2K23 Q3 Update

Q3 2K23

Earlier this month, this blog hit its official 11th anniversary date and tomorrow, the FOH video series will hit its 4th anniversary. In that time, the video series has overtaken the blog in terms of number of overall postings, though the blog is still ahead in terms of overall views. I don’t really have any changes in mind for the blog, and the FOH video series I’ll discuss more in the End Of The Year posting. Blog posting was a touch slower for September, due to me having a lot of open bottles I wanted to clean up, along with considerably less free time, due to the new gig. What’s interesting is that it was by far the biggest month in the history of the blog, larger, in fact, than some entire years. So...welcome, everyone who’s dropping by, and thanks for coming.

As I’ve noted prior, this quarter is the likely end of following grill season with FOH videos of spicy mustards. Part of this is because I’ve covered quite a few over the 3 years I’ve been doing it and I think I’ve nearly exhausted accessible mustards that would fit that criteria...there are still a few more out there, which I will get to as the normal course of things, as mustard is something I generally keep on hand, but not enough for another full grill season. OTOH, I’m about halfway to the number I would need now, so I may do it for one more year, possibly, but as of now, I find the likelihood of that possibility to be pretty low. In any case, I will continue to post photos of my grill work, which can be found in the YouTube Community page for my channel, as well as other stuff more strictly relative to the FOH series.

Season 22 of The Hot Ones also was announced and I updated the blog page for that once it dropped. I also posted the update to the YouTube Community page, but this season definitely has added a few more titles to things, including a new entry from Hot Ones for both the lead AND the final slot...guess it will be a while yet before I get caught up... The #8 slot is still the ghastly Da Bomb Beyond Insanity. I also see another Angry Goat, which I’m pretty excited about, hanging out there in the #2 slot and featuring one of my favorite peppers to boot...that one might just get moved up in the list a bit, depending on what kind of sale they might be bothered to have on Black Friday...

Also, as mentioned on the YouTube Community tab, I have not, as of yet, tried to chase down the Paqui One Chip Challenge for 2023. It was both expensive and not particularly convenient to find, even before the recent controversy, which I also addressed in a separate post in the YouTube Community tab. After doing the challenge for the last 3 consecutive years, it seems there is not much of a clamor for me to make content around it. If there is enough interest, then I will find one, if any are out in the wild, given that Paqui has pulled all of it from retail and Amazon has delisted not only that, but every other similar “challenge-type” chip. If I go to that trouble, I will do a video and post it, but for something that generally tastes awful, it’s hard for me to see an incentive. Again, while I don’t think any of those chips are particularly harmful via people ingesting them normally, I do strongly feel they should be age-gated, for a variety of reasons, some of which I touched on in that YouTube Community post.

In FOH news, and I’ve mentioned at least some of this on the aforementioned Community area of the YouTube page, I will be doing a little something special (starting tomorrow) during the entire month of October. It is more or less as spooky of themed stuff as I can find, including a video for Halloween itself, so hopefully you’ll dig those. In November, we will have a video blowout with daily posting of new videos (all of them related, except for the Sunday that falls in there, which will be a daily double video posting) every day of the Thanksgiving swing, plus Cyber Monday. In December, we will do yet another video blowout, which will be the 12 Days Of Xmas, starting Xmas Day and running into January. To kick off 2023, I did a lot of wing videos in commemoration of the Super Bowl, which will not be recurring in 2024. I don’t really have any major plans at all for 2024 as of yet, except for one very specific video in May, but stay tuned to the YouTube Community section, as I will be updating there sooner (probably) than the quarterly updates here.

Finally starting to wind down the backlog of non-sauce content, which means I should be well caught up by the end of the year. I will get into this more in the Q4 end of year update, but basically I’ve built up fairly well-stocked YouTube FOH Playlists with content (you can click directly to those on the right) and so my urge to produce FOH content at such a voracious rate as the last couple of years is ebbing a bit. I, again, did not get to plans I had made back in 2021. I also have not yet made the major change I had anticipated at the start of the year, but that is still on the agenda for next year...probably. Maybe.

I am caught up on the hot sauce videos, at least for now, and as I mentioned in the YouTube community notes (I post a lot of stuff there as well - check it out if you’re interested), today is the last day I will be doing Saturday postings of hot sauces for the foreseeable future. With the aforementioned new gig, I basically have weekends only to do filming, in addition to having my son, and given that I use natural light for most of the videos, in the coming winter months, I will be having a lot less of that available as well. Of course, those were relatively the conditions I started the FOH video series in, but this time, I have some good padding, and with some of the changes I have in mind, should be plenty good to go. As mentioned, there is a ton of content both on the blog and in the various FOH playlists, including stuff I’ve seen nowhere else, and I’ve tried to make it as easy to access as possible.

Anyway, as always, thanks to everyone who’s dropped by here or checked out the FOH videos and if there’s something you want to see, please drop me a line.