So, if you look to the right of this post you’ll see that I’ve set a start date for the BIYF Binge. That date is next Monday.

Memorial Day 2016. An appropriate, BIYF-y date.

Following a flurry of posts two weeks ago, I’ve gone to silent running as the nuts-and-bolts reality of the Binge has begun to sink in. I’ve been busy behind the scenes trying to lay the groundwork for (at least initial) success with this project whose scope is actually quite daunting when you start doing the math. I hope I can rely on your patience, understanding and support along the way. It’s a little terrifying and not just because of what I’ll have to watch.

I hope to re-watch as many items as possible from the last 19 BIYF Festivals within a one year span and write something about each of them in a timely fashion. That works out to at least one post every 2-3 days. And I hope to write at least marginally entertaining posts. And brevity is not always something at which I excel. Nor are complete sentences.

Plus, that “at least marginally entertaining” part means I’ll need to spend some time gathering/preparing visual materials to enhance my prose and some more time doing homework to get my facts straight. Or mostly straight. For every post. Daunting. Terrifying.

And ultimately low-stakes in the grand scheme of things, I know. Still, it’s something I’d like to do for us in this landmark year leading up to BIYF XX. Hopefully it will be something you enjoy. Hopefully it will be something I live through.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what will be a suitable model I can use for these posts. In a perfect world I’d like to post a legitimate, stands-on-its-own, readable-by-the-non-BIYF-masses review for each each item. There’s a couple problems with that idea.

First, there’s no way I will be able to sustain that over the timeframe I have and still work a job and live a life. It’s just not a reasonable goal at the pace of a post every 2 or 3 days. That way lies madness, homelessness, starvation, and divorce.

Second, there’s already a ton of reviews of almost everything we’ve watched out there on The Internet just waiting to be found and consumed. While I’d like to think I could produce the ultimate review of the items in our catalog, a lot of the stuff that already exists is really pretty good. Why reinvent the wheel when you can just link to it instead?

Which brings me to my revised, grounded-in-reality goal. Since this whole endeavor is honestly just a nostalgia-based exercise, all I really hope to do is remind you that each of these things on our list exists and that we watched (or in some cases did) them. I’ll try to do this in an entertaining fashion. I’ll provide some facts, some images, some links, some commentary, and whenever possible I’ll attempt to integrate some part of our BIYF history into the narrative. I don’t know how successful I’ll be, but I think this is at least within the realm of the possible.

I hope the “BIYF history” that makes its way into these posts is a shared one, just as the events that produced it have been. I’ll give you my two-cents-worth here, but my best-case-scenario is that you’ll also share your thoughts and memories in the comments. That way, when I work on v2.0 after the Binge (the “permanent” version) it won’t just be a record of my thoughts, but ours.

Thanks in advance for any help you’re able to offer/memories you’re able to add and let me know if you need any help with blog logins or technical issues. I’ve almost accepted my fate and the BIYF Binge will begin shortly.