You’d think that running would be the cheapest sport you could get into, all you need are some shoes and a place to run, right?

Well, that’s wrong.

If you go out like that you’re gonna have a terrible time (or get hurt) and end up hating every second of your run. Then you’ll remember how bad running sucks and you’ll give up and feel worse than before you started.

Don’t fear, though, I’m going to teach you the right way to get into running. Written from the perspective of someone who has been trying to run for the last 10 years but only just recently figured it out. 

Step 1: Get decent shoes.

This is not an option, I started running with some cheap shoes I picked up for less than 30 dollars on clearance at the big box sports store and guess what? They fucking sucked. I got shin splints and I sprained my ankle in those shoes. Fuck those shoes, never again.

Go to the running store, the kind where they scan your foot and analyze your gait (FOR FREE) and someone will tell you what the shoe they recommend for your foot and your gait. Believe it or not, you can’t just buy any ole pair of shoes and get out there and do the thing. Everyone’s different. Unreal.

I went with a more minimal shoe with less padding, my entire strike (you start using these words when you begin running) changed immediately and my previously wild shin splints completely disappeared. Good shoes is magic, invest the money here.

Estimated cost: $100.00

Step 2: Download an app.

Get one of the seemingly infinite C25K (Couch to 5k) apps that are out there. Most are free, the pay ones have a few more features, but the free ones are basically fine.

These are important because they’ll help you pace yourself so you’re not trying to fucking run a hundred miles on your first day and then you overdo it and you get hurt. You can’t run a hundred miles, you can’t even run a mile yet. Don’t sweat it.

They ease you into running by using an interval training method, where you jog for a minute or two, then walk for a minute or two, and you gradually build up your running endurance until you’re able to run for a full 30 minutes without a walking interval. Crucial.

Estimated cost: Free (or $3 if you pay)

Step 3: Dump all your cotton!

This can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. You can go to Target and spend less than 50 bucks and get a good running outfit going. The essentials being socks, shorts, and a shirt/sports bra. The important part is that they shouldn’t be cotton.

Cotton holds onto sweat and that’ll make the fabric cling to you and feel gross and uncomfortable and sweat in your socks are how you get blisters, and blisters keep you from running. You shouldn’t get blisters.

While you’re at it, go on ebay and get an armband for your phone for $4 so you don’t have to hold it in your hand while you’re running, cause eventually you’re gonna drop it and then the screen shatters and you’re gonna be bummed and stop running. Which is the bad outcome in this adventure. Game over.

Estimated cost: Initial setup should be less than $60. If you’re a bra-wearing type person, please splurge a little and get a decent sports bra. You probs already know this, but you have my official blessing to spend more than bare bones budget on this. Anyway, once you get confident that you’re sticking with this, spend some real cash (but look for deals!).

Step 4: Limit your runs per week.

When you’re starting out, try not to run more than 3 times. Running is extremely stressful on your body and it needs the time to heal up between runs. Make up a schedule and try to stick to it. For example, I run every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Saturday I go a little harder because I rest Sunday and Monday.

Running more than this at first just increases the chances you’ll hurt yourself, and we don’t want to get hurt!

Step 5: Stay active on your off days.

Just cause you shouldn’t be running on your in-between days doesn’t mean that you get to sit around being a lazy ass. You can still do a work out, and you should do some activity that increases your heart rate for at least 20 minutes per day regardless.

This is my favorite no-gear-needed workout to do on the between days. Try to do each circuit with no breaks between the exercises and only take water between circuits. 

When you get a bit more advanced, do each exercise in an tabata style interval (20s of the exercise, 10s rest, move to the next) and increase the amount of circuits you do.

Step X: The Running Alternative

In case you’re totally morally opposed to running, don’t worry, you don’t have to run! See, running and walking are pretty close to each other, so close that walking will give you around 90% of the benefit that running gives if you do it right!

How do you do it right?

Well, for every 2 minutes you walk, that’s roughly equal to 1 minute of running. So if you want to get the full benefit of a 30 minute run without, y’know, actually running, all you have to do is walk for an hour straight. Nobody said being lazy was easy, and you’re still going to need good shoes.

Feel free to ask me anything about what shoes I like, and what my favorite leggings are, or whatever. I’m here for you.

Good luck!

Work/life balance is very difficult for a lot of creatives because many of us work from home, for ourselves, or for “fun” and therefore we are our own worst enemies when it comes to really working.  Since so many of us live where we work, the line is very blurry!  Which means that we’re constantly sabotaging ourselves in tiny ways that reduce our productivity, and this goes way beyond just checking our phones or messing around on facebook/twitter/tumblr.  It goes way deep, like psychologically deep.

