Just a few minutes ago, I published the 500th LAMB. Wow! Think about that. 500 LAMBs in less than three years, and I'm not even sure of how much of the surface we've scratched.When I started this here project, I had virtually no goals. I was one of many movie bloggers in the sea of movie bloggers, and I was disenfranchised with the larger blog directories. Yes, they can be comprehensive and a tremendous resource. But...there were problems. there were too many of them - some you joined merely to get a button to put on your site and a link on theirs. Others were better, but still so expansive. And, true or not, seemed so impersonal.
I knew there were a ton of movie blogs out there, and I wanted a resource - a community - where we could gather. So it was pretty much a grassroots effort. I had made some friends/contacts in the 10 months that I'd had my own movie blog, so I emailed them. It wasn't a lot of people, but it was a start. I featured a post on my site about this new thing called the LAMB and got more feedback that way.
(Funny, I just went back looking for an old image of the LAMB - it was much more, shall we say, raw in its infancy. Saw a comment on that post from Disdain, who would later join the LAMB with his site The Critical Critics. He said "Sounds like a good idea. How many sites do you plan on featuring?" My response: "As many as I can. I don't think there's a ceiling at this point." How true those words proved to be.)
Word spread. Growth was pretty slow compared to these days, with about 10 new LAMBs a month for the first few months, though that grew to about 20 a month in the second half of its first year.
These days, I'm pushing 40 per month, with apparently no end in sight. The LAMB has grown in many other ways as well. We've added a number of recurring features that go beyond the new LAMBs, a podcast, a message board, contests, you name it. We've had a number of contributors over the years; some have come and gone, and some have been around for the long haul - either way, I owe a debt of gratitude to all of them. I've tried to maintain all along that this site isn't about me, it's about all of us and what me make of it, and I hope that spirit has come through.
Basically, I just wanted to take this time as an opportunity to thank you all, from those contributors to my fellow podcasters to each and every new LAMB, and even those that we've lost along the way. It's been a pleasure watching the LAMB grow, and I can only hope that it gets that much better over the course of the next 500 LAMBs.
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One way I'm dying to make it better is to have the list of LAMBs be more useful and searchable. Want a list of Horror blogs only? You got it. Looking for sites that specialize in Classic Films? No problem. What about by rating - you might want to see a list of blogs "rated" PG-13 or under in case you're surfing at work. Can do.
Well, to that end, I don't have extactly what I want just yet, but this is a start. Click here to view a list of all 500 LAMBs. It's in Excel, and is sortable, filterable, you name it. It took a long time to sit down and do, so much so that I sought out help and got it from Travis of The Movie Encyclopedia, so a big thanks to him.
Of course, I'd love to have it be a part of the site itself, and one that retains that sortable/filterable nature, but unfortunately, I just don't have the IT/Javascript knowledge to do so. I'll figure it out eventually, but if you happen to be a whiz, I wouldn't turn away an assist, either. Here are some stats from the first 500 LAMBs, just for fun:
Sites by Rating:
G - 23
PG - 72
PG-13 - 190
R - 80
NC-17 - 17
n/a - 118 (I didn't start asking for a rating until more than a hundred in)
Dead LAMBs :
26
Top 5 Sites people heard about the LAMB from (note: the question was not asked of the first 19 LAMBs):
24 - Final Girl
23 - Blog Cabins
7 - Lazy Eye Theatre
7 - Out of the Past
6 - Valley Dreamin'
Sites identified as:
Reviews - 419
News - 132
Horror - 83
Editorials - 157
General - 152
Humor - 108
Classic Film - 79
Additionally, we've had a ton of write-ins, the leader of which is probably Lists.
All that, plus the names and URLs of every site, in order, can be found in the file. Once again, my thanks to all of you for making the LAMB what it is today. If there's any way you think it can/should serve you better, please let me know.
