The Blast is gone (for now)

                                               
​                                                The Blast is NOT Back
                                                                    but
 
             The Blast, my erstwhile blog about current events, culture, and sports, has not “published” since December 2017.  Having received a torrent of inquiries (that would be FOUR) in the interim --- wondering if there was a particular reason it had ceased to exist --- here’s the deal.

                During the month of January I attempted to put the 350 or so Blasts into some kind of book form.  The working title was going to be:

                                                                                        BoomeRant:
                                                                  The Observations and Comments
                                                                              of a Working Class Kid
                                                                        with an Ivy League Education
                                                                 Who Rocketed into the Middle Class!
 
            After spending hours of editing, sorting, and writing short introductions to book “segments,” though, there really wasn’t any “there” there.  What with the daily bombardment of news and commentary on Trump and his administration, as well as the inescapable amount of CONTENT that now invades every moment of our lives, the Blast may have had a distinct voice but, ultimately, so what?  It was time to move on, and that’s what happened.  The Blast may re-emerge at some point but, in the interim, this blog will present a new project.

           That new project is a graphic narrative --- personal, with a hope it will strike some universal chords with others.  It has grown out of living in the Connecticut suburbs these past four years since retiring from teaching and leaving New York City.  Having grown up in a Long Island suburb and, having taught in Westchester County suburbs, these environs were not alien to me.  However, since 1984 I have only lived in cities (Boston, Cambridge, Providence, New Haven, and, of course, New York) --- I was not ready for the culture shock I have been experiencing these last few years. 

           Several graphic narrative/cartooning classes at the 92nd Street Y I took over the past year led to the (continuing) project that will unfold where the Blast used to be.  While it’s definitely my take on living in suburbia (and the Southwest Connecticut suburbs, in particular), I’m pretty sure folks in other places will recognize much of what this narrative focuses on.

            In classically ostentatious fashion, the narrative likens my situation in suburbia to Dante’s journey into the Inferno.  While there are no demons or tortured souls (aside from my own) in the pages of Wilbur’s Suburbo, it is a “savage journey into America’s suburbs.”  Because graphic narrative content is labor intensive (and time-consuming), the Suburbo will not be published with the regularity of the Blast.  The hope is that there will be installments on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, starting this Wednesday, March 7th.  It will continue to be posted under “The Blast –blog” tab on the Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli” website (www.biljohnson.com) I’ll send out reminders online and on FaceBook and hope that people will check it out and enjoy it.

              As usual, thanks for reading!
 
Bil Johnson