I want to help you fix this, though!  Here’s a list of things you can do to not only improve your productivity but improve the quality of your work and the quality of your life in and of itself.

• Don’t work where you sleep.
  

If you only follow one thing on this list, this is the thing to follow.  Move your work area to another room that isn’t your bedroom.  This will absolutely improve your entire life by an immeasurable amount.  I’m not lying.  Go into the kitchen, dining room, living room, build a shed in the yard and go out there.  It doesn’t matter.  Just don’t work where you sleep.

• Don’t eat at your desk.

This is only slightly less important than not working where you sleep, but only slightly.  If you can’t move your workspace out of your bedroom for whatever reason you’ve convinced yourself is true, then this is the thing to follow.  Take your meals away from your workspace.  Take them where you can’t even see your workspace if at all possible.

• Take walks when you’re stuck.
  

When you don’t know how to push forward on whatever you’re working on, get up, and take a 20 minute walk and leave your phone behind.  20 minutes walking is the magic number of walking minutes that’ll get you to find a solution to, or at least a way around, the problem you’re having.  Not having your phone on you means you aren’t looking at it, cause if you’re looking at it you’re not thinking about the solution to your problem.

• Put your phone and all messaging on Do Not Disturb mode.
  

When you’re working, you shouldn’t be able to be reached until you’re done working.  I KNOW THIS IS VERY HARD FOR MOST OF US.  The average person checks their phone 85 times a day, and uses it for about 5 hours a day.  That’s a lot of productivity time stolen by distraction.   If you can’t see it, you can’t check it.  The message can wait.

• Take regular breaks, but don’t break at your computer!
  

The longer you work in a row means the less productive you become.  It’s extremely important to know your limits and to take breaks when you can.  These are different breaks than the walks noted above, those are for overcoming problems.  This is for getting a short rest and getting back to work.  But don’t take a break at your computer, because that doesn’t actually count to your brain as a break.  Leave the room when you’re taking a break.  You can check your phone now.

• Have a different computer for doing work on.
  

This one is tougher to follow because it has a potentially significant monetary component and creatives are generally always strapped for cash cause of how creative work has been devalued.  But that’s another post.  A computer that you only use while working is important.

• Your work computer should be the “opposite” operating system of your personal computer.
  

If your personal computer is Windows, buy a Mac.  This is a psychological thing that works in two ways.  The first is that you won’t like using it so you won’t be as inclined to fuck around on it.  Remember, you’re using it for work, not to be comfortable. Secondly, it’ll put your brain in a “Oh, we’re working” mindset, which is what we’re trying to re-train ourselves to recognize.

• If you can’t get a work computer, make a second login on your computer. 
  

Purposefully limit it to only have access to work-centric programs and that you can’t install any new programs from that account.  Make the second login a totally different theme, wallpaper, colors, everything.  No facebook, tumblr, or twitter!

• Find a ritual to get ready.
  

This is also a pretty big thing.  Rituals are extremely powerful things in our lives.  We all have them, whether we are conscious of that or not.  Do you check your phone first thing in the morning?  Ritual.

For getting into a proper mindset for creative work, we need tangible things that will get us ready to focus in on the task and ignore distractions and temptations for distraction.  Whatever those may be.  A proper ritual before you start working will help you get there faster.

For instance, I know some people who take a shower, get dressed in business clothes, and then go straight into their home office to begin their work day from their house.  Do they have to do that?  No.  But that’s their ritual.  That’s what works for them.

For me, I need a large ice water on my desk before I can do literally anything.  If I don’t have it, I’m seriously thinking about how thirsty I am and it’ll only get worse, and I’m so preoccupied by NOT having the ice water, I have to go get the ice water.

I know it seems like a lot of rules to follow, and don’t get me wrong, I struggle with a lot of them too.  Particularly with being accessible to everyone in my life all the time.  But following as many of these as you can with as much consistency as possible will give you results you’ll be happy with in the long term, even if you’re miserable right now cause you don’t know if you have a mention on twitter or a new note on tumblr.

Well, you know there’s one surefire way to combat him, stop him dead in his tracks, and help create a better world for all of us.  Wanna know what it is?

VOTING

Did you know that 2015 is the year that Millennials overtook the Baby Boomers for largest generational cohort?  There will be (or are, if you’re reading this after 2015) 75.3 million Millennials in the United States as opposed to the 74.9 million Baby Boomers.

You may not have known that, but there’s a lot of people interested in that, and those people generally don’t have your best interests at heart.  They know that young people tend not to vote.  In fact, it’s in their best interests that you don’t vote at all.  And they’re continually making it harder and harder for the people they don’t want voting to vote.

