Graceful Swans,
First off, I want to say I love you, and I hope you're still floating.
It's now July, this very month, ten years ago, I decided to start chronicling life on a unicorn stud farm while also giving my opinion on sports and pop culture. And, for whatever reason, it worked.
Trust me, I have always thought what kind of looks I would have gotten if I pitched this idea in a boardroom all those years ago. "Hear me out, it's me, but not really me and I own and operate, apparently by myself, a unicorn stud farm. I know, I know, unicorns don't exist but that's not the focal point at all. It's sports. More importantly things in sports that matter mostly to me but I expect other people to read it because I'll pepper in some juvenile jokes here and there. Oh, the unicorns? Nah, I'll mostly reference them as footnotes or in the lead. Yeah. Yeah. No. I promise I've never done LSD and I wouldn't even be able to pick it out of a lineup. Yeah. No. What? I'm sorry I just missed that last part you said. Seriously? I was thinking 'Unicorn Sports Fuck Fest'. Yeah, I wasn't married to it either. Yeah. 'Studly Pastures?' I personally don't think that's edgy enough but whatever..."
And just like that we were up and running.
Going back and looking at that first year...I kind of cringe. It just seems so gimmicky and hokey and clearly I thought this would make me some money. Like all true writers, as soon as I realized I wasn't going mainstream, I said "Fuck it, I'll just write what I want to and everybody else be damned." And so I did and man, were we really popular in some obscure European countries for whatever reason. One love, Latvia! I can only assume they actually thought I was breeding unicorns.
Oh, by the way, STILL to this day, after all those poignant posts that have real meaning to them and came straight from my heart and make me actually proud...they still don't hold a candle to some bullshit Charlie Sheen post I made in Year One. The viewership on that one post alone...I...I just really hate humanity. It's like if you opened the New York times one morning to the best sellers list to see 'Old Man and the Sea' at number two and then 'Today's Garfield cartoon' at number one. I'm not trying to take a shit on Garfield but come on...in ten years the best thing I did was the blog post equivalent of a fart joke?!
That's depressing.
I have some true favorites that I'm especially proud of but I'm really proud of all of them, truth be told. I painstakingly agonized over each and every one of them because if I wasn't satisfied, then I didn't expect you to be.
You're probably wondering why I've been pandering on like this for this long and well...the truth is that this is the last post for the Studly Pastures that I will make. It's been a decade, that's a helluva run, and I would rather slowly limp off into the sunset than wait for the computers to take over and use my own blog against me. I'm not sure if that's a thing but I'm smart enough to know not to wait and see.
Why now? Well, we're a sports blog. I've been watching cornhole tournaments and Korean baseball. I figured I would spare you and I would fall on the sword myself. I know I once said that I would keep writing this blog until the Miami Dolphins won the Super Bowl or that I died. Let's face it, neither of those things are happening for a long, long time.
Ten years is a long time. This blog is essentially a time capsule. None of it will be deleted, unless that thing I said about the computers taking over happens.
Kids, this has been an absolute blast. And I know I've said it before, but if any of these have made you laugh, think, or just simply be intrigued for a split second about a man running a unicorn stud farm that has a particular proclivity for sports...well then...mission accomplished.
Float on forever, graceful swans.
