I should be famous by now.

J. Bieber is upset about Toronto-area strand of weed named after...

Thu, 26 May 2011 18:23:00 -0700

J. Bieber is upset about Toronto-area strand of weed named after him.

Also, he’s still, like, a little kid. When I was a little kid, I was scared of drugs, too.

Question, has Beebz even tried his weed yet? If not, he has no right to complain about it. It could be, like, really really good.

What little Jeezy F. Beeby* doesn’t understand about celebrity, which I inherently do, is that once your image is out there, there’s no controlling it, so it’s not worth getting upset about what a few Canadian drug-growers do with it.

Also, when they name a weed after me, it’s gonna be way more clever than “JB Kush”. I’m pretty confident about that.

(via. PopCrunch)

*that’s a little wayne reference

May 25th, 2011 - Actual Progress.

Wed, 25 May 2011 17:58:00 -0700

Today’s accomplishments:

• Wrote about a page and a half.

• Spent $70 on a bottle of scotch I read about in a men’s magazine.

• Posed for a new profile/book jacket picture in front of some cool graffiti.

• Made a vevo playlist of literary-inspired rap videos.

• Tried a new tapas place I hadn’t tried before.

• Left comments on 40 of my best friends facebook walls about how much it would mean to me if they read my blog.

• Logged into myspace. Thought about updating my status. Didn’t.

• Started reading “war and peace”, the wikipedia-entry version.

• Posted an ad on craigslist for my services as a freelance creative genius.

• Drank 6 cups of coffee.

May 24th, 2011 – Thinking about the economy.

Tue, 24 May 2011 18:00:06 -0700

My friend has some photos up in a coffee shop over in Potrero hill.

I didn’t make it to the “opening” a few weeks back, so I decided to truck my old laptop over there and check it out today, while working.

Unfortunately, the place didn’t have free wifi (in 2011!), so I didn’t stay longer than it took me to check out the photos, eat a blackberry scone and make small talk with the counter-girl about why they didn’t have wifi.

The photos themselves were mediocre, a series of candid, black and white shots of little kids, looking at things (tv screens, starfish, art, etc…), but what got me was the prices she was selling them for. Like $60 to $90 bucks.

One had sold.

To me, they should be selling for $6000 to $9000.

Not because they’re worth that, or one of the patrons of a dinky little non-wifi-having café might buy them, but because the only way to create value in the art world is to create the illusion of value.

Free advice to anyone looking to pay their cell phone bill with their craft; you’re wasting your time. Go big or go home.

May 23rd, 2011 - Now more than ever.

Mon, 23 May 2011 10:00:05 -0700

You know, they say many great writers had to toil for hours upon hours, staring at the blank page, committing 12 hours a day, months and years at a time, in mind numbing frustration while they waited for inspiration.

I’m lucky I don’t have to do that.

For me, inspiration is a constant stream, rendered through beautiful applications like google reader, tumblr and twitter. Every linked post can lead to a constellation of new creative ideas.

Just today, a post comparing Lady Gaga to David Bowie, got me thinking about how Kanye West was the new Prince. I even scribbled some notes about the various comparisons for a future article, while watching old episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on hulu plus.

I know my gift is not only my unprecedented creative talents, but the era in which I received them.

The only way I can be one for all time is to be one for my time.

Preview from Mr. Brainwash’s upcoming show in Los Angeles....

Mon, 23 May 2011 07:54:54 -0700

Preview from Mr. Brainwash’s upcoming show in Los Angeles. If you’ve seen Exit Through The Giftshop, you should be aware of MBW’s phenomenal ability to creatively plagiarize his more talented friends to achieve maximum marketing buzz for his work.

Certainly a hero of mine.

(via LA Taco)

May 22nd, 2011 - A different kind of progress.

Sun, 22 May 2011 15:26:00 -0700

This morning, my plan was to get early, go for a run, then write until the Bulls-Heat game at 5:30.

The hangover slash late night tacqueria shits slowed my running plan down, so I had a big breakfast with the girlfriend at Blue Jay, figuring I’d work it off when I went to the gym later.

Then, since it was such a nice day, we decided to walk down to the mission to check out vintage clothes shops.

We bumped into another couple who we’re friendly with and wound up at Dolores park for the better part of the afternoon, actively participating in our youth by slowly depleting a case of Tecate.

By the time I got home, it was 4:30 and I was drunk.

Despite what Bukowski apologists might say, writing drunk isn’t for serious writers, which, above all, is clearly the role I am bound for.

So, with writing shot and exercise out of the question, my fallback was to continue drink, which I did, with the natural grace of Jordan is prime.

May 21st, 2011 - Street view.

Sat, 21 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Bagel shop to café to bar to living room to bar to tacqueria.

That was my trajectory today, and in a perfect world, it would be my trajectory every day.

What matters, I guess, isn’t the points on the map, but what you do when you get there.

I spent bulk of the day at the bar, and on the living room couch, watching a friend play LA Noire, which deserves the accolades it has gotten.

It truly is a post-modern masterpiece.

I wish the café had been a more prominent part of the day, but, as they say, real-life intervened.

