Who the hell is Drew McWeeny?

And why does he need a whole dot-com just about him?

Well, I am.

And I'm not sure "need" is the word, exactly. I want one, though, because I am a writer who has been working professionally since 1994, and this website is going to be the new catch-all permanent home of my work. You'll find links to the past here. You'll find new things. You'll find things you can buy, and you'll find a whole lot of things that are free. Feel free to poke around and explore.

You'll find both of my newsletters here, including the full archive from their original runs on Substack. Formerly Dangerous is a newsletter about media both past and present, including my Hip Pocket columns, my James Bond Declassified series, and so much more. The Last '80s Newsletter (You'll Ever Need) is a film history project where I'm reviewing every single film released in theaters in the United States between January 1980 and December 1989.

You can also find my podcast, The Hip Pocket, here, and those episodes are going to be free to everyone forever, so please share them with people if you enjoy what you hear. My previous podcast, '80s All Over, is also going to live over here now as I phase out my Squarespace site. Everything's going to be here on Ghost, and once I put these roots down, I'm not moving again. I hate that the Internet, which people originally claimed was "forever," is anything but. The only way I can control my work is to build a home for it and pay for that home myself, with no one else having access to the on/off switch. I like that Ghost seems determined not to let this place turn into a cesspool, but they're also dedicated to giving people real control over what they publish, how they publish it, and how they interact with their customers.

I'm still figuring out the new subscription model, but once I've got it all sorted out, I'll open things up and get everyone set up. Your paid subscriptions make this site and these projects possible, and when you spread the word and turn new people on to my work, you help me more than I can possibly explain.

You want a link to the Discord server where we hope to grow this community through events and ongoing conversation? This will be the place. You want to buy merch for the shows or the newsletters? I'll make sure you can. Want to support us by using our Amazon Affiliates link to buy things? We're getting that set up, too.

Now, more than ever, is a time to support independent human art. Corporations are trying to tell you that AI can replace everyone at every job, except, apparently, for "people who buy and implement the snake oil plagiarism suicide machines," and they want you to believe that art is something that can be generated by an algorithm. That's ridiculous. Human art matters, and everything you read on this site is generated 100% by human effort.

Thanks, and welcome.