1980s I… wait. Hold on a second. I'd rather not go into some long cause and effect explanation. That would be a bit too high brow for me and frankly, we're all here to make cheap jokes about Paris Hilton. Girl, you know it's true. See a joke about Milli Vanilli. That's my level of humor because I remember things that were popular in the decade that I was born.

The real story is that I came to Progressive Boink thanks to Mike Fireball. I had been an avid fan of his writing because I enjoyed his humor, but was disappointed that he hadn't been writing that much, due to the fact that he has a life outside of his world famous website making. I remember him writing about how excited he was to be invited on board as staff and asking me which articles of his that he should go without for when he moved his archive. Being a devoted follower of Fireball (Deus ex Mike) the idea of seeing his articles posted more often thanks to P-Boi was a thrill. I feel bad to make the confession that I largely ignored the articles of the rest of the staff at first. It wasn't until I decided to investigate the archives (the things that pirates put on their baked potatoes) that I was able to see the quality of writing and humor that I would come to adore. I can remember the first article I read from each person and can still point out the parts that made me laugh hardest.

My embarrassing admission is that I was envious after reading everything. No, really. Every article I read, I just thought how I wished I could write that well or come up with a joke that would make people laugh or even contribute something that people would take the time to read. I have written before or drawn pictures for myself, but I've always been shy about sharing them. I started to come out of my shell somewhat when I decided to start posting onto the forum. The forum is the place that I was able to post pictures of me with writing over my girl parts and the opportunity to have boys online hit on me awkwardly because of it. Okay, maybe that was only part of it. It was the place where I started to get a feel for how close knit Progressive Boink is and how happy I was to be part of it.

Through a stroke of luck on my part, I managed to get connected with B and after he looked at the pathetic attempts at art I had made on Deviantart.com he goaded me into drawing him a few comics. I know they're floating around his computer still, but I am happy that from those humble beginnings that he was able to see potential. Being on staff here at Progressive Boink is something that I am not only happy to be a part of, but proud of as well. I love to be able to brag about how great everyone on the site is and how fun it is to read the comics and the articles. I could sit and list why I appreciate everyone and other things like that but I think that comes across more in how enthusiastic I am to be a part of staff. Progressive Boink is my favorite site on the internet, my favorite group of writers and people and most importantly, it's like another home to me. I don't think I would feel quite like myself without it.

Main Page Design #7 Summer 2005

   Everything was going fine with Whatever-Dude.com until we met in real life and decided we didn't like each other very much.

This is what terrified me about getting back into writing online. My first website was the "Celebrity Superfight Main-Event." I needed something constructive to do while my high school friends sat around smoking pot out of little corncob pipe devices that baffled me. I used it as a way to say what I was feeling. I talked about how great it was to be a man. I talked about little things like how great Goldberg was and how pointless it would be to date a girl with a tongue ring. I was a moron. A complete moron. And eventually doing the site pushed me away from the same people who helped me birth it, and I've still lost most of those friends forever.

I started writing for wrestling opinion boards. I spent some time on ScoopThis.com and Wrestling Uncensored, two very popular sites from one of the two times in my life when I could say "I KNOW A LOT ABOUT WRESTLING" in a crowded room and have it make things better. I bonded with an absolute legion of overweight guys who had a lot of passion but not a lot of ways to show it. And when I started to grow as a writer I began to alienate myself within the crowd. Five years later a lot of those guys are still on the same forums, talking about the same things and laughing at the same jokes. Whether it was my arrogance or their motionlessness I made like Stone Cold Steve Austin and took my ball, and went home. I still have it sitting on my mantle.

