To blog all the time! See you all in 2013.

I woke up Sunday morning feeling like my stomach was throwing up into itself, over and over again. Maybe I should have gone into the bathroom of our straight-out-of-Portlandia vacation rental and induced vomiting. But instead, I just lay in the cozy master bedroom of our temporary Northeast Portland cottage, staring at the wall of art books the owner had left, telling myself, “You’re fucking 30. You don’t throw up from drinking anymore.” I was in the final throes of a long weekend of eating, Portlanding, and blackout drinking, and instead of calling taking it easy, spending the day in bed, I officially started my day with a breakfast of fried-pastrami-and-eggs poutine washed down with a shot Bulleitt Rye and pickle back.[1] Even though I didn’t officially hit 30 until this morning, that shot was the cherry on top of a serious rite of passage.

Last weekend, I invited a bunch of my closest friends to join me to celebrate my 30^th in Portland, Oregon, a city that feels like home, even though I grew up 2 hours south. Most of them didn’t come. But then again, many did and they helped me turn my birthday party into the kind of indulgent, excessive celebration of my time on this planet that you don’t usually get as an adult. A big problem with writing autobiographical blog posts is it leads to self-mythologizing. I realize sometimes YR AN ADULT features posts that occasionally come off as arrogant and pompous and I take responsibility for that. But at the same time, if I successfully do something which I think is actually of value to other fellow new adults, then I want to recount it, for the benefit of you dear reader. That’s why I humbly present to you a few lessons on how to have the 30^th birthday party you deserve, based on how I did it. Also, it’s my birthday today, so I can blog about what I fucking want.

Get your shit together Pulling off this birthday weekend, where 10 different people came from all across the country was a logistical nightmare. But I knew I wanted to do something where I could bring my friends together from different parts of the country to come hang out for the weekend. So, 7 weeks before my birthday, I sent out a mass email to everyone who I thought maybe liked me enough to spend $400 to $700 on a two-day trip to get rained on while I forced them to talk about how great I am. Turns out most of them didn’t. I also coordinated a nice place for the out-of-towners to stay, a slightly out-of-the-way little house near the Alberta Arts district, where, for $30 a night, everyone had a bed to sleep in (though one dude did sleep in a child’s bed). It really wasn’t that much work over all, but it was a consistent effort over the weeks and months before thise weekend. If I tried to put it together on the fly, it never would have worked. AND if I’d tried organizing it a few months earlier, more people (probably) would have come. So the lesson is, if you want to do something big for your birthday, you actually have to make it happen ahead of time. You know, unless you and all your friends are super rich. In which case, feel free to wing it.

Invite your folks Friday night, the kickoff to the party was a big, awesome barbeque at my parents house. My parents are actually pretty fun (if slightly eccentric) old Jewish intellectuals, who like entertaining people and can talk to most anyone. So, I brought 14 people to their house, where we polished of 10 pounds of marinated carne asada, dozens of beers and most of a bottle of whiskey. Despite the fact that we took advantage of their kindness and unconditional love for me, I think they really enjoyed getting to meet my new friends and hang out with my old ones. I can’t say for sure though, because I was pretty drunk the whole time.

Go with the flow The big plan for Saturday night was to have a sweet, expensive dinner at Olympic Provisions, one of my favorite meat-focused restaurants in the world and then go off to Booty Bassment, the Portland installment of my favorite hip-hop dance night in San Francisco. Except we spent all afternoon drinking, while occasionally watching the Oregon-USC game at Bridgