Empty Glass

You want a great title at a time like this, your final post on your blog. I thought about "The End" in reference to the Doors or "Is this really the end?" in mock-homage to my self-created nemesis, Alejandro Escovedo. But, alas, more than most things, I'm a Who guy, and so I thought the title of Pete Townshend's first solo album was the appropriate title for this good-bye.

Bottom of the Glass is no more. It's been three years almost to the day since Billy and I fashioned BOTG out of nothingness, and now it feels like we're back to that same shapeless void that we began from. In the modern vernacular, we got nuthin'.

I'm sure you've noticed it--Billy desperately relying on houses stuck on top of bridges that he sees on his drive home each day as source material, my own reliance on what my Psych-major daughter calls "the creep of narcissism into your blog posts, Dad." It was bound to happen. I'm not sorry.

And so, having kept this baby going for three years feels about right. Jesus, after all, preached three years. My wife was telling someone just yesterday that we had been writing our blog for "a year and a half." I was quick to correct her: "Three years, actually. Four calendar years." I said that with some pride. Narcissistic creep, I guess.

The reasons for our demise are myriad, and I don't want to bore you with too many details, but here are a few of the lowlights:

1. The collapse of modern music. With nothing to listen to, and even less to write about today's offerings, one of the two primary reasons we started the blog was gone. Let's face it: rock music is dead, and we are guys who rock (Billy in a kind of lightweight way, to be honest). You saw Billy's bald statement of musical malaise just a few weeks ago. Well, folks, that wasn't one day, was not an isolated incident. As we both found ourselves dipping deeper and deeper into our back catalogs, Billy said, over too many beers in New Orleans, "What are we? A damn oldies station?" We looked for musical saviors on the horizon and found none.

2. The loss of friends as readers. After over a year of few to no comments from "John," one of our closest comrades in the world, Billy and I had to ask ourselves, who are we writing this blog for? A bunch of anonymous fuck-nuts? Why? If we can't keep friends like John entertained, what, really, is the point? ANSWER: there is no point.

3. Work. The blog was, in some ways, an antidote to work blues, but, in the end, the work beat us down. We found that sour taste of daily frustration about our jobs seeping into every word we posted here. And you, dear readers, deserve better than that. I apologize for Billy.

4. It just felt played out. Billy's become one of his daughter's soccer coaches; I'm currently consumed with a kitchen rehab project. We just looked at each other and said simultaneously: "Grow up!" Snap.

There's more, of course--things like the anonymous tormentors we had to keep blocking, for example. But that felt undemocratic and soul-crushing, too. Weren't we trying to be a blog for anyone who wanted to read us?

And so, at the end, as I take that glass and turn it upside down on the bar, there are a lot of good memories, a few recriminations towards Billy, and a whole lot of time spent writing drivel that now swirls around in cyberspace. I can picture, a few months from now, someone coming across one our pieces in some kind of Google search (if Google still exists then) and getting mad and looking to lash out back at one of us, and discovering that there is no outlet for his rage.

But, I don't want to take that image of bitterness with me. Billy, sorry you had to find out this way that I'm pulling the plug. I owe you a beer.

Bob
Chattanooga, TN and beyond
4/1/2011