Editor of
Editor-at-large at Death & Taxes Magazine, contributor to The Week, Interview, and Vice Magazine.
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I’m in Sandwich, Illinois. (at Sandwich Il)
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Kanye West
New Slaves -
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Can I just say, too, though, that this movie kinda helped out? It’s a cheesy romance / mental patient / nouveau-manic-pixie-dream-girl-Jennifer-Lawrence-wearing-yoga-pants-oh-my-god-you-guys movie but the more I started training for this race the more I let myself get into the story; the overriding message being about forgiving yourself in order to accomplish things you never thought you’d be able to do. Right? Or is it really all about Jennifer Lawrence in yoga pants? Am I objectifying? Totally. But a total babe dancing to White Stripes in yoga pants I mean - you know what I’m getting totally off subject here. What I was trying to say is that a year ago I thought I had defined myself pretty well: that I was a koala-shaped writer who drank a lot and smoked a lot and ate a lot, like my heroes (who are all dead, by the way, and I romanticized their downfall as something to aspire to, which isn’t healthy, not at all. Anyway.) I was pretty fucking sure that was who I was. That or Brian from Family Guy. But when you start being more fluid, more open to change, you ipso facto (which is Latin for “ippy facto”) open yourself up to more possibilities. I’m not saying that if you’re Stephen Hawking you can be a champion pole vaulter, but if you’re realistic about your dreams then you can do pretty much anything.
You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t limit yourself to what you think you you are. Maybe you’re something else. Shit, I can’t dance. I dance like someone gave a deaf kid a lit bottle rocket. Maybe next I’ll take up dancing lessons. Who knows. The future is open.
Here I am gushing about Silver Linings Playbook. Who am I, your mother? Yeesh.
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Wheaties diary 6: Discipline
After yesterday’s post someone asked “how” to run – essentially – how to keep doing it. It isn’t a whole lot of fun while you’re doing it. The mind starts to wander, and after a while it’s just you and your knees hurting and trying to keep yourself from stopping.
The (ahem) “secret” is breaking things down into little pieces. But you already knew that.
It might seem insurmountable to try and scale something as insane as running a large New York City park like Prospect Park, but it isn’t too much different than reading a book: you break it down into much smaller parts and go from there. Read 30 pages in a sitting and you’ll be done in 10 days. Make it a regimin. Or losing weight: don’t look at it as “I HAVE TO LOSE 20 POUNDS”, look at it like “I’m gonna not drink soda this week” and then do the same thing again next week.
That’s how you get ‘better’ at anything: you stop thinking about it as a problem and break it down into manageable pieces. Wanna finally finish your novel? 1000 words at a time. Wanna cook a steak dinner? Learn how to peel a potato first. God. Look at me. I’m talking like a “cool freshman English professor” now. Carpe diem, you guys. O captain my captain, etc. But really. Pick a point close by and get there and then when you get to that one, pick another one, and get to there. Learn to enjoy it.
I know this might seem pedantic to some people, but hey, maybe this might work for one person. And that’s all I really give a shit about. Haters gonna hate! Waiters gonna wait.
I have one more of these diary entries, coming up after the race, which is Sunday morning, so here goes nothing, I guess.
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I reviewed the new She & Him album ‘Volume 3′, and it totally slays in that cool girly way.
“Volume 3″ is a totally solid album, leagues better than the shrill (sorry) and oddly mastered (not sorry) “Volume 2″. What that album lacked – mystery, production values, um, songs that stuck around – “Volume 3″ makes up for in the first three tracks. Zooey’s voice sounds somehow deeper and more tried and true, which is an odd thing to say about a sitcom actresses third album, but there’s something here that wasn’t on the last two albums. She sounds like she has something to prove and an image that she’s comfortable with now, again, something that wasn’t there on preceding albums. “Volume 3″ legitmately sounds like the Patsy Cline / doo-wop sound that she’s been striving for all along – Zooey sounds free here – and it makes it work, it makes it click, and it makes for a great album. -
What’s that? We at D&T interviewed the frontman for The Pixies? Yeah we’re pretty cool like that.
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My old roommate and one of my closest friends, Gus. It was sort of like perpetually living in Bored To Death.
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Wheaties diary 5
Leaving for Chicago in a couple of hours, and packing my bag(s) as I type this.
The whole thing has become quite real. It became somewhat real a month ago when I signed a contract for this endorsement. It’s become very official as I sit here looking at my suitcase, waiting for the car to arrive in an hour.
Anyway, I figure I can talk about something here, so here goes.