When I left Wrestling Uncensored it was tied to the hip of Matt Caracappa. He wanted to do a wrestling opinion board, but for entertainment. Movies and old TV shows and toys. SUBVULTURE.NET he called it, and it was going to change the Internet forever. It did, kind of, when it became X-Entertainment and basically ushered in an entire web full of DO YOU REMEMBER THUNDERCATS. I still blame Matt for not being able to find myself a good pair of red Dickies beneath the sixteen cases of Care Bears T-shirts at Hot Topic. He had a singular vision and after a while it stopped including me. I wasn't writing that much and I wasn't writing what his audience really wanted, but when he fired me I got big red eyes. I hated him. More than anyone else I've ever known online I hated and resented what he'd done to me, from cutting me out of that one or two years when the Internet made you money to just valuing what a cam girl thinks about his MUSCLE collection over my friendship.

Whatever-Dude.com was founded by myself, Dave Macchia, and Paul (from the band Evan and Jaron). We were all exiled X-Entertainment writers and we wanted to prove that we were better than Matt. We were the "unpopular culture" website. We didn't appeal to lame motherfuckers sitting in their parents' basement trying to remember that Saturday morning cartoon commercial about putting orange juice in your ice trays to make a healthy snack. We appealed to the people who went out on the weekends, who had girlfriends, who had a "life" but wanted to laugh. The problem is that at the time I was a lot closer to the people we weren't trying to impress than the ones we were. I sat outside on the street in the middle of a New York City night buying pizza for a homeless guy as they drank and danced around in the club. I got too emotional, took everything too personally, and walked about 65 blocks when I should've just gotten a cab. I lost the people I thought I'd finally found because I wasn't grown up enough, and there were too much so.

I've never really had a home. My Dad is a radio personality and wages a continuing war with Clear Channel, moving from station to station in cities and towns wherever he can find the work to support my Mom and I, at least until the Low Men in Yellow Coats show up to buy up the station. I've lived in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, West Virginia, on the streets. We were homeless for a while. Not a long while. My Dad swallowed his pride and put a roof over my head even if it made him miserable, because I needed it. So I don't hold it against him. But I never really had a home.

Elementary schools, middle schools, new groups of friends and older ones forgotten. A house, an apartment, a room in my Grandfather's basement. Rats on my cradle and gnats collected like particles of dust in my kitchen sink. It seemed to be the same story wherever I went. I'd do what I could to make friends, and then they'd go away. Everyone I love seems to go away. I've lost a best friend and a cousin to suicide. I've written about them melodramatically. I wonder if I'd write about Dig Dug when my Father dies.

I move in, I befriend, I alienate. My fault or theirs, it happens.

There was a boy named Jon Bois writing for Whatever-Dude.com a year or so after I'd moved away with my head lowered. He seemed trapped. He had so much talent, and you could tell beneath the formulaic jokes and references he was being asked to make for his audience. He wanted something more. I knew it. And when we ended up working on the same project, illogically, I came to know him not only as a Whatever-Dude staffer but a friend, and moreso than that a friend who just needed someone to say "okay" to blow through the ceiling. If he'd just turn and run.

I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted them to call me "Kenta" just to avoid the drama. I wanted to write some goofy, funny stuff and let the others run the show.

And, just like that, I was home.

Expressing what the site means to me now arrives to me as trivial and a retread of what the others have said. I respect and love these people. They're my friends and peers. Bill is my favorite writer on the Internet. Jon makes me want to be a better writer. Emily supported me creatively when I was writing my novel, on and on and on. Blah blah blah. Welcome to our livejournal where we will discuss what out of context is just a website full of jokes a lot of people don't get on a site a lot of people don't read.

Bill is my favorite writer on the Internet. I can't even remember how we found him. We needed a writer, he said "I'll do it," and somewhere between Super Shammies and Trip-Hop we found a guy who was not only our peer in every imaginable way, but a man who helps me understand where I've been and what I've gone through. He can't stand what he writes. He feels like it isn't going to be good enough. He types and deletes, types and deletes. He is where I have been. He is me. I don't know his last name and I've never shaken his hand, but Bill is a part of my heart. He opens up and says equally profound and dumb shit that makes me feel like I've read something I should've written. I'm glad to know him, because he helps me finish what I'm trying to say.

