Sunday, January 1, 2017

Reboots are a Natural Part of Life



In early December 2016, I caught wind of the existence of a plan to reboot Duck Tales on Disney XD. I threw my hands up in the air and said, "Nope," and decided to bring The Modern Gafa back from the dead. I wrote a few scenes for a web series, featuring myself complaining about the prevalence of reboots. Of course this new website and series would themselves be reboots. And of course a few weeks later the cast of Duck Tales (2017) was revealed and I was so blown away any gripes I had about reboots have washed away. This is because reboots are a natural part of life.


Trees grow and we pick their fruit and when we grow tired of looking at them we chop them down and reboot them by planting their seeds. When we finish a nice meal we throw the left overs into compost and they form soil and fertilizer for us to reboot new crops. When a chicken has fattened up we kill it, cook it, and reboot it with one last white egg in an incubator. (I've been playing Stardew Valley lately so that explains all these scientifically inaccurate agricultural metapors.)

Just like Mother Nature, Hollywood may be out of ideas or unwilling to take a risk on something new. Everyone always wants to hear the classics at a concert. We always try to preserve historical buildings instead of replace them.

But not all reboots are bad. Duck Tales looks amazing, so does the new Spider-Man movie, and the office building I work at looks really good with a new paint job. We hear the word reboot and we imagine uncreativity, repetetitivness, boring, souless. What's the worst thing that can happen? We have to start calling it "The New Duck Tales" or "Duck Tales (2017)" or something like that? Sometimes, sure, it can be unfortunate to see so many remakes instead of original stuff, but sometimes remakes can be better than the originals. So that is what I aim to do with this reboot. If I have to call it The Modern Gafa (2017) than it's going to be the best version of The Modern Gafa that it can possibly be.

Since 2008 I have rebooted The Modern Gafa three times. I have dozens of scripts for failed web series reboots lying around, but those are a lot harder to put together than a website. In its second incarnation, I left The Modern Gafa in 2015 and came back in 2016, only to rename it and leave again. At that point I didn't actively have an interest in launching the reboot you see before you. It was rather a case of me not wanting to see others use the name of The Modern Gafa, no matter the quality of their work.

That is why i am here now. Because as a wise man one said, life is like a hurricane. When the storm settles, you find yourself in a new phase of your life. This is just another one of those phases. And this is the phase I'll be going alone. So no matter how tempting it may be for someone else to create content for this site, I will never bring on another writer to this incarnation of The Modern Gafa. I don't want to manage a team of writers or look for replacements or deal with internal drama. I just want to write. And this is where I am going to do it. Not as a member or a leader, but as the soul proprietor. I am my own boss and no one else's. Because it's not an us or a them, it's a me.

Because I am The Modern Gafa.