BCK turns 21 today!

The site's a mere 3 years younger than Google. It's been around longer than Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit. (Which is one good reason to maintain a site like this: social media platforms come and go, taking with them all the content you've posted there, not to mention your audience and community. Build your own site, however, and you're not at the mercy of Zuckerberg, Musk, or whatever today's internet hotspot might be.) I remember when LiveJournal was in and Tumblr was big. I was here in the days when it took 5 minutes to download a jpeg on a dialup modem, man.

BCK started out as a stack of hand-coded static HTML pages hosted on a free Tripod account. We've had 4 different webhosts (possibly a 5th next year, though I haven't decided) and we're still chugging along. Sony Pictures once paid our bills, John Laroche was briefly active here, I've heard from Eternal Sunshine's editor and Charlie's former writing partner Paul Proch, and Duke Johnson, and Antkind's publisher, and old friends and family members of CK's, various media outlets, and of course the major contributors to BCK's existence: regular everyday folks who just like Charlie's work and want to talk about it or contribute something to the site.

I was 24 when I launched BCK and I'm 45 now, holy freaking God, and the site is what it is because of the people who visit here and the people who contact me. BCK wouldn't exist if I felt like nobody was interested. (On that note, I've made a lot of really good friends through BCK, too.)

ANYWAY.

Happy Birthday us! Here's hoping Charlie is able to put his art out into the world for years to come.