In Alabama, where they have very strict voter ID laws, they are closing 45 of its 49 DMVs.  That’s four DMVs for the entire state.  That’s four (4!!!) places in the entire state that’ll serve you up valid identification so you can vote.  I shouldn’t have to tell you who this impacts the most, but I will anyway:

Millennials and poor people.

Not only are they going to have a plain harder time getting time off of work, or cutting a day from school, to wait at the DMV (which isn’t open on the weekends, obviously), they have to tackle the almost insurmountable task of even getting there to begin with.  

THIS SHIT IS DESIGNED.  YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO VOTE ACCORDING TO THE PARTY OF DONALD TRUMP.

You aren’t supposed to vote because they know that if the Millennials, as a bloc (which is fucking terrifying to the GOP because of how liberal and diverse you guys are) decided to vote a certain way they would win every time.  

And you haven’t even achieved your final form yet.

Millennials are projected to peak at 81.1 million strong in 2036.  Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are only going to decline, because they are going to get older and die.  You are ascendant, but you must participate!

Think about that power for a moment, it’s not theoretical.  It’s here, and now!  But you have to prepare yourself, because they’re going to do everything they can to keep you not voting.  If you haven’t registered to vote yet DO IT IMMEDIATELY.

It’s really easy to register, most states will let you register online.  “But, Joey,” you say, “I don’t have a computer!  I borrow my sister’s iphone to browse tumblr!  Have you tried filling out forms on an iphone?  It’s terrible!”

Well, aside from that being incredibly impractical and kinda weird, Vanessa, that’s fine.  You can go to basically any post office and pick up a voter registration form.  I guarantee that there’s one near where you live or work.  These take 10 minutes to fill out and are free to mail off.  You will now be registered to vote.

After that, you need to see if your state has any sort of voter identification laws, 32 states have them, so it’s probably a good chance that you reside in one of those.  Next step, if you haven’t done this already, is to get proper identification situated.  With the aforementioned Alabama closing all their DMVs, we’re gonna need plenty of lead in time.  So take care of that shit as soon as possible.

BUT I DON’T WANT TO TAKE A DRIVING TEST!

If you don’t intend on driving a car you can still get qualifying state-issued identification from the DMV, which is the only place that issues those things.  Suck it up, buttercup.  You’re gonna have to wait in line and get your picture taken.

ALL OF THIS IS IN YOUR BEST INTERESTS!

This is doubly so if you’re a Latino or Asian Millennial, since a big part of the rhetoric for this election cycle is going to focus entirely upon your parents and grandparents status in the nation, and, to a lesser extent, your own as well.  But it would basically be impossible to repeal the 14^th Amendment which gives citizenship to children born in the United States.  Even so, if they’re not safe, you’re not safe.

FEAR RUNS THIS CYCLE.

They’re afraid of you because they don’t understand you.  Baby Boomers basically can’t talk to Millennials.  There’s a literal language barrier that they have no idea how to get around.  This is to your advantage, and their disadvantage.  It’s literally causing a crisis, you guys aren’t buying things that they expect, no, need you to buy.  Like cars, and houses.

But the GOP is really good at appealing to passions, and to people who don’t know any better.  In fact, everything they do entirely relies upon it.  They are after low-information voters to vote against their own self-interests by creating an enemy.  Right now it’s Mexican immigrants who are “criminals and rapists” which is fucking false as hell because immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native born citizens.

So the more you sit back and don’t vote, don’t participate in the political system, the more you allow other people to build your narrative.  I know some of you whose parents worked three or four jobs at the same time so you could have a better life than them.  Well, now it’s your fucking turn to do the same, guys.

The GOP nominee will need 47% of the Latino vote to win!  You’re probably thinking, fuck that puto, I’ll never vote for pendejo Trump.  But that’s what they’re counting on, particularly the “never” part. They’re counting on you not votingat all.

I can’t fucking make you vote.

But I hope I’ve helped you get prepared for it.  I hope that you’ll understand the actual power you have this election cycle and participate.  It’s your right and responsibility as a citizen, despite all the powers that be working against you.  Make an appointment at the DMV, send in your voter registration.  Talk to your work about getting time off during the day to go vote.  

But that’s not all!

You’re gonna need to actually prepare, because the ballot isn’t going to be only for the presidential candidates, it’s going to be for senators, congresspersons, and propositions which will actually affect your day to day life far more seriously.  You’re going to need to read up on those things, and vote accordingly.  Don’t just randomly fill shit out in the booth there.  