Jon makes me want to be a better writer. I wanted to write about playing NBA Jam with my Dad. He was always Bill Clinton, I was always Air Dog. I was struggling to write an introduction when Jon sends me the one he'd written FOR me while standing in Radio Shack. "My favorite player is Chris Mullin. Christ Mullin can do lots of different dunks, including backwards dunks and 3 pointers." It was brain damaged and I'd never had someone touch me on that little inside spot that says "this is supposed to be fun" like he did. When I'm down on my writing all I have to do is go through Jon's archives and see how much it means to someone to just have that chance they need to open up and be themselves. Jon is undeniably and indomitably himself. He is my greatest contemporary and one of my best friends.

Emily supported me creatively when I was writing my novel by typing "that's great smiley face" over AIM when I'd stop to send her one paragraph at a time. I wanted to do for her what I'd tried to do for Jon, but even moreso. I knew that she wanted to be a writer, and being a WRITER in capital letters means more than going to college and learning how to stop splitting your infinitives. It means turning your face inside out and looking at the front of your brain, even if it's covered in years of doubt and thick little layers of crud. Emily gave to me and I wanted to give to her. Her work on the site continues to impress me every single time, and no matter what happens with the site, our personal relationship, the sun rising or the floods that evidently are going to just wash right over us she is the Zelda to my F. Scott and I will continually beat her in the face if she doesn't live out every single one of her dreams. She's my dog's Mom. That's important.

Nick told me that I was a God. I told him that I wasn't. I'm not a God, but when I look down at Nick from my condo of clouds and harpsichords I see me even before I was Bill. I see the Superfight me. The one who felt so much like everyone else but so different. I wanted to learn things, I wanted to feel every thing I could, I wanted my favorite baseball team to win a God damned game every once in a while so I could just be a little bit happier. When I met him he was an obnoxious kid on our forum. When I talked to him over AIM the other day he was one of the most special people I know, and the one of us who I know will go the farthest. Watching him grow up is one of the coolest things I could ever imagine and I would do anything for him. Even if he thinks baseball began in 1998.

Mike Fireball, as an ancillary joke on our Hamid page, made the same Oregon Trail joke as me on his website and I made him feel like absolute shit about it. I didn't have a hell of a lot of respect for him. I founded X-Entertainment. Poprocks just looked like another one of "those" sites to me. But there was a kindness to him. It seems strange to say, but even when I halfheartedly berated him for lifting one of my jokes he seemed so sincere, so sweet, like his heart was beating right through his text. Maybe that's the real reason why he's the Internet's Cutest Boy, but there is an unstoppable gravity to that little Pokémon. I see him as me if I hadn't had my heart broken so many times. I love him for that. I love that he takes so much pride in what he's doing here. I love the way he talks about Karen. I am envious of him for these things, and because he seems so much more important to the way things work than me. I don't know how we did it without him. And I never want to try again.

(insert part about Justin here when you get the time)

Keasbey Mornings: Feel free to poke fun at my legendary love for cashews.
Destinys2ndKid: I will poke fun at your love of
Keasbey Mornings: brb pirate night
Destinys2ndKid: Son of a bitch.

The comics section did two very important things for me: It helped me begin drawing again for the first time since I gave it up five years ago, and it helped connect me to three people I'm thankful every day to know and dick around with.

Kyle Haslam Daly is my favorite sentence. He went out to lunch with Jon, Emily and I and we walked around Best Buy long enough for me to buy his Secret Santa present months too late. He seemed so quiet. Probably because Jon and I were talking in elaborate puns all day. But the moment he stepped into the role of "comic artist" for P-Boi and gave birth to that section he became someone I respect beyond words. The balls that comic swings are pissed-off tanuki sized, and Kyle is always going to be one of the things I look most forward to in an update. And he's the funniest SHITHEAD on our forum. Whenever a member posts something even 0.01% ignorant I can count on good old Vondruke to show up and smack them in the mouth with another member. You make me nicer, guy.

