2020: a Year of Failures, Fiascoes and Secret Successes

This didn’t work out QUITE the way I planned.

2020, huh? At the risk of being crude, it was a real motherfucker of a year. I have lived through some tough years before. 2001 was no picnic and 2016 was such a garbage fire that it seemed unlikely that any one horrible year could top it for sheer awfulness. 

Then came 2020, a year that was horrible in ways I never could have imagined. I expected all sorts of terrible things to happen when Donald Trump was elected President. Many, if not most, of those things have come to pass. But I never expected that a deadly global pandemic would be so horribly mismanaged by the Trump administration that hundreds of thousands of people would die preventable deaths, the economy would tank and life as we know it would change in dramatic and alarming ways. 

2020 was easily the worst year for humanity since I was born but it was most assuredly not the worst year for me. In a sea of uncertainty, I clung, and clung hard, to the things in my life that give it meaning and direction: my wife and two sons, this website that I love with all of my heart and soul, the Travolta/Cage podcast that I host with Clint Worthington and the books I released this most miserable of years: The Weird Accordion to Al, Postal and The Weird Accordion to Al: Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition. 

To put things in My World of Flops terms, this year was full of Failures, Fiascoes and Secret Successes. The biggest failure of the year was my primary project for the year, 2020: The Year YOU Control Nathan Rabin. The idea was to spend the year doing 12 theme months patrons nominated and/or voted for. 

It was an ambitious, unwieldy idea that, to be brutally honest, I did not realize as well as I would have liked, in no small part because it began several months late and then had to be put on hold repeatedly so that I could focus on the Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 articles that keep this website afloat financially and keep me out of the poor house. 

True, we did do John Candy Month, Phil Hartman Month, Mismatched Buddy Cop Movie month and Danny DeVito Month but that still eight months left. 

Eight months! I will do these remaining eight theme months if it literally takes me the rest of my life! That’s how dedicated to failed, unsuccessful ideas I am!  

If 2020: The Year YOU Controlled Nathan Rabin was a Failure in many ways the year as a whole was a flaming Fiasco. What a nightmare! What a trial! I hope we never see the likes of it again! 

Being an introvert who works from home, I actually did shockingly well during the early months of the pandemic. My productivity and efficiency somehow skyrocketed and I was able to keep publishing here at a regular pace AND finish writing everything for the extended version of the Weird Accordion to Al, which was a LOT: big sections on The Compleat Al, UHF and the 2018 tour that gave the book its subtitle as well as pieces on every episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

I’m quite fond of the original version of The Weird Accordion to Al and worried that an extended version wouldn’t be as tight, focused or disciplined but the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity edition holds together beautifully and is markedly better than the original, which is pretty damn terrific in its own right. 

I was deservedly proud of myself for flourishing during brutal times. Then I hit a wall hard and joined the rest of the world in suddenly doing much, much worse. My Patreon plummeted from around 3300 dollars a month to around 2500. Page-views suffered as well and I stopped being as productive and efficient on account of the whole world being on fire.

The year’s big Secret Successes, meanwhile, are the The Weird Accordion to Al book, which sold thousands of copies independently and kept my small business afloat during some very rocky weather and Travolta/Cage, which is really hitting its stride with episodes devoted to Con Air/She’s So Lovely and Face/Off. 

To that end I have a VERY big project to announce in the very near future that I’m hoping will similarly help me not only survive 2021 but thrive as well. 

I’m excited and also terrified but you beautiful people give me the confidence to keep chasing my dreams and the support that lets me realize them, literary and otherwise. 

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of  THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here