Also, wording on the ballot for the propositions are really confusing also by design if you haven’t figured out how this game is played yet.  So don’t be afraid to look up voting guides, most of the time you can search “progressive’s guide to <state> propositions” and it’ll bring up something usable to go off of.

Like I said, this is important stuff, and you need to know it and be prepared.  See you at the polls.

I’m going to straight up say that I did not like this book and that I don’t recommend it for anyone to read.  The rest is under the cut.

Keep reading

I’ll put it under a cut, since not everyone’s here for that, but I just want to talk and get some things out of my head.  Read it, or don’t, i don’t care.

Keep reading

I had an adult moment yesterday, maybe it’s a life changing one, but it certainly made me think about things a little differently.

See, on Sundays I go back to my hometown and eat breakfast with my grandma and watch Turner Classic Movies (or Lifetime channel, depending on her mood) on her couch and spend a few hours with her.  She’s 96 and hard of hearing (though, she hears better at very odd times so I have a theory that she hears better than she wants us to think).

Anyway, this week after grandma’s house, I was going to go to the mall and buy a new belt, cause my current belt is coming apart and only barely qualifies as a belt right now.  I just wanted a pretty simple belt I can put my own buckle into and live life.

I knew it was a dicey gamble going to the mall on a weekend, but parking was fine, and I was hopeful I’d grab what I needed and get on with my day.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

What actually occurred was a surreal, Heart of Darkness-esque journey into the depravity of Middle America.  See, the mall’s changed a lot since I was younger and used to hang out there.  It’s gotten a lot more high end stores, but for some reason all those stores sell the same shit.

But there’s more.

I started at Hot Topic and saw some of the most tacky belts imaginable:

Like, do people, in the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Thirteen actually wear these things?  Rainbow studs?  FUCKING BULLETS?

There was some to the right of this picture that were seatbelts with buckles, but had slogans on them from tv shows, and the buckle had a tv show name.  There was one for the fucking Big Bang Theory.

Which was all enough to turn my stomach, but it got so, so much worse, because then I looked up and saw the horror of horrors:

They were selling Derpy Hooves bowties.  Among a whole selection of ironic bowties.

That was when I knew I had to immediately leave before the overpowering Friendzone Aura infected me or something.  I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.  It was awful.

I fled.

I came across three surf/skate stores that all sold the exact same stuff and were all next to each other.  Which is all stuff for literal Hypebeasts in Training (without the floral patterns).  

One store almost had what I wanted, but they put a fuck ugly logo on the belt.  Who the fuck wants a logo on their belt?  That’s the worst thing ever.

Then I came across Spenser’s Gifts, which was the most awful store I’ve ever been in.  I walk inside and there’s a house remix of Pumped Up Kicks playing and this is the first shirt that I see:

Like, really, that happened.

It was then that I realized that I was in the center of White Culture, that a store could unironically sell a shirt that said “I’M ON THAT WHITE BOY SHIT” and not feel utterly ashamed to even exist.  That people would buy that shirt and wear it proudly.  That this is the land of the Lowest Common Denominator and I was at the fucking epicenter of this garbage culture.

They also had belts that said cool things like “LET’S GET WASTED” and my personal favorite, “WHERE’S MOLLY?”

I prayed to whatever Kind and Just God that was responsible for a basically good universe to just drop a fucking meteor on that store with me in it, just kill us all, but all that happened was some guy walked up next to me and said in the most disgusted tone of voice possible, “This is like a wannabe Hot Topic.”  He was right.  Death refused to come.

After that, I started being a little more critical of where I was, and what I was looking at, and the people around me.  I was blind to them before, because I wouldn’t acknowledge them, I was single minded in my quest for a belt, and now I couldn’t buy a belt from these stores.  I couldn’t participate in this form of commerce.  I couldn’t give my money to this machine of death and broken dreams.

Everyone was excited for the most inane things possible, the most disposable, loathsome gewgaws of overpriced garbage.  I saw a girl, probably 15, wearing a super short crop top, some crazy low rise jeans, with a backwards snapback, walking a toy breed dog in wedge heels that she could barely walk in with her mom.  I almost cried.  Shed literal tears.  It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen.

I even went into the Gap, on some odd bout of loathing, that maybe I’d have a fucking brain aneurysm and die right there and not have to worry about ever needing a belt again, but alas, all I heard was a TRANCE VERSION OF “TIME OF OUR LIVES” (which I think was a remix Black Eyed Peas cover).

However, that wasn’t the actual turning point of my day.  That happened when I fled the Gap and I saw that it was next to a Hollister.

