From the shared desk of Joe and Mike pt. 2: The Retrospective Conintues.

I'm Mike Haverty, the internet's Leon Firestone, and I fear that a long post about what the guide means to me will be seen as redundant to Joe's post earlier this week. While Joe wrote more about the process of The Guide, I feel the human level of it is much more entertaining.

Origin

It's a little-known fact that Joe and I have had other projects before this. These were often giant collaborations with schoolmates and creative equals where we would draft scripts, shoot movies, make stage shows, etc. These are little-known facts because they rarely got off the ground. An idea would come up and everyone would approach it with vigor. Then our giant brainstorming sessions would devolve into sessions of Smash Brothers or Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and any creative output would be put on hiatus for my team of Cable/Tron Bonne/Strider.

This is how every creative pow-wow went for three years, until Joe and I said, in unison, "fuck that" and started our own project.

Influences

The Guide showcases our affinity for 1950's guides, written for teenagers to tell them the dangers of the world around them. Our characters go one step further, and are disillusioned by all of the dangers this world has to offer compared to the happy-go-lucky 50's. Instead of generic hygiene and courtship tips, we write for specific situations. The first few posts are the best examples of this, where giving birth at a friend's baby shower seems like a plausible problem, or becoming self-aware of one's birthday party only has one solution: cannibalism.

Another main influence in The Guide's creation was John Hodgman, which is obvious if you have ever read his book The Areas of My Expertise. If you haven't, read it now and realize how inadequate our site is compared to it. He is my favorite person living or dead, and he changed how i view comedy. This is a guy who was a literary agent for many years, dabbled in short works and McSweeney's, wrote his own book of made up facts, and now appears on the Daily Show from time to time because his promotional interview with Jon Stewart was so damn good. Upon that, he's the humor editor at the New York Times and contributes to NPR's This American Life.

These are all things I wanted to accomplish in my life, and he's kind of harshing my game by doing everything before more, and probably better than I could ever do it.

The Rough Times

It's been fun to do the guide, because both Joe and I know that some of our content sucks. Really bad. But this is also how you can tell that one of us is having a very bad week. I found out I didn't have enough money to go anywhere except community college minutes before I wrote about Ghost Riding. I feel like I have done an injustice to Ghost Riding by writing a lackluster post, but I got through it because The Guide is always there in my life, and no matter where I am emotionally in life, I need to see to that it gets written.

With that being said, the Guide in my life is passive. This meaning that my day's motivations rarely revolve around my post, but the post is a culmination of what and how I am at the moment of posting. It's a moment of zen at the end of a shitty day where I can have fun writing something that only a few people will read because they Googled "Space Mountain+Decapitations" and just wanted to read something factual. I take pride in that misdirection.

The Future

I think Joe and I see the Guide as different things. Where he wants it to be an extravagant and layered epic journey, I just want to make people laugh. I know all three of you returning readers are scared of Joe's idea of a narrative. It sounds boring on the screen, but believe me when I say that we want nothing more but to keep this site as funny and semi-fresh as ever. There still will be guide entries, but they will be pertinent to the adventures we go on in our arc.

The last thing we want to do is alienate you.

For those savvy to webcomics, Crtl-Alt-Del is the opposite of what we want to emulate. For those who do not know their current story, the main character's girl had a miscarriage. While I admire the sizable testicles one would need to take the story in that direction, imagine waking up to that comic in your RSS feed. We are not losing the vigor that started this humor site. It will be as retarded in its humor as it ever was. How long will this arc go for? We really do not know. Will there be others like it? We really do not know. Does anyone really care and just wants "the funny?" We really do not know. We haven't gotten any e-mails from readers, and our Google Analytics page is probably filled with lies.

Hey, if you read this site and you like us, send an e-mail over. Give us an idea of what our project means to you. I think there are times that Joe and I forget that this thing is on the internet, and we just want to get a better idea of our fanbase. We've been around for a year, and that's like 10 years in internet years. We won't be considered hip and StumbleUpon-worthy for another 20.

Survive Another Day,
Haverty