My adoration of Peter Holby can't really be explained. Sometimes he'll just IM me out of the blue with "so I was thinking about the state of Hungarian indy wrestling, and I've come to the conclusion that they need a monkey dressed like Uncle Sam to start throwing around strong style submissions," and I FUCKING KNOW WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT AND CAN RESPOND. He loves that I answer his rhetorical wrestling questions and I love that he's there to ask them. I'm going to spend the weekend with him in an artsy fartsy crack hotel just to watch a guy from Japan wrestle in a hotel. And you know what? We're going to break our faces off smiling. Folby is the part of me that I can't even write about. He's the part of me I don't ever want to lose.

Lindy. You're dead to me.

Lindy Kempe, like everyone else on this G-D Earth, came over when Mike Fireball shut down Poprocks and boarded up Progressive Boink. I didn't know who she was. I just thought she was another girl who posted in Mike's livejournal about how funny his DO YOU REMEMBERS are and how unentertaining his I AM BEING A GOOD WRITERS are. They make things worse for us. They want us to try less. They want us to be cheap and easy. And then one day out of the blue Mike sends me a fan sign from Lindy. I didn't even know she liked my writing. All of a sudden this unbearable weight of a personal counterpoint came raining down on my head. She is a little ball of talent. It rolls around. She can and will do everything. She's only been on staff for a few weeks but it feels so RIGHT. She should've been here all along. And if she and I had been dorky little kids together I would've asked her to live at the McDonalds with me. When she has risen up over the world and carries the weight of her destiny on those shoulders I'll be the guy under her chair holding up the supports.

And me. Here I am. Two years later.

I've never really had a home. The kids who played Goldeneye with burned mouths as I typed away about the Spice Girls fighting the Nitro Girls weren't my home. They helped me grow. They took me as a scared, sheltered little fat Christian boy and pushed me toward life, and what it brings, and what it promises.

The wrestling op boards weren't my home. Pat Patterson is gay and Mark Henry is black. They type "good job!" to anyone who writes anything. But they told me that I was good. They wanted me to write more, and to write about more, and to be more. They are stinky and depressing but they remain the stinky and depressing parts of me, and without every one of them I would not be where I am.

X-Entertainment wasn't my home. With God damned Matt Caracappa. The bastard. Websites come and go. Readers lose interest and new ones replace them. Posts blow up and are forgotten. Do you remember Thundercats? Matt does, and so do I. And when there is no one else here he and I will stand shoulder to shoulder, finally old enough to know how much we respect each other, and wise enough to know that that is a deep and honest love. To truly love someone you must know what it feels like to hate. Matt was both of those things to me. He wasn't my home, but he's standing there on the street waiting. Because we always come back.

Whatever-Dude wasn't my home. I wasn't ready for it. I didn't know what it meant. How could I? I wanted to be an INTERNET SUPERSTAR with a fan sign gallery and a camwhore portal full of girls who knew my name. Paul is an accomplished writer. Dave has started a family. Where am I? I don't feel accomplished. I don't know what it means to have a child. I don't know what happened to Jen or Eric F'n Fields or fucking Mickey. I don't need to. Because they helped build me up. When I was a blubbering little boy missing my Grandmother they thickened my skin and opened up my eyes to the world. They weren't my home, but they torched my fires. Without them I would've never written a book. Without them I wouldn't be here.

And without Progressive Boink, I wouldn't be me.

For the first time in my life, I have a home. I know this is where I'm supposed to be. And no matter how cliche the story begins to turn I know that when I wake up in the morning I am doing what I love with the people I care the most about in this whole world. I write about 14 more paragraphs than I'm supposed to because I can't get it out any simpler. If I move around, they're here. If I sit still, they're here.

Bill, Emily, Jon, Justin, Mike, Nick, Kyle, Folby, and Lindy. And my dog.

From my home, I love you. From the bottom of my heart. You have me for now and forever. I'm here for you all, as much as I can be with words and trips and homes. You are everything to me. And I'm the hands and feet of Progressive Boink until the motherfucker stops moving.

 

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