Which was next to an Abercrombie and Fitch.

Which was next to ANOTHER Abercrombie and Fitch (I checked to see if they were connected and it was just a double storefront, it wasn’t. They were their own stores).  THERE WERE TWO ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH STORES IN THE SAME FUCKING MALL!!  And that was when I finally understood.  When I really, really got it.  This is why the rest of the world hates us.  The terrorists are right.  Death to America if this is America.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending so much of my time this last year and a half in Los Angeles proper, and being in Downtown and seeing how different life is from the bizarre corporate feeding frenzy that the mall is.  But I’m sour on my hometown right now.  Maybe forever?

I’d always thought that if this thing out here doesn’t work out, I could always fall back onto my parents’ place, it was kind of almost a given.  I spend a lot of time in there on Sundays when I go back, and it’s nice, and comfortable inside.  It’s a good place to live, it was a good place to grow up.  But now?  I’m not so sure.  It feels empty and poisonous now, a vacuous space filled with homogeneous people-not-people and I don’t think I could ever live there again.

That’s my adult moment, when I realized that I’ve outgrown my hometown.  I can’t go back.  I can’t be part and parcel to that culture any longer.

As most of you guys know, when I’m not on my day job as bookseller extraordinaire, I put in work with my friends over at HAM On Everything.  Things have been moving fast for us recently, and nothing exemplifies this so much as this past weekend, I’m still trying to catch my breath and every so often I have to stop and smile and say to myself, “Yes, this is real, yes, this is happening.”

First up, Romo got picked by Antwon to DJ for him at his show in Moscow.  As in Russia.  As in flying across to the other side of the got dam globe to DJ a show.  Really.

Then, at the same time, we had the Summer Solstice happen to officially begin summertime and we decided to ring it in properly with a party on Friday night.  But since we wanted to do it really really right, we threw a completely free party on Sunday, too.

Trust, it was unreal from start to finish.

But we’ll start with Friday first, which was H.O.E. Rap City.

There’s a delicate balance when you book a show, since you want people to be dancing and having fun, so you need the DJs to bring that, but if you have five hours of DJs back to back all the music starts running together and people get fatigued, so some performers are needed to mix it up a little.

That said, we generally don’t do all pure rappers on a lineup, we like to keep it mixed, we like it a little weird, a little offbeat, slightly ironic.  We’ve been the first Los Angeles performance for a lot of people, people who are now pretty big.  I’m not saying we break new artists or anything, but we’ve got an eye on who’s on next.

So, all rappers was a little uncertain, but we’re not against taking risks every so often.  We got 900 RSVP’s to the party, and not everyone shows up who RSVP’s.  You can usually count on about half of your RSVP’s to show up to an event, we’re mostly lucky and get about 2/3rds to ¾ths of our RSVP’s to show up.

We got everything set up early and all in place and what not, ready to start the night and let people in, when one of the turntables stops working.

Oh, no.

When the party starts at 10pm and your turntables crap out at 9:55, that’s officially a problem.  Something slightly uncertain spirals into a sort of anxious panic, but we have back up turntables, only they’re at headquarters.  So Adam and I jump in my car and we tear ass through Downtown Los Angeles to his place, grab the gear we need, and head back.

The whole while Adam’s phone is blowing up, people are looking for him and he’s not at the party.  People need him and he’s in a car getting emergency stuff.  I kept a positive mental attitude, this was just a snag, and everything else would be cool from here.  So, we get back around 10:40, Adam jumps out of my car with the turntables, and I prepare myself to park a hundred miles away because the party’s been going on 40 minutes since we left and someone most assuredly had taken my parking space by now.

Only they hadn’t.

With a prayer of thanks to the Based God I reclaim my parking spot and realize that everything was going to be fine.

But it was more than fine, everything was totally packed!  Seriously, we were very close to capacity and it wasn’t even an hour into the party.  There was just a sea of people in the warehouse, and they were very down.

This was one of the smoothest, busiest parties that we’ve ever thrown.  Everything seemed to work perfectly from our end (turntable snag aside) and the crowd was seriously feeling it the whole night.  Normally there’s a couple dust ups and scraps, and we gotta kick a couple kids out cause they’re a little too turnt, but that didn’t happen at all.  There was mosh pits galore, girls on stage dancing, and everybody knew the words to every song the dudes performing did.

It was dope.

However, of everyone that I talked to all night, everyone kept on going back to the same thing: Sunday.  Everyone couldn’t wait for Sunday.  Hell, I couldn’t wait for Sunday, either.

