2K24 Q1 Update

2K24 Q1 Update

I’ve decided that this year, in addition to trying to match FOH video content on YouTube to various holidays, only partially successfully in years past, to, this time, pick some random holidays out and find videos that might actually fit them. I realize I don’t have enough to a following for this to be super meaningful, but it’s fun and even if it’s only a secret thrill for me to hold most of it as a surprise until it goes live, it’s an indulgence I will grant myself. The list is on the YouTube Community tab of my channel (you can get to the page by following any of the Playlist links at right and then going to my YouTube home page), if you’re interested in the latest updates, but so far, here are the days I have stuff planned coming in the days ahead for 2024:

April 1 - April (Fiery) Fool's Day
April 4 - Ramen Day
April 26 - National Pretzel Day
May 4 - IYKYK
May 18 - Chris Cornell RIP
May 29 - Memorial Day
June 12 - National Jerky Day
June 20 - Summer Solstice
July 4 - Independence Day
August 4 - National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day
August 6 - National Mustard Day
Sept 2 - Labor Day
Sept 23 - National Snack (Meat) Stick Day
Oct 21 - National Worm Day
Oct 28  - National Chocolate Day
Oct 31 - Diablo Double Feature
Nov 14 - National Pickle Day

I’ll probably update this list in the Q3 update, though I don’t really have anything planned outside of the “usual” holiday stuff I normally do for November/December.

A lot of being a chilehead is a process of refinement. While that is manifested a bit more directly with the creative endeavors of these written reviews and the FOH video series, it extends a bit beyond that. Case in point: One of my previous customs was, every December, to try to cut down the amount of open bottles lingering in my fridge door. In years past, that selection of bottles of varying levels went beyond the usual top shelf (where I generally keep things in current rotation), overflowing beyond the bottom shelf, where I hold the sauces I want for the quarterly FOH Wing Things (a video tour of my refrigerator door is in one of those Wing Things, by the by, link to the playlist at right), right into the middle shelf, which is where everything else not hot sauce goes, so mustard, mayo, pickles, various Asian sauces, grill sauces, etc. This would be less of a problem now, as I don’t share the refrigerator with anyone else these days, but that wasn’t the case when I started the blog and for much of my life before that.

I think New Year’s is something that culturally we’re conditioned to see as an opportunity for renewal, to start the next calendar year fresh, so to speak, so at the end of December, I’d have a purge for those sauces that hung in there, always waiting for me to get around to finding something to pair them with to finish, but accumulating as I found more appealing sauces and cranked though those. It always kind of bothered me, though, as I hate being wasteful and while life is too short for bad sauces, as I always say, it was, if nothing else, a waste of money that I’d spent if not enjoying the entirety of the bottle in return. So, I always had this on the backburner to remedy. I came close for several years, but it wasn’t until 2023 that I finally ended the year without having a single bottle to toss. None of the shelves were full to the brim as I started off 2024, either.

This January started off on fire. It saw not just one, but two, SOTY candidates, on the way to 6 consecutive hot sauce reviews, the last of which was this blog’s 500th overall post, quite unplanned, but the streak was something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. So, I was cautiously optimistic for the year. Then, naturally, tragedy struck. Continuing the trend of starting off even-years badly in January, which began in 2020, for this year, I finally ran out of luck and acquired COVID-19, which was highly obnoxious, and came shortly after I made the 500th blog post. I guess that is one of the good things about being so far ahead on video content, though, as I was able to take time off to recover without having to also worry about filming new stuff. The blog has no set schedule, so that was never going to be a problem, but if you were wondering why the frenetic pace of the early part of the month suddenly dropped off, that’s why. Definitely, make sure you are vaxxed and boosted as much as can be (I was short one booster total) and I found having albuterol at hand to be enormously helpful. This did create a lot of havoc with the challenges I was planning, as it rather handily reset the tolerance I was building, which I then spent most of February re-building in order to try to film the challenges in March.

All of the challenges I had are filmed now and will appear sporadically on the YT channel in 2024, some of which are on the schedule I posted earlier. Two of them were ½ pound chocolate bars from Willy Pete, neither of which induced much more than very mild cap cramping after the fact. Part of this has to do with my higher tolerance, keyed somewhat pointedly at Reapers, I feel a pretty significant part, maybe a larger part, has to do with my prep being really dialed in, nearly to the point where I’m debating filming an advice video, which will not include my specific methods (I need to get paid on the YouTubes before I’m going to post that kind of thing, as it took me a while to develop to get to this point), but just some general guidance if anyone’s going to attempt these. I guess if there’s enough interest, I can whip one up. If you want to see this, let me know.

Speaking of challenges, since I don’t really do them frequently, it was kind of interesting, the entire process of ramping up tolerance and then maintaining it, with just stuff I had at hand. I tinkered a bit with prep (and action for relief, if cramping got too high) and it was quite a bit more engaging than I’d ever suspected. It certainly won’t become a regular thing with me, but I’m definitely happier I did it now than when I started. As to those challenges themselves, two of them involved both heat and volume. The first one went a lot smoother and easier than expected, but I’m definitely done attempting those again, most likely. It’s just a huge influx of sugar for both of them and I’ve done that kind of things three times now and that’s a pretty good number to stop at. I am going to continue to look at challenges and if I find any I think are 1) interesting, 2) potentially tasty or at least not awful) and 3) do-able, I’ll probably give those a whack. I have one sort of on the back burner for 2024, if I can find it, and then that might be back to the dry spell for challenges again.

In January, I figured since I was doing some challenges for the FOH video series, I may as well make a new playlist (link at right). I then made another in February strictly for chocolate bars, since I’ve been doing so many of those. And then also hit my 500th overall review (counting both mini and full reviews) here on the blog in February. And then yet another playlist in March for meats and cheeses, which turned out to be a lot larger than I had anticipated. Links to all of those playlists at right.

As I mentioned in the Year End wrap up for 2023 (posted end of December), the FOH video series had some momentum. If it keeps that going, in addition to having more videos than posts here, which it already does, it will have more cumulative views. I kind of expected this, because blogs, while maybe not dead outright, definitely do not enjoy their earlier popularity and YouTube has been hotter for quite a while. On a side note, I still, as of right now, have content that is a year old (slightly over) that is not yet posted, but it is minimal compared to other years and should be caught up by next Quarterly update. I’m doing pretty well on not having a huge backlog for this year, since that kind of spacing creates some challenges on the back end and have easily enough non-sauce content to run through this year handily.

In some ways, the disparity between the FOH series on YouTube and here raises the question of why bother at all with the blog. This is my labor of love and the thinking is that perhaps people will check out videos and there will be some pull through. This was always meant to be archival in nature, a big, grand, vast library, much larger than I ever anticipated, to be sure, but still a joy to do...and I still have a lot of sauces on the hit list yet to get to...I suppose one day I will run dry, but until then, lots more to discover.

Finally, as I mentioned in the blog some last year, we seem to be cycling back off of “hot” products and stuff intended more for a chilehead market as far as the commercial sector, so fast food, grocery store items, etc. 2024 so far has been pretty dry, outside of a few Hot Ones tie-in products, which I may or may not get to. Access seems easier than some of the other stuff, but ye gawds, the price point...stay tuned for those, I guess...maybe.