May 20th, 2011 - Happy hour revelations

Fri, 20 May 2011 13:04:00 -0700

This afternoon at Lucky 13, I got in a giant argument with an old friend about which one of us would be more famous.

I came to the realization that he actually thinks he’s smarter than me, which was eye opening.

We’ve been friends for a long time, but I actually got some insight into his character today.

Sometimes, you have to treat your narcissist friends more delicately.

I’m sure glad I have a little more perspective than that.

May 19th, 2011 - The art of focus.

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:32:00 -0700

Free idea for a Chrome application: A pop-up every time you navigate to Wikipedia, asking if you really need to look up what you’re looking up, or if you’re just dicking around.

I came up with this idea after learning that white castle was started in 1927 and is still family owned, socks, the white house cat died from cancer at the Clintons’ secretary’s house and the reason DJ Quik didn’t spell his name with a C in it is because he was a blood and c stands for crip and he couldn’t have that shit anywhere near him.

This information will probably come in handy for details for future works, so it was actually a productive exercise for me, but for people who are less creative (read: 99.99%) of the world, I can see how it would be real time suck.

Bean There, the terribly named cafe that I’m writing this journal entry in is playing early Portishead, which cafes have been playing into the ground since college, and I can’t focus.

I didn’t bring my headphones today.

Heading home to watch NBA playoffs.

But look out first novel, tomorrow I am coming for you.

May 18th, 2011 - I keep getting more legit.

Wed, 18 May 2011 21:06:00 -0700

Got in a fight outside of a show in Oakland late last night.

Well, I shouldn’t say that I got in a fight.

I got punched in the eye.

A compliment about a guy’s Bad Brains parody t-shirt gotten taken for sarcasm, which turned into actual sarcasm, which then turned into hyperbolic statements of limited human value, which turned into a punch.

The BART ride back to the city was epic with laughter, as I held a popsicle from a corner-store against my throbbing eye socket.

This was the first time I’d ever been suckerpunched for running my mouth, so I feel (more) legitimized as a writer.

This morning, I was too hung over to get any real writing done but I got my creative juices flowing by spending the morning on gchat, recounting the story to my friends one by one.

All told, it was a pretty productive 24 hours, I think.

May 17th, 2011 - Alibis and aliases.

Tue, 17 May 2011 21:03:00 -0700

Booked a flight to New York on a whim.

San Francisco just hasn’t been doing it for me on the inspiration tip, of late.

I leave this coming Saturday.

Plan is to write and network out of a co-working space in Brooklyn during the days, then go drinking at night.

When people ask me what I do, I say I was a video artist, but now I’m just an artist, sans medium.

People are intimidated by video art, so they don’t call bullshit.

I need to come up with a clever approach to business cards while I’m there.

Right now, I’m thinking I’ll just carry around a label maker and print out labels with my website/twitter handle. That way, people can just stick the label over somebody else’s business card they’re carrying around in their wallets.

Trouble is, that means I’d have to carry a label-maker around.

Is there too little time to get stickers printed?

Whatever. I’ll figure it out.

May 16th, 2011 - New blogs.

Mon, 16 May 2011 13:48:00 -0700

I told Nicole about how I’m thinking about starting a new blog, about how I feel really good about this one.

That’s what you say about all your new blogs, she tells me.

But this one is different.

I can’t reveal what it is yet, because I’m still formulating it in my head.

But rest assured, the domain is parked.

It’s cool living with someone who doesn’t understand how genius your ideas are.

Nicole treats me like I’m just a normal boyfriend, not the future voice of the reality generation. It keeps me pretty grounded.

My future girlfriends will all view me through the multiple lenses of celebrity, wealth and validated genius.

But when Nicole tells future literary scholars that there was no indication that I would go on to become one of the most successful writers of the 21^st century, she’ll mean it.

Also, I knocked back about 317 words. #waytogohank

May 15th, 2011 - Following the muse.

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Was really going to try to grind out another few pages on the novel today, but inspiration took me in different directions.

Right at 11:30, I headed down to Coffee Bar with every intention of putting on my DJ Shadow Pandora station

I wound up searching the internet for famous quotes about creative genius.

Then I got hung up looking for cool pictures to paste those quotes onto, to create a visual juxtaposition, so people will reblog them on the tumblspere for a couple days.

I’ll be posting some of those soon.

My craft is writing, but my muse extends to all mediums that don’t take much effort.

May 14th, 2011 - I'm my own publicist.

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Reached out to my old high school journalism teacher to see if maybe she could get one of her students to do a profile piece on me.

Angle wasn’t, like, Check out Henry. He’s this awesome contemporary writer with his finger on the pulse of youth culture. He’s been published on a couple different online magazines and has an AMAZING blog.

Nah.

That’d be a little pre-mature, right?

The idea was just to do a where-are-they-now type of thing.

I can give insights on how I survived college by phoning it in, and how easy it is for liberal arts majors to get jobs doing community management for social media companies.

I’m trying to be on the cover. Just a few hundred words and picture. Wouldn’t be a big deal, but, you know, a clipping is a clipping, even if it’s from the South Eugene High School Axe.