See, Aqua Hydrate sponsored us on Sunday.  Which meant we got to get the entire pool area of the Roosevelt Hotel to throw our party in.  Which meant we got to get DJ Paul from Three 6 Mafia to DJ our pool party.  Which also meant that we got to throw this party completely free.

I was feeling so bout it bout it that I even threw on some boardshorts and flip flops to get in the proper spirit of the whole thing.

Aqua did us right, with lots of free water bottles everywhere and even some snocones.

I’m about that snocone life, just so you know.

Look, we even got Ladie Lane out in the daytime (SUNLIGHT) with a snocone and look how amazingly happy she is.  This is the enemy of her people confronted directly.

Zach got in on it too, in his own way.  Just cause you’re at a party doesn’t mean you can stop working, y'know?

Here’s a cool panorama of everyone going pretty crazy during DJ Paul’s set.

While the list was strict for people coming in for free, for people staying at the hotel, they could come in to the party if they wanted to.  Since they were hotel guests and all.  And this is a nice hotel.  In Hollywood…

There were more than a few people completely unprepared for our slutty ratchet pool party, like the suburban preppy couple from somewhere not around here, and the old, middle aged couple who were just staring at us all in abject wonder while filming everything they saw with their iphones.  It was classic.

There was also one particular individual who was so amazingly turnt that it almost defies description.  I’ll do my best, though.

His eyes were barely open slits, and he tilted his head super far back to see anything, and he was trying to figure out how to put his tank top back on, which was proving to be exceptionally difficult and the process to which he found the tag in the back, and the arm holes, and the neck hole was excruciating to watch.  And even then, he only got one arm and his head through and gave up.  Then he started air DJing to the music, and it was just amazing.  Like 100% incredible.

Eventually the Roosevelt got sick of us scaring their guests and shut us down, which meant it was time to go to In N Out. 

While there we literally saw everybody that was at the party eating Double Doubles.

Then it was time to go home and prepare to rejoin the real world of real people.

I managed, somehow.

Remember when a picture of a simple unmentionable was all it took? Then it stopped. It was bare flesh now – but that tapered off quickly. The flesh is savage, and grows savvy, and more interesting things could be found. Things with action. How could there be any going back?

Soon enough, debauchery in all its myriad forms became commonplace, mundane. It lacked something special, and so tastes needed to adapt. Become refined.

What arouses is more and more particular. Exact. Gradually losing erotic content entirely, as long as it follows what’s required. Until the rarefied result that’s left is something that could only be called sexual in the most academic of terms.

Instead, its appeal and allure pertained entirely to how esoteric and unapproachable it was. How utterly unlike any form of copulation between two living beings something can aspire to be. How nobody, at all, could possibly understand. But – and with shocking alacrity – even that lost its secret little edge.

What was possibly left? Where was there to go from here?

A picture of a simple unmentionable was all it took.

So, when I was younger, I won’t say that my moral compass lacked direction, but I would say that someone hadn’t informed me that I should be addressing it when making certain decisions.  Namely when it came to cheating on things.

This story takes place in 2nd grade, and we would get assigned work to do and I wouldn’t do it.  I don’t know what I did instead, I just didn’t do it.  Which was weird cause it was all in-class work that we were supposed to be doing, but I didn’t.

But, I do remember what I did afterwards.

Since this was elementary school, kids always forgot to put their names on their worksheets and what not.  And the teacher would make a pile of these things and I would walk up with all the other kids who realized they forgot to put their name on the worksheet and just take one from the pile, put my name on it, and turn it in.

I did this a lot.

So, one day, we had a writing assignment and so of course I didn’t do it.  There was a pile of papers on the desk, so I went up like everyone else and I looked through for one that felt right, and I picked it up and took it back to my seat.

I didn’t even read it.

So we all have our papers and the teacher asks who wants to read their story to the class, and for some reason I raise my hand.  In retrospect, this is among the dumbest things I’ve ever done.  I don’t know what I was thinking, but it wasn’t about consequences to reading someone else’s story as my own.

I mean, I could turn in someone else’s math problems, no sweat.  That's interchangeable stuff, but, yeah.  Nobody had outright told me it was wrong, though, so… yeah.

Anyway, I get called on cause this is 2nd grade and nobody wants to read shit, because, fuck, we can barely read at all (I read amazingly for the record, but that’s neither here nor there).

So I get up there and I start reading this story that I didn’t write about going up in a hot air balloon and, here’s where I fuck up, whoever wrote this story put in how high they went, and it was something like 1000000000000 feet in the air.  Literally that many zeros.  And I get to how high and I say one zero zero zero zero zero aloud cause I don’t even know what to say about a number with that many zeros behind it and then I hear:

“That’s not your story!”

