We want spunkybean to offer something other sites don’t. Homespun sensibility blended with mid-western pragmatism, humor, energy, sarcasm, and starry-eyed optimism. Just that. Nothing more. Well, maybe a little more. spunkybean will be a fresh, new voice on pop culture. An informed and enlightened, yet not-so-informed choir of hard-working, dream-chasing, plainspoken, word-hyphenating folks like you.

And we’ll do it without the pompous arrogance of a magazine or other ezines and sites. Unless of course we turn this into a magazine. Then forget I said that, OK?

spunkybean will be a voice for Gen X. We don’t imply our generation invented pop culture, but we sure as heck perfected it. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself which of VH1’s “I love the…” specials had the most content? Rest assured that everyone associated with this site owned Thriller (on tape), enjoyed long walks around malls, wore acid washed jeans, and watched ABC’s After School Specials. We fell in love at skate-parties, got fat eating sugary cereal on Saturday mornings whilst watching cartoons until Noon, and we solved the Rubik’s Cube. Or, at least, we took the stickers off and put them back on correctly. Go ahead. Watch a John Hughes movie. Those people are just like us spunkybean folks.

Can you call Gen Xers “folks?”

At first, it will be a small collection of essays, stories, and pop culture reviews and editorials. If all goes well, eventually it will be the Rolling Stone …the Spin Magazine …the People Magazine of the next decade. Lofty goals, sure. But show me a guy who’s launching a website and doesn’t expect to make a million dollars, and I’ll show you the next contestant on To Catch a Predator.

You probably won’t find anything political here. At least not until the site really catches fire and one of the writers gets a big head and starts to believe his or her opinion matters. No, sir. The Weakest Generation (tm) doesn’t have time to change the world, philosophize, or vote. We like to laugh and watch TV. And maybe some sports. A movie on occasion. spunkybean will give you plenty on those topics.

Oh. And you can get some adverbs, here.

As Kermit the Frog so eloquently put it when he sang Paul William’s words in The Muppet Movie …”life’s like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending.” So sit back and enjoy spunkybean. One never knows when things will take off, egos will grow, success will tear friends apart, and corporate sponsors and the mega-dollars that come with it will rob our little pop culture website of its charm and innocence. My creative vision will conflict with the site’s creator and we’ll stop speaking, only communicating through other people. He’ll be jealous of my book deal, my movie project, and he’ll hate my new friends. Famous friends. In fact, the other five founding members of spunkybean will all keep the site going while I’m off doing side projects. “I’ll try to post an article once a week,” I’ll say. But I won’t. I’ll probably stop returning emails, too. spunkybean will cease to exist. People at cocktail parties will talk about how much they used to love this site called spunkybean but when The Don stopped contributing, it was never the same. They’ll talk about how they all purchased “The Best of the Bean” and its one of the funniest reads you’ll find anywhere. They’ll say, “even my brother thought it was funny.” And we all know “that brother” was a bit of an angry fella. A little too serious for his own good, really.

Well …like I said …something’ll just click with spunkybean and people will love it. I hope they’ll never talk about how or when we “jumped the shark.” That’s gotten pretty lame. And, sure, The Don will probably have made some good money from book sales, but his movie flopped. Big time. All that he had in ego, drive, and creativity, he lacked in humility and consistency. Turns out he was a one-trick-pony. Maybe it’ll turn out the real creative force behind spunkybean was its youngest writer. Shy. Soft spoken. A bit of a shut-in. But actually a dynamo who ends up writing five or six generation-defining novels, one of which becomes a movie and an instant classic. All that time, the real genius wasn’t me, but him. Or her.

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