15 years ago, against everyone’s better judgement, I started writing about horror movies. At the time, the main impetus was the fact that I was living in Chicago and, not being very active on social media, I wanted to have a place where I could talk about horror movies I was watching and comic books I was reading because I was a giant goddamned loser who couldn’t talk about these things to anyone in the real world.

Another key detail in the journey of yours truly is that it also marks 15 years(ish) of people calling me Wolfman. Admittedly, this is a curse of my own design. At the time, I was working a job where another person shared the same name as me, causing quite a few confusing situations in which no one knew whether coworkers were referring to me (an idiot) or my name twin (not really an idiot). Frustrations grew to such a point that higher-ups demanded I have a nickname to clear up the confusion, at which point I blurted out, “Well, pretty much everyone I know calls me Wolfman.” [Editor’s note: No one had ever actually called me Wolfman.]

I had initially assumed this exchange would amount to little more than some people I work with and friends I might relay the story to reacting with a “teehee,” and while some did, there were also unexpected ramifications to my ruse. Namely, the next time I returned to work, every single person I ran into called my Wolfman.

Shortly thereafter, I decided to start a blog and, never being known as someone who was particularly creative, the best title for a blog I could come up with was The Wolfman Cometh, all while thinking, “This is just a placeholder and I’ll change it to something better eventually.” Exemplifying my laziness, I never changed the name of the blog, forcing me to register countless social media profiles that include many variations of “Wolfman.” The consequence of that decision was that anyone who I met through social media in the following years called me Wolfman, partly because it was easier to call me that than any other name, and partly because I think it must be fun to say you know someone you call “Wolfman.”

An event that I can’t help but think cemented my fate as Wolfman was that in early 2010, Benicio del Toro starred in the monster-movie remake The Wolfman. This meant there were many times where I’d be standing near the poster for the movie and people would point at the poster, then point at me, then point at the poster, then point at me, and this would continue for hours. They’d also say things like, “You must be pretty excited for that,” and I’d say, “For what?” and they’d say, “That,” and I’d say, “What?” and they’d say, “That movie,” and I’d say, “What movie?” and they’d say, “That Wolfman movie,” and I’d say, “What Wolfman movie?” and they’d eventually strangle me. (Yes, I was just as insufferable then as I am now).

The 2010 The Wolfman didn’t really excite me back then and it doesn’t really excite me now. I recently had to search my own website to see if I had ever written about it and apparently I didn’t, so I watched it again and it’s…fine? The gory stuff is pretty cool, but there’s a lot of CGI and a lot of boring scenes connecting the wolf transformations.

Why am I writing about any of this? Well, we’re on the cusp of a new take on the 1941 The Wolf Man is hitting theaters in the form of Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man. Approaching the film’s release, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much has changed in the 15 years since the last Wolfman landed in theaters. A lot about me personally is the same as it was 15 years ago (ugly, loser, unfunny) and I also continue to share poorly written opinions about horror movies that aren’t often shared by anyone else. What’s ultimately goddamned insane is how, while my connection to the last The Wolfman was mostly just people pointing at me and pointing at a poster and starting a blog that shared the name of the movie, my connection to the upcoming Wolf Man is that I went to L.A. to do the press junket with the cast and crew of the movie, requiring me to both say “Wolf Man” and hear “Wolf Man” out loud a number of times, which is weird, because that’s my name.

In the words of American Movie‘s Mark Borchardt, “Life is kinda cool sometimes.”