I had worried at the beginning that this, in some way, to a certain type of person, might be construed as selling out. For those of you that have been following me on this weird little site for the past five (my god) years, I haven’t been the most, exactly, shall we say, demure of characters. For the first couple of years on here I was stoned half the time and didn’t really give a shit about anyone else. After my Dad died I was massively humbled but emotionally wrecked: it took (actual non-metaphorical) years to build back up the confidence I used to have back before that happened. Now, finally, I don’t know exactly why, but around December last year everything got a little better. I started to take myself a little more seriously. I stopped having a Bukowski-esque death wish. Hey, I got laid a couple times. By a real person! I mean, I’m writing this as if nobody else is going to read it, it’s all a bit self-congratulatory, this post anyway, but I’m getting to a point here. I think now I’m a lot better than I was, is what I’m trying to say.
If you had told me a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, heck, 5 months ago that I was going to be sponsored by a breakfast cereal, I would have slapped you in the face and told you you were a liar and that you had no friends (because a slap, a truth, and then a lie is an excellent way to break someone down, at least thats what they taught me at finishing school). If you would have told me that I’d be getting paid for it, too, I would have keeled over and physically died from laughter. Here lies Ned. He was told something so unbelievable he died laughing. RIP.
I didn’t know how this audience would respond. A fair amount of you (and a fair amount of friends too) thought it was a joke. The more I trained, the more people seemed to believe me. Now, the response is phenomenal. Quite a lot of people have emailed or messaged me saying that they’d gone out running, too, inspired or motivated by this thing I’m doing here.
Shit, man – it works. You lose weight. You feel great about it afterwards. It’s hard goddam work but the best shit takes a lot of work. Except for my ex girlfriend. That was a lot of work with little payoff. I’m wandering here. Back to the point.
Taking money from a company to promote their product is a strange thing in general – and Wheaties and Tough Mudder and Zeus Jones have been really, really cool about this whole thing – basically letting me do what I want in terms of content. Which is rad. I’ve never had money in my savings account. I’ve never had a dog, or enough money to be able to donate. Those are a few things I plan to do. There’s a few cool things I plan to do with this. It’s a little wierd, even saying this, but it should be mentioned: thank you for being a cool audience. For five years this blog had no commercials, and for the last month there have been (essentially) commercials, and I’m very humbled and flattered by the fact that you guys have rolled with it.
(I mean, you guys stuck around when I took several Ambien and posted misspelled Carly Rae Jepsen lyrics one night, but this is a little different.)
I want to pay people to write for The Worst, too. I spent 3 years with no money, not being paid to write. If you want to know the truth of it, that’s how I approached the endorsement deal in the first place: to be able to pay people to write, to know that what they do is worth something, to be able to put in an hour’s work and get honest pay, not a whole lot, I’m no Gatsby, but I can now afford to pay people for the next couple of months to write for the site. For a little while, anyway.
I’ve erred on the side of staying away from posting long, “feely” things on Tumblr – I think the majority of those days are behind me. But all this above this sentence is worth mentioning, as is what is right here:
Basically, thank you.
P.S: I will now go back to posting pictures of Jennifer Lawrence.
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Selfie
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Jennifer Lawrence, again.
She’s like a boner lumberjack, just choppin’ down wood wherever she goes, whatever she does.
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Today on The Worst, we interviewed megawatt comedian Kyle Kinane.
Do different parts of the country have different senses of humor?
Somewhat. It’s ironic that playing in some of the more conservative areas like Texas or Arizona can be more fun because they’re not hung up on political correctness. They came to a comedy show to laugh, and check their issues at the door. They’ll laugh at themselves even if it’s some liberal putz from LA because they know why they came to a comedy club. I’ve been surprised after shows in Phoenix and Dallas, because instead of getting defensive about their differing views, they just laugh because they know it’s okay to do that in a comedy club. Sometimes you get in front of a “liberal” audience and they have so many mental hurdles set up before they can laugh at something.
How freeing is bombing? Do you have to fail big to win big, so to speak?
It’s freeing because it reminds me that I’m never done with comedy. There’s no sense of figuring it out. Bombing is the tap on the shoulder that says “See? This is still a part of it.”
You never perfect comedy, which is what makes it the perfect lifestyle. There’s no end point. You just keep studying. -
gq:
My Prize Possession: Glenn O’Brien
“I got this in 1979 and it has a lot of miles on it—some motorcycle miles, and it was my regular outerwear during the days when New York streets could be risky. It probably saved my life when I resisted a two perp mugging at knifepoint on Avenue D. (Or maybe it was the Sacred Heart of Jesus pinned inside it over my heart.) Some guys wore tagged leather jackets back then. One day I asked my friend Jean-Michel Basquiat to draw one of his crowns on the back of mine. Jean was so into kingship he smoked Chesterfield Kings. My friend George DuBose had nicknamed me Leroy because he said I acted like a king. This jacket made me feel even more like one.” - Glenn O’Brien
Glenn is a really, really cool dude. Big influence on my writing, man. Read his books.
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