“Yeah, that’s Danielle’s story.”

I said something like “Oh, I grabbed the wrong paper” then set it down and went back to my seat.

Like, lmao, Little Joey, I admire your quick thinking on your feet and all, but I GRABBED THE WRONG PAPER THAT I THEN DECIDED TO READ ALOUD TO THE CLASS AND DIDN’T NOTICE THAT IT WASN’T MY STORY AT ALL UNTIL I TRIPPED UP OVER THE ABSURDLY LARGE NUMBER AND THEN GOT CALLED OUT?

That’s just silly, bruh.

Even though I don’t remember getting into any real trouble with the teacher for it, I now am a lot better at citing my sources.

Honorable mentions:

• In Search Of… - N.E.R.D.
• Discovery - Daft Punk
• Deltron 3030 - Deltron
• Off the Wall - Michael Jackson
• Power in Numbers - Jurassic 5
• Reachin’ - Digable Planets
• Mezzanine - Massive Attack
• Speakerboxxx / The Love Below - Outkast
• War Stories - Unkle
• Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem
• The Mating Game - Bitter:Sweet

A list of perfect albums as judged by me, Joey:

1. Melody A.M. - Royksopp
2. Wide Angle - Hybrid
3. Adios - KMFDM
4. Movement in Still Life - BT
5. Any Minute Now - Soulwax
6. Counterfeit - Cirrus
7. Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By - Lovage
8. Pop Up - Yelle

trigger warning: gypsies

So, a long while back, when I was working at Borders, we had a pre-opening meeting every day with all the staff.  Giving daily updates with what promos are happening and if we’re getting secret shopped that week and what not.

One day, though, we got the warning “Okay guys, we’ve gotten notice that the gypsies are in town.”

And everyone was like, “Uh, what?”

Cause we didn’t really get why they’d tell us “the gypsies” were around.  Then it was explained like thus:

“Okay, you’re going to see them, there’ll be a whole bunch of them, and they will steal, you won’t catch them doing it, but you’re not going to stop them if you do.  You’re going to let them take what they want and then they’ll move on and hopefully not come back until next year or later.  Just let them be.”

The reasoning for this is that even if you catch them stealing red handed, they’ll use that to sue the store, and corporate decided that letting some gypsies steal a Green Day CD was the better loss than to fight them in court for a discrimination lawsuit.  And they would sue the store for literally anything they could find a reason for, and it doesn’t cost them anything cause they’re all lawyers anyway, and etc etc etc.

So we laughed at it, but then sure enough, later that week, the gypsies showed up.  They were blatantly obvious in how they looked and acted and there was like 10-15 of them.  They weren’t raucous or anything, but you KNEW they were committing crimes all around you, then they disappeared and I didn’t see them ever again.

That’s my story with gypsies.

Oh my gosh, guys, this was an insane week for my second life as a dude who throws warehouse parties.

Monday was new year’s eve and shit, so that meant we threw a party.  We teamed up with I Heart Comix and assembled an insane lineup for the party, and got the most RSVP’s in the shortest amount of time we’d ever had for one of our events.

There was no merch table this time, so I felt a little aimless at first, but that went away awfully fast as people showed up and filled the space.  It was a huge space, we had two rooms with dj’s going at the same time, and the main stage area was completely filled.  Like just freaking packed, and from then on I was busy doing everything ever it seemed.

We had three bars and they all needed things, and people needed to be found and brought places, and things were going wrong and needed addressing and a million other things the whole time.  It wasn’t bad, but it was definitely a different party experience than I’d usually had.  I didn’t see much of anyone perform (except Speas, he was AWESOME), but that was alright. 

I made some new friends, I “hung out” in the VIP, I saw Blake from Workaholics, I even tended bar and made some tips, haha.

Anyway, people party WAY DIFFERENT on NYE than they normally do.  Or the people who showed up weren’t our usual crowd (I’m thinking a bit of both? idk).  So, from the beginning people went SUPER HARD on the alcohol.  Like drinking everything they could as fast as they could.  We had three people puke before 11pm.

We opened doors at 10.

Then after midnight everyone suddenly stopped drinking.  Like completely.  Then by 1am, I’d say about half the people left.  Mind you, it was still packed, cause there was A LOT of people in there, but they were done after the new year started.

We kept the party going til about 3:30 and that seemed the natural time to shut it down.  I’m sorry I don’t have more to write about it, but you don’t really want to read about the boring shit I did like carry cans of RC Cola in from the outside, do you?

I saw like 5 iphones dropped on concrete tho.

