AFK

 Folks, I'm going to be out of town for the next two weeks. I will do my best to be able to post on this blog and/or publish more outtakes/BTS, but no promises. That goes for everybody own email too.

You're welcome

[I will reply to comments on the last blog post and the one before it here.]

One of the reasons I've found these so hard to write is that I don't want to sound insincere, but every time I try to express my honest gratitude towards the fans, it comes out so syrupy and effusive that it reads like it must be overblown hyperbole, yet it still doesn't go far enough. Here I try again.

There are many ways to see my content on the Internet for free. Some of them are perfectly legitimate, others are less so. So if you've only ever seen my content through free resources, if you've enjoyed my work without paying me a single thin dime, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: I love you. I am deeply grateful to you and to every single one of my fans, whether or not they've paid me, and I'll tell you why. But not right now. This post is a special thank-you to the people who have financially supported my work. This is for the thousands of people (I still can't believe it) over the years who have either bought a clip from one of the clip store or subscribed to the sister site lostbetsgames.com. In the next post, I'll talk about why I'm grateful to all the fans, but these words are just for the paying ones

(But everyone is welcome to say whatever they want to say or ask whatever they want to ask in the comments, paid or not.)

You. I owe it all to you. Everything, all through this whole unbelievable journey, it's all been thanks to you. Every one of the awesome experiences I've had, I've had because of you. Every one of the amazing sights I've seen, I've seen because of you. Every one of the incredible people I've met, I've met because of you. Because of you, I could bring my entire family to Las Vegas to celebrate my parents's wedding anniversary. I was able to make my sister smile more brightly than I'd seen her smile since her divorce by surprising her with front-row tickets to her favorite musical, because of you. There is no way, by word nor deed nor skywrating, that I could ever be able to adequately express how grateful I feel to all of you. No matter how much you think it is, you're wrong; it's more.

So I hope you understand why I got weirded out when you thanked me. From my perspective, you were showering me with amazing gifts, and thanking me for it. "Here, have some money, and thank you!" "Here, have some more money, and thank you so much!" "Here, take your family on a vacation they'll remember for the rest of their lives, and you're doing such a great job, keep it up!" "Here, here's the down payment for a house, and you are so great! We are so lucky to have you!" 

You can maybe see why it's taken a mental adjustment for me to get comfortable with this, and all I can do is say, um, you're welcome. You're welcome for all the gifts you have given me, of which I haven't enumerated half. You're welcome for all the money, and the house, and the car, and the other car, for my ex-wife. You're welcome for giving me the opportunity to hobnob with porn stars and see hundreds of young women naked. You're welcome for all the applause and acclaim and admiration and appreciation and adulation, and those are just the ones that start with "A". You're welcome for bringing me into contact with so many people who had such a profound impact on me.

You're welcome for changing my life. All of you, every single one. Every time somebody bought a clip or a subscription, I regarded it as a huge compliment. So many people try to sell their creative output, so many would-be singers and musicians and authors and artists and actors and filmmakers. Very few succeed, and I was one of the lucky ones. I've heard that some of the other few lucky successful creatives actually don't like their fans, and I don't understand it at all. How can you feel anything but deep gratitude and love towards the people who make it possible for you to do what you do? I guess some of them must have fan bases that are much more toxic than I, a pornographer, have, but still…

Okay. It's getting late and I guess that's enough for now, but one last thing. Some people have asked about my future plans, whether I was going to do any more shooting. If you had asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have said, "Absolutely not. I'm disabled and retired. It's out of the question." Now, after receiving so much support and encouragement, I've gone from "absolutely not" to "probably not." There are still some good reasons it's unlikely to happen. But I won't say never.

Placeholder

 Okay, I asked people not to post in the last thread because I was going to make a new post later today, but for crying out loud, it's 2:45 in the morning. I'm going to bed. This is a placeholder, so anyone who has something to say as a place to comment.

Is this thing still on?

Okay, guys. I've been trying to write this for like two weeks, and I keep getting stuck. But there's something I really want to get out there, so I'm just going to cut it short and say what I want to say and publish it. Maybe I'll post more later. Anyway, what I was writing started off with:

To everyone who's been a fan or supporter of lostbets.com.

Over the years, I've tried a number of times on this blog to express the inexpressible gratitude I feel towards you all. I've been taking a trip down Memory Lane lately, and I'm going to try again. Here are the contents of the Shoots folder on my server.

What follows in the current revision is a lengthy recitation of why this list makes me so grateful, but for now I wanted to share something I've been up to lately. By the way, here's another view of my Shoots folder.

24 TB, I can't fucking believe it. Anyway, most of those Shoots folders has a Games subfolder, and each Games folder has a subfolder for each game we shot that day. I've been trying to match each one of those game folders with a published episode number, and here are the results of my work:

LostBets.com catalog of (most) scenes

A few things to note. First, this spreadsheet was mostly generated by an automated script, which attempted to match the scenes with the episodes. It's certainly possible that the script made a mistake, so if you notice an error, please tell me.

Second, one of the main reasons I did this was to find unpublished content, which I knew existed, and it turns out there are about 40 unpublished games. Don't get too excited, though. Many of them had a very good reason for going unpublished. But there are some good ones in there, and I may as well edit and publish them at some point. They're collected in the spreadsheet on a tab labeled Unpublished. Let me know if there any you're particularly excited to see.

(Yes, yes, I know, everybody wants to see Kodak, Bibi, Cody, and Tori. I know.)

And third, after a shoot, I would organize all of the footage from the SD card used in the cameras. All the footage for games I would put in the Games folder, all the footage for POV's I would put in the POV folder, all the footage for promos I would put in the Promos folder, and all of the footage for none of the above went into one of two folders. If it was completely and utterly worthless, it went in the Cutting Room Floor folder. But if it seems like it might possibly have some value, it went in the Outtakes folder. I collected the contents of all of those Outtakes folders on another tab of the spreadsheet. Some of them I didn't even bother to rename from the filenames they had on the camera, so there's no way to tell what's on them without looking at them. Again, let me know if there's anything you're particularly keen on seeing. I'm looking forward to bringing you the best outtakes and BTS footage I can find.

By the way, I've been active on Reddit lately, as u/LostBetsRed. Look me up there; I intend to share some never-seen-before footage, if I can find someplace to host it. (Any recommendations? The various *Tube sites have gotten to be real dicks about letting you upload.)

I won't say that I'm back. I've been gone for too long and broken that promise too frequently in the past to have the credibility to make it again. But at this time, it's my intention to write again, at least if anybody is still listening after so long.