Five Years

Yes. That’s a Bowie nod.

With that post, I gave up on trying to get one of my close friends to commit to a regular weekly podcast, I gave up on trying to appease other people’s ideas of what was or wasn’t worthwhile content, and I decided to, for better or worse, plant my own niche on the internet, and see how it would grow.

Has it been as successful as I originally hoped? No. However, perhaps due to my persistence and determination to never let it die, the site has found a lot more popularity than expected. I have been surprised, several times, at people telling me they already knew and enjoyed Nerd-Base! What better compliments could I ask for?

So, consider the following to be a “State of Base Address”. Where, if you care to stick with me, I will go over the hope-filled past and hopeful future of this wonderful little corner of the internet.

Nerd-Base was never going to be huge. I’ve run it, more or less, by myself, out of pocket, with a handful of good friends making contributions here and there over the last few years. I’ve never made money on it, even though our host has started putting ads up, but I can’t afford for them not to. But it’s got a great reach, and I like the fact that it’s a place people come to for the type of content that no one else does anymore. People still like to read, and that makes me happy. Mainly because I can be “long-winded”.

What’s Balderdash? Well…It was my first real “go” at having an online presence outside of twitter/Facebook/etc. I wanted to do a podcast more than anything. There were about 2 or 3 episodes recorded before I gave up and started working on what would become Nerd-Base. Which leads to the question; What happened to the Nerd-Base podcast? Well, the best answer I could give is, “Life”. Life happened. A lot in my personal life, my old co-hosts, Rishard, Brian, and David, well, we’re all adults with crazy schedules. Not to mention David lives up in Mass, and Rishard moved a little more than halfway across the country, and honestly, recording over Skype just isn’t the same, and there’s no one like those guys….however….

In the time since, Amanda has really helped out on the site and filled in a lot of the spaces that I lost with the other contributors. What’s wonderful is her burgeoning, blossoming, geek-ness. She’s become so much more well versed in all the various fandoms. Her love and awe at new-to-her fandoms are evident in her articles. She devoured Star Wars so voraciously, that she can easily hang, and possibly out-fan some of the oldest veterans of the Wars. We’ve got something in the works to bring more multimedia content out, but we’re just not hurrying. As long as we don’t let the embers go out, the fire is never truly dead. I give huge thanks to her for helping to keep this going.

Dave has been largely inactive at writing. Stupid life stuff… In his geek life, he has leveled up at kung fu. What settled on tai chi has then expanded to bagua. piqua, baji, chua chuan, Chen style, cannon fist, and a slew of cool weapons. Additionally, Dave has become a board member for the national Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Association and much more involved in the community and his own classes at Yulong Tai Chi Chuan. This also means more kung fu movies and samurai dramas! Thanks to Mannix for his movie collection helping to fill in some of the missing blanks of the endless Shaw Brothers flicks as well as the increasing content by Netflix and Hulu. Is this some sort of crazy resurgence? Dave hopes so. In the comic world, Dave continues to have feelings about the questionable animated DC content… lots of ups and downs there. He has completely sworn off Zack Snyder films. Stop ruining my childhood. At least Star Wars seems to have made a come-back. 🙂

Myself? I’ve been busy.

I was given the honor of being a recurring ~~character~~ panelist on a few community/culture panels at Wizard World Philadelphia, thanks to the gracious Tony Kim (who himself has found a lot of success in the past year with the launch of his geek-chic clothing line, Hero Within).
I’ve done a lot more on other sites than this, which I intend to change. Nerd-Base is my heart, but it hasn’t been tended to as much as I’d have liked over the last couple years. I intend, truly and honestly to change that in 2017.
My buddy Ben over at Next Level Radio and I are working on a new podcast called The Wilhelm Files, if he ever gets the time (*ahem*).
I’ve recently (in the past two weeks), rebuilt my “work station” at home, the lack of which has severely impacted my ability to work properly (I can’t focus properly if I’m not at a desk with both monitors going, I guess it’s a OCD sort of thing), which you’ll notice since I’ve posted three times this week which is more than the last few months!
I’ve also been researching the best ways to combine the soon-to-be-reborn podcast with a video component. If anyone has a green screen, a good DSLR that does video (with external mic port), or some sound-proofing, or anything, really, that they’d like to contribute to that effort, by gods, let me know!! Hahaha, we’ll be putting out videos as fast as we can after that!

*My original concept for Nerd-Base, after the Balderdash podcast failed, was to make vlogs that took place in a Nerd-Base!

Seriously though, I intend to breathe new life into Nerd-Base this year, and I think we’re off to a good start. It doesn’t hurt that Amanda and I will be heading to Star Wars Celebration Orlando in April, on what just so happens to also be Star Wars‘ 40th Anniversary!! We’ll be covering that among many, many other things.

So please, stick around. Keep telling your friends, keep checking back. If you want to contribute, please reach out. Let’s make Nerd-Base great again!!! Oh yeah….I went there. *wink*

Cheers,
Christopher Lee