"I would say the end is pretty seriously nigh."

I feel shitty for posting this now, as so many are still reacting to Jake's rather sudden plunge back into the world of Celebrity PDA. The post below is not in reaction to any one thing and has, in fact, been scheduled for this date for nearly 3 months now and was written many days ago. So in spite of, not because of, anything else going on right now, we're posting exactly as we originally intended...

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Hmmmm. Have you ever wondered what life would be like with no Jake Watch?

Well, we have. And as hard as it is for both us for tell you this, you're going to get the chance to experience a Jake Watch-free existence sooner than you might think. When? Well, we'd rather not say. We don't want this to turn into a big countdown, but instead, we're going to continue posting as usual until our predetermined end date...which is pretty damned soon.

We know this seems sudden, but it's been in the works now for quite a long time. The generic "after Rendition" time period has been kicking around for about 6 months, and the actual date for at least three. The "why?" of it all is very complicated, but perhaps to your surprise, one reason directly involves our biggest undertaking ever...and yes, it is directly related to Jake and Jake Watch. Yes, there have been some rough times and yes, we are by and large completely baffled by what has become of the majority of the fandom lately (Jake Watch readers are naturally excluded from this assessment), but a certain celebrity father once told me, "It's all about learning!" We'll talk more about that in a minute, but that's exactly what this blog has been for us: a learning experience, and one that was never intended to continue indefinitely.

We will keep the forum and the store open, and all the MySpace pages will remain active (like we'd let Jake in '08 go!). The only major change will be that the blog will no longer be updated. Which, OK, is pretty major. But we feel that at this juncture, our time and energy are best spent not writing new posts, but working towards new goals, ones which we plan on sharing with you and ones which will continue to involve the britpopbaby/Prophecy Girl collaboration.

In the interest of full disclosure, we do have a couple of things to share with you...

First of all, our biggest disappointment, by far, is that we never accomplished what this blog was originally created to do, which was to give us some semblance of professional credibility, ultimately with the goal of interviewing Jake. We tried very, very hard for you guys, through every avenue we could think of. We went from being to ignored to being rejected (harshly) to being ignored again, with a lot of other being ignored's in between. That was supposed to be our "thank you" for your support over the months and the fact that we never got even remotely close has been disappointing to the point of discouraging. In fact, originally, Jake Watch was going to exist only until we got an interview, but unfortunately, over time, it became clear that our efforts in that arena were going to be fruitless no matter what our methods. So there's that hanging over us, and also the "Jakes and Ladders" board game which, after two months, we just couldn't seem to finish.

Secondly, I, personally, need to address the poetry reading incident because I know there is still some confusion and tension surrounding that. Contrary to popular belief, I did get over it. I made peace with the fact that I was an idiot/misinformed going into the situation and was an idiot/comatose while standing there and listening to stuff that I should have protested against. But I moved on and accepted that I couldn't change what happened. However. Just when I thought things were over....I received an e-mail from Stephen about a month ago regarding that night. Yes, it shocked the hell out of me, too. Despite the fact that it came 11 months late, it was obviously heartfelt and so I wrote him a very genuine thank you e-mail and requested his permission to share with you what he had written to me (considering "asking for permission" is what started this whole mess, I wanted to cover my bases). He did not write me back. And for that reason, I cannot tell you that he thanked us for Ramona's gift and promised to tell Maggie, Peter, and Ramona about it and also apologized for his behavior the night of the reading even though he admittedly had no recollection of what happened. So...you didn't hear that from me.

So once again, I'd like to put that behind us. Jake Watch has been a full education, for both of us, on so many levels, and we are better people for it. When britpopbaby started this site 19 months ago, the concept of a blog devoted to a single celebrity was virtually unheard of. Now, blogs about Jake alone are a dime a dozen. I don't say that to negate the value of these other blogs (there are some great ones out there!), but rather to say that we recognize that we've done what we needed to within this medium for the time being. No matter what came before or comes after us, we can both be proud of the fact that there has never been anything even remotely like this site for any other celebrity. I am not even lying when I say that I am frequently stunned by our combined creative output. I don't care how self-congratulatory that makes me sound. Most people who get paid to be creative don't churn out stuff at the volume we have. But we never intended to continue at that rate forever.

So that's it. You'll know the final post when you see it. Considering it'll be 2009 before Jake's next movie, you could always start at the beginning of Jake Watch and read the year away. Who knows? We might be back. ;)

We'd also like to stress that this isn't really the end of anything, but more like a chance for us to take a new direction. We're not abandoning ship; we're growing.

We would also like to thank you for reading and supporting us all this time. We appreciate each and every person (OK, most each and every person) who came to see what we had to offer and we certainly appreciate, more than we can say, those of you who have become regular readers.

I know "thank you" doesn't exactly equal an interview with Jake, but you know what? Looking back at what we've accomplished, I think we made it alright without him. :)

Post title from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode "Prophecy Girl." In case you were wondering...