Anyway, that brings us to last night, Friday.  See, we got like five kegs of beer for NYE, but we didn’t clear even one of them at NYE, which was totally fucking weird.  Did people just not want beer and just wanted to get turnt on hard alcohol?  I don’t know.

Anyway, we didn’t want to literally throw away all this beer we had, so we were like… let’s throw a do over party!  And that’s exactly what we did.

It was supposed to be kinda smaller, just to get rid of the beer, really.  No real reason to strain ourselves – so everything was thrown together at the last second.  Then Adam learned that someone pretty big was in town for the weekend and he simply had to get them to dj for us.

That person was Alice Glass from Crystal Castles.

Now, I’m unfamiliar with them, other than I know they exist.  I couldn’t name any of their songs, but I think I’ve heard them before.  So I didn’t really know what to expect.  But then we got 600 rsvp’s for the event almost immediately.  We had to shut it down early.

Oh, dear.

So, last night I’m hauling things into the spot and a carload of kids asks me if this is the spot where the show is at.  There’s another spot that throws parties on the same street and they start a lot earlier than we do, so I ask which party to make sure they’re coming to the right one, and they say “The Alice Glass one” and I’m like… it’s not even 8:30 yet… shiiiiit. 

So I’m like, “Yeah, this is the spot, but we don’t start til like 10, and she’s not on til after midnight anyway, so come back in a little bit.”

They drive off to park, I guess, and I continue to get things ready for the party.  Another group of kids come up to me when I’m outside and ask if they can buy tickets now and come back later.

Tickets?  What?  We don’t sell tickets… These kids aren’t from around here, I guess.  I explain to them they pay at the door and that’s about it.  Doors open at 10.  Then he leans in on me and asks, “Is she there now?”

Dude, NOBODY is here now.  We’re still getting shit together, come on, guy.  Come back in an hour when things are happening.

So, we get everything set up and open the doors and we’re INSTANTLY packed… but it isn’t our usual crowd of people.  I can tell that immediately.  The first thing about it was that nobody was dancing.  Everyone was posted up on the walls, clearly waiting for Alice.  Like, it was really super obvious.

I took matters into my own hands and got some people dancing in front of the dj area, but there was like 10 of us, and a lot of empty space around.  Eventually people started dancing once they got alcohol in them and stuff, but the majority of people were totally not dancing at all.

At like 11:30ish we totally hit capacity, and had to start turning people away.  We would have let them wait in the alley if we could, but the cops were lurking REALLY HARD.  They didn’t come in or anything, but they were driving by every 5 minutes or so.  Any people hanging around would have gotten us busted, so they had to go somewhere else.  It sucked, we hate turning people away, but we gotta look out for the party, right?

Alice went on at 1am in a super packed, super hot warehouse, and then all the sudden there was a ton of room everywhere.  That was because everyone who was there for her packed themselves against the dj spot, and were taking pictures and video of her djing.  She wasn’t singing or anything, she was djing.  Nobody was dancing, nobody was really even moving.  The line at the bar disappeared, hell the line for the BATHROOM disappeared.

It was legitimately the strangest thing I’ve ever seen at one of our parties.  Nothing like that has ever happened before, and we’ve had some pretty big names pass through.

Oh, wait, that wasn’t the strangest thing… the strangest thing happened when her set was over and she was getting escorted to the lounge:  Someone grabbed her hair like they were trying to take it to make some love potion or something.

Which wouldn’t really surprise me, considering the things that I heard people yelling and saying to her while she was djing.  Like, I know y'all were trying to be complimentary and stuff, but when you yell, “YOU ARE REALLY CUTE ALICE IT HURTS ME” it kind of comes across as creepystalker.  Sorry dudes, but you need to learn that sooner or later.

Also, there was something in the air or something, there were people making out all over the place.  I heard even Alice made out with a dude, and that broke people’s hearts on the internet or something.

After that, Adam and Romo dj’d and we all jumped around and got turned up and moshed a little and things were pretty awesome.  Also, someone thought I was Franki Chan, which was super hilarious.  All complimenting me on playing a really good set, and I was like “I didn’t play though?” and he was super confused, cause Franki wears glasses and had on a LA Ratchets hat, and I wear glasses and had on a LA Ratchets hat… but his was black and mine was white.  I shoulda played along and sold it tho.

Anyway, we got rid of the kegs, and the party was freaking insane, and I smelled awful, and I still smell kind of awful despite taking a long shower and washing my hair twice, and I think some crap got in my lungs cause I’ve been coughing since last night and I guess that means it was a good time.

But I’m also glad our next party isn’t until the end of the month.  This week was exhausting.