A Shroud of Thoughts 11th Anniversary

It was eleven years ago today that I launched this blog, A Shroud of Thoughts, with the "Famous First Post". At the time I had no idea that I would still be writing the blog eleven years later. The simple fact is that I have been writing A Shroud of Thoughts longer than I was most of the jobs I have had and romantic relationships in my life! It is hard to believe that 2599 posts after that first post A Shroud of Thoughts is still going.

Here, as I usually do on this blog's anniversaries, I have to explain the origins of its name. In 2004 it was the fashion of the time to name blogs with some variation of the word "thought" in them. For that reason I took the title for this blog from a phrase in Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage canto iii stanza 113:

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

A Shroud of Thoughts was dedicated to pop culture from the very beginning, although I would also write things of a more personal nature in the early days. Finally deciding that people would probably be more interested in pop culture than they would be my own rather dull personal life, those personal posts fell by the wayside. It did eventually occur to me that I should perhaps change the title of the blog to something more fitting a pop culture blog, but by that time it already had a regular readership. It has then remained A Shroud of Thoughts  ever since.

Every year I post links to what I feel were the best posts of A Shroud of Thoughts in the past year. For last year's 10th anniversary I posted what I thought were the best posts of the past decade  as well. Anyhow, without further ado, here are what I feel to be my best posts of 2014-2015.

"1954: Film's Other Great Year" (June 16 2014) 

"Torchy Turns 110: The 110th Birthday of Glenda Farrell" (June 30 2014)

"The Tingler: So Bad It's Good or So Good It's Bad?" (July 14 2014)

"Billy Liar: Kitchen Sink Surrealism" (August 2 2015)

"Shared Universes Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe" (August 22 2014)

"WWI in Classic Film: Sergeant York" (September 7 2014)

"The 50th Anniversary of Bewitched" (September 17 2014)

September 21 2014-September 27 2014 (The Week of the 50th Anniversaries of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Gilligan's Island, and My Living Doll)

"Rock & Rule: Canada's Animated Masterpiece (October 4 2014)

"From Stage to Screen: Arsenic and Old Lace" (October 18 2014)

"Terror on the Newsstands Part One: The Horror Pulps" (October 26 2014)

"Terror on the Newstands Part Two The Shudder Pulps" (October 27 2014)

"The Flash Turns 75" (November 10 2014)

"Tony Randall, What a Character!" (November 16 2014)

Santa Claus on Film (December 22 2014)

"British Shows on American Network Broadcast Television in the Fifties and Sixties Part One" (January 23 2015)

"British Shows on American Network Broadcast Television in the Fifties and Sixties Part Two" (January 24 2015)

British Shows on American Network Broadcast Television in the Fifties and Sixties Part Three" (January 25 2015)

"British Shows on American Network Broadcast Television in the Fifties and Sixties Part Four" (January 26 2015)

"The Wicked Lady: The British Film Censored by Americans and How It Changed the English Language" (February 10 2015)

"The Avengers: 'A Touch of Brimstone'" March 28 2015

You Only Live Many Times: James Bond's Archenemy--Ernst Stavro Blofeld (April 17 2015)

Laurel & Hardy in "The Music Box" (May 2 2015)

"Farewell to Mad Men" "May 18 2015" 

"Green Lantern's 75th Anniversary" (May 21 2015)