The Backstory

The Backstory

The only sane response to the more-more-more of the Internet is less.

That’s the goal of All the Fanfare. Less, but better.

Someone (okay, it was me) once called All the Fanfare the “Wait But Why” of pop culture. In case that means nothing to you—do you even internet, bro?—it means long-form, evergreen articles that are entertaining and informative. Quality at the expense of quantity. 100% organic and hand-crafted.

There’s a longer explanation here, which employs Dwight Schrute, Batman (1989), and The Matrix in making the case. Pop culture is my lingua franca. I think about this stuff all the time and it informs how I see the world.

About Me

Everything you need to know about me can be found in this paragraph:

I was born 9 months after Star Wars premiered in 1977, which naturally suggests my mom’s womb quickened on its own after she saw the film. I get it—these movies make me feel things too. I learned about all the gender parts in health class but they neglected to teach us how babies are really made.

Me, in a nutshell:

  • Star Wars ✔
  • Writer ✔
  • Does not take anything seriously ✔

That's the flavor you'll get following me. A pro writer who thinks too much about pop culture and brings the funny.

If you need, like, credentials or something before handing out a follow—I've been published at /Film, Den of Geek, The Gamer, and Superjump Magazine. I quit freelancing for reasons.1

All the Fanfare is a bet on myself. Why toil away on someone's digital farm when I can grow my own rutabagas and eat them, too. (I've never actually eaten a rutabaga and can't even picture one right now. I just think it's a funny word.)

Most of my articles are behind a soft "paywall". It's really just a free subscription. I go into the reasons here if you are interested, but the short answer is it's to prevent my articles from being fed into a large language model like ChatGPT.

The Reason I Require a Free Subscription to Read My Articles
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Song of Myself, 51 ~ Walt Whitman There’s no sense burying the lede. I require a subscription because I fear AI. It’s not fear in the sense that I think Skynet will emerge like a

Platform bookkeeping

All the Fanfare is hosted on two platforms. I use Substack for newsletters and Ghost for traditional web stuff. It’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Substack has a great network effect (and obviously is built for newsletters); Ghost is a superior web platform that also has email capabilities.

The platforms:

When you subscribe to my website, I also add you to the Substack. You’ll get emails from both, and they will look subtly different. But they’re both bangers. The main difference—the stuff posted to Ghost tends to be longer and evergreen, Substack tends to be shorter, more topical, and more personal.

Your subscription enables you to read articles on allthefanfare.com and leave comments.

This sounds awesome—where do I get started?

Let me turn this over to our resident maitre d', Andrew Bernard.

Andy Bernard the office cheese platter
The Office, NBC

“Pardon moi, monsieurs. I took the liberty of preparing for you a story platter.

“From the California region: the origins of Point Break’s ex-presidents.

“Here you will find a Timothy Olyphant appreciation post via a scathing review of Hitman, which I believe you will find both challenging and delicious.

“At that point, I would recommend you take a quick trip south of the border to the Great Pit of Carkoon2, where you will find this piece speculating that everyone was baked while shooting Return of the Jedi. If I may be so bold, it's a lot of fun to assume everyone was baked in the 80s.

“Bon appétit.”

Thanks Andy.

Malibu Surfer-Thieves and James Cameron: The Origin of Point Break’s Ex-Presidents
The origins of Point Break’s Ex-Presidents. Also: the reason Roach mooned everyone, Anthony Kiedis played a poseur, and the masks ranked.
I Watched Hitman Just to Spend Time With Timothy Olyphant
It embarrasses me to admit it now, but there was a time when I confused Timothy Olyphant and Josh Duhamel. In fact, it’s worse than that. I knew who Duhamel was. He was in Transformers. He was Mr. Fergie. Olyphant was just a guy that looked sorta like him and
Return of the Jedi Was Made At the Height of Hollywood’s Cocaine Era and It Shows
Hollywood hasn’t had a single cocaine epoch, but an ongoing, never-ending love affair with the drug–one among many–since there has been a Hollywood. Drug abuse in the film industry actually predates Hollywood’s establishment as the center of the American film industry in 1915; it is foundational, pr…

Footnotes:
  1. Fine, since you insist on prying into my personal business: Anytime you write for an outlet, they own what you create. Best case scenario, it's just a period of exclusitivity, a year or three, after which the rights revert to you. But many publications claim ownership of the article forever. It's a lousy trade-off for a few hundred bucks, but it works because all writers crave validation above all else.
  2. The Great Pit of Carkoon is the proper name for the Sarlacc Pit. I hope you know what that is, otherwise we’re gonna have some work to do.