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Seven years is a long time in a man’s life, especially for someone still hanging on to his twenties with all his might. Thinking about where I am now and where I was seven years ago, I can hardly recognize myself. Twenty-two years old, fresh from college, without a care in the world. Maybe I should have had a care or two, but I was a little too young and misguided to know better. Now I am married with two kids, a happy homeowner enjoying life in suburbia. The one constant during this time – a period that has featured changing addresses, new faces and new places, and a variety of jobs – has been the one thing that I never thought would last as long as it has. Seven years ago this month, in February 1998, I was surfing the internet and decided to start Proudest Monkeys. Seven years, well over 300 movie reviews, and more than 600 pages later, Proudest Monkeys, a labor of love with such humble beginnings, celebrates its birthday.
During that winter so many years ago, I knew precious little about the internet and even less about HTML. I had certainly done my fair share of surfing during college, but that consisted of repeated viewings of ESPN.com and other such web sites. A couple of friends from high school, Chuck and Scott, had developed sites of their own, and they would be my inspiration. With the world available to me, what sort of web site would I develop? I certainly have a lot of interests, but those admittedly are limited to frivolous areas of entertainment – movies, music, and sports. I can still remember crafting that first page, dominated by the site’s distinctive green hue and containing precious little of consequence. I even put a little tracker at the bottom so I could see what sort of traffic came my way. In those days, it was not very much!
As the weeks turned into months, the inspiration to begin crafting film reviews began to take hold. Shortly thereafter, Mouth of the Gods, the segment that would eventually become the Critics Corner, was born. Reviews of Palmetto and Dangerous Beauty, two 1998 offerings that happened to be airing in theatres around this time, became the first reviews to be posted. Other friends offered their own critiques of a variety of films, to the point that today’s site, which boasts hundreds of movie reviews, contains more than fifty written by guest scribes. This has become the longest continuing segment on the site, and it has been the one which has brought me the most joy over the years. Although the reviews may not come as quickly as they once did, they still represent a nice outlet for this would-be writer.
On the heels of Mouth of the Gods, sections devoted to album reviews, concert reports, the Dave Matthews Band (which inspired the web site’s name), fantasy sports, and restaurant critiques began to develop. Passing flights of fancy related to a variety of polls, hot-button issues, and the like came and went, but the site continued on. In May 1999, the site moved from Angelfire, its original hosting company, to its current location, as I officially purchased www.proudestmonkeys.com. At various points in the years that followed, my interest in the site had its ups and downs. After a month or so of inactivity, I would invariably get the itch to craft another movie review, usually a scathing rebuke of the latest piece of trash that had snatched my hard-earned money. Whatever happened, though, I kept coming back to the Monkeys.
During that first year, the Proudest Monkeys would be lucky to see more than 200-300 page hits in a given month. During the past few months, the site has enjoyed nearly 2,000 page hits every day! I remember submitting the site to various search engines in the hopes of acquiring some traffic, an exercise that often proved to be futile. In time, I realized that the site’s structure and its content would do a much better job of attracting attention than I ever could. This was also around the time that my technical knowledge hit the proverbial wall, as I realized that it was content – and not the latest web gimmick – that would keep visitors returning to the Proudest Monkeys. Of course, this gave me even more reasons to keep spreading my thoughts to the masses.
Looking at what this web site has been and what it is today, I can honestly say that I have no idea what the future holds for the site. I have since created three others, all running in some form or other, but they have never held my attention the way this one has. I have enjoyed every bit of time that I have invested into it, just I have enjoyed sharing it with you all. Every site such as this is in some way a vanity piece, and the Proudest Monkeys is no different. I certainly enjoy writing the articles that now litter the internet, but I also enjoy knowing that viewers such as you get a chance to read them. Granted, you may not always agree with them or think much of them, but that is your right, and that’s half the fun. The Proudest Monkeys is this writer’s outlet, his chance to converse with the world at large. God willing, it will be around in another seven years to mark yet another milestone.
Submitted 2/11/05.