Something's coming...

I'm excited about a new writing opportunity that's about to happen, so if I've misappropriated that excitement by posting this tangentially-related clip of one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals, please forgive me.

Suburban Acrobat started out as a blog for an audience of one, something I created for myself because I knew that if I was going to allow myself to be a writer I had to require myself to write. I never thought when I created it that I'd ever have much of an audience, and indeed so far, I've had little of one.

If you look through the past postings, you'll see stretches of years when I ignored this blog, as well as times when it's shifted from being a place where I could ponder the deeper moral concerns and fragile observations of life. Lately, for example, it's been the only place I could think of to post reviews of the comic books I've been reading a lot of lately; certainly these posts have been of little interest to the person who has visited here to see what I have to say about teaching students or raising children.

Perhaps this new opportunity will allow Suburban Acrobat the chance it's been waiting for to more clearly establish its identity. Because my jonesin' for all things pop culture is about to find a new - and I hope permanent - home. This is thanks in no small part to a collaboration I'm excited to tell you about.

I met Melissa Elliott-Lowell a few years back when we worked together at the high school where I still teach. We weren't particularly good friends at that time but whenever our paths would cross, they'd metaphorically generate these knowing yet exciting sparks. When it came to music, movies, books, television, hell - most anything culturally related - whenever Melissa would open her mouth to express her own opinion, a voice in the back of my head would say: "get out of my brain."

Circumstances are nutty, and the story of what happened next in our fledgling friendship is not meant to be told in this moment and in this posting. But from a distance, it was Melissa's writings and worldviews I most closely found myself aligned with. It was her disappointment in herself for not living up to her promises to herself to be a writer that I most identified with. And it was her turns of phrase that I found myself laughing the hardest over.

So I pulled the trigger and asked Melissa to start a site with me. And she agreed. And I can't wait to share that site with you, a place where two Midwestern, suburban parents who love to soak up popular culture and love language will write, reflect, and hopefully most importantly, entertain readers like yourselves. This place is currently being developed. Names are being bandied about. Site features are being discussed. Options for the site's location on the web are being explored.

But I couldn't wait until we were ready to introduce you to Melissa's work. No writer has as many witty asides in their writing this side of Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy" scripts. And no one but me is as shameless about holding up a lighter at a Barry Manilow concert on one night and being totally hipster the next. So before we unveil our first posts together, click on this link and go to Melissa's blog, entitled Uncomfortably Numb.

And trust me. Something's coming. Something good...if I can wait.