GenXnerd

Born in Kettering Ohio in December of 1976, Lewis R. Cougill (MuGumBo) is a lover of film and television. While growing up, his mother would take him to the theater’s weekly new releases and view titles far beyond his age group. Lewis saw some of the greatest movies ever made originally on the big screen. Some of his fondest memories were spending the summer weekends at the local drive-in absorbing double and triple features from the comfort from the families van’s roof. Once his father bought the family a VCR Lewis’s cinematic playground exploded. He and his mom would go to the local video store and rent grocery sacks full of movies picked because of their amazing cover art. Growing up in a time before computerized special effects it has built a strong interest in the older grittier movies of cinema past. Lewis has a particular love for the 80′s horror genera and can spend a weekend enjoying a Puppet Master  or Hell Raiser marathon without thinking twice.

As the years have passed Lewis (often referred to as MuGumBo on this here internet) embraced technology and has enjoyed sharing his ideas and interests on the web. In 1997 he started a website and organization with his brother that has grown to be the worlds largest independent musician organization. After a break for a few years MuGumBo picked the keyboard back up and started a website for the restoration of a 1981 Datsun 280zx that was given to him by an old friend. It started off with simple intentions but grew to be a life changing experience for him and ignited a new fire of creativity and design.

Next on the block was MuGumBo’s journey into his own personal hobbies and interests with the website GenXnerd.com. This started off as a site devoted to nerdy and geeky things like Xbox 360 reviews, tips, tricks, and complaints and grew into a much larger idea of embracing all that is Generation X. For the first time in his life he traveled to GenCon in Indianapolis armed with a crappy digital camera and brand spanking new Sony HD video camera (bought on credit) and found a new interest and peer group. He recorded hundreds of videos (many which made it to YouTube) and about a 1000 pictures (available on the site). This really opened the gates of creativity for MuGumBo and he began to just go with his gut on creating new things. Armed with a large web server, Photoshop, and a back ally understanding of WordPress he started putting his ideas together and giving them names. Some are still alive and some are just sitting dormant waiting for a better idea to come around or the domain name to expire.

The most notable of things MuGumBo has created is the website, movie group, and Twitter exercise called Twitflix. The idea started off as he was tweeting along with some movies on a Sunday afternoon and others started commenting on his tweets and reactions to what he was watching on the screen. A light bulb went off and he wondered how hard it would be to get others to watch movies with him at the same time and all comment along. Well to his surprise it was very difficult to get others on board with the Twitflix concept and took him months till he developed a hard-core group of people who would Twitflix one night a week. Now instead of begging for participation the is always a handful of people to Twitflix a movie with.

Around the same time MuGumBo was working on building up a Twitflix audience he also started to crave the idea of hosting a podcast. He had dabbled with a few video cast blogs and they were a pain to edit. He finally found a sucker to sit on the other end of the conversation and he created the Traumatic Cinematic podcast. MuGumBo’s original partner was lacking a personality and sense of humor and MuGumBo was able to carry the entire burden of the show on his shoulders but eventually he had enough with the one way relationship and verbally bashed his counterpart live on air till he questioned his self-respect and ran off with his tail between his legs. Now MuGumBo has teamed up with a real partner and someone who is willing to actually care about the show. Manifesto also writes for this site and in one blog post did more than MuGumBo’s old partner did in his entire tenure. Chapter closed on that topic for now.

As this is being written the newest of MuGumBo’s ventures is bringing together a group of podcasters and videocasters under the title and domain name of GenXcast. The idea is that working together should drive everyone closer to their goals than doing it alone. We shall see what it develops into.

So as you can tell MuGumBo is one busy guy but there is a man behind the curtain. When you take a step back and gander at the man behind the tweets and the multiple FaceBook pages you are left with a husband, a father of two, and a self proclaimed hick. The guys at his day job call him LouBob and he deals with daily stress by working in his huge world hottest pepper garden, chicken farming, and of course hanging with the fam! It isn’t easy to juggle everything but Lewis makes sure he always finds time for those most important in his life. He often has to remind himself that these internet ventures are more than just a hobby but a hope to find a better more enjoyable way to make a better life for those he loves.  Sure everyone wants that but Lewis is working hard to find something that will explode and his ideas are endless. In Lewis’s mind he wishes he could find several sponsors that would like to associate there names with the creations he has made.

The story has only begun!

Contact Lewis MuGumBo@gmail.com