Waiting for her to get back to me.

Oh yeah, I didn’t get any work done on the novel today.

Tomorrow, baby.

May 13th, 2011 - Productivity.

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wrote a couple pretty epic tweets today.

One was about how the library of congress needs to clear some space for Lil B. #based

The other was about how I’m looking to room with some heavy-hitting culturemakers in Berlin this summer – DJs, gallery-promoters, bloggers with actual ads on their site, or maybe party photographers – it wasn’t especially clever, but it was super authentic.

Between those two, I got nearly 10 retweets. Not bad.

I didn’t get any other writing done, but I still feel pretty productive.

Spent the rest of the day watching season 4 of Entourage. I identify with the director character. He seems pretty true to how I plan to do it.

You gotta like you hate everybody, and that your artistic vision is the only thing that matters.

It’s ok to be an asshole, as long as they think you got integrity.

May 12th, 2011 - Small talk.

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Girl behind the counter at ritual roasters asked me what I was I up to today.

Just writing the next great American novel, I said, dead serious.

Clearly impressed, but trying not to show it, she asked me what it’s about.

Give me your email address and I’ll send you the synopsis.

She gave it to me, thinking I was gonna ask her out, but nah, I’m just adding her to my mailing list.

Satisfied with my effort, I decided not to do any writing today, I just dicked around on tumblr and fb for a couple hours.

You know, gotta stayed jacked into the zeitgeist.

From a recent profile on Ellis in the Guardian, in which he was...

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:05:00 -0800

From a recent profile on Ellis in the Guardian, in which he was called, among other things, the most disingenuous person the writer had ever met.

Photo, licensed and modified via Creative Commons License.

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 17:58:00 -0800

Photo, licensed and modified via Creative Commons License.

via.

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:43:00 -0800

via.

8 reasons why you're not famous.

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:49:00 -0700

You’re trying too hard. Sure, when you’re chasing your dreams, it’s all about persistence, perseverance and perspiration, but there’s a smooth, charming way to do it - like the way Bill Murray coerces Sigourney Weaver into liking him in Ghostbusters - and there’s the tonedeaf, overeager, sweaty way to do it - like the way Chris Farley bricks selling breakpads in the first half of Tommy Boy. You’re doing it the second way and dang, it ain’t pretty. To quote a line from SuperTroopers, “Desperation is a stinky cologne.”

You’re not trying hard enough. Like so many wannabe celebrities, you expect fame to be thrust upon you, for your time in the sun to be served up on a silver platter. Perhaps you liken yourself to Bukowski, thinking, that maybe, you too will toil for 50 years in obscurity, living like a drunken baddass, writing poetry and true life short stories when you’re blackout drunk, simply for the sake of needing something to do. Then, out of nowhere, you’ll be recognized for your undiscovered genius and will sleep with hippie-girls half your age till the end of your days. Well, I’m actually happy to be the one to break it to you. You’re no Bukowski, bub.

You’ve let yourself go. Let’s be honest, you’ve really gone to shit. Most of your friends agree. Maybe not you’re new, shittier friends but your old friends, the ones that knew you in your prime. You just don’t have it any more.

Someone else got there first. You know that one thing that you do really well that was kind of unique and maybe you somehow you leverage that into a little piece of the fame pie? Well, someone else got there first. Every time I listen to Mayer Hawthorne’s gimmicky, bowtied-hipster take on Sam Cooke-soul, I imagine there’s some other, wannabe soul singer out, who was trying to do the same thing. Based out of some other city, Raleigh-Durham or Austin, with the exact same gimmick, retro clothes, a cheesy name like Art Killingsworth or Duffield DeSouza, and a white, vintage soul sound, who is just plain fucked now, because he wasn’t bros with Peanut Butter Wolf. Sucks for that guy.

You’re been barking up the wrong tree all along. You weren’t supposed to be a world renowned graffiti writer, bro! You were supposed to be a standup comedian! But now, you’re on probation for felony-vandalism, you’ve got a heroin habit you picked up in the joint that’s costing you 3 grand a month and there is, like, no time to get to an open mic.

You’ve got a shitty publicist. You really need to fire that cooze. What a waste of fucking money.

You’ve been banking it all on reality. It wasn’t a bad bet. Plenty of less attractive, less intelligent people than you have made a name for themselves on one moronic reality-competition TV show and then leveraged it into hometown notoriety, ultimately landing a co-hosting gig on a drive-time radio block in a non-major market. But hey, if you really want to be famous, don’t you think you should aim a little higher?

You think you’re going to get famous off your blog. Hahahahaha!?!?!?!??!?!!?!?! Wait, for real? For really real? That’s how you’re trying to get famous? You might as well stick to reality! There’s room for (kinda) famous bloggers like there’s room for famous movie critics. The whole internet has, maybe, 4-6 spots and they’re mostly in blog verticals you don’t know shit about (Tech Blogs or Mommy Blogs). So unless you’re dad is Mike Arrington or you’re fucking the Pioneer Woman’s husband, that’s a fantastic reason why you’re not famous.

Photo Credit: Wen Zhang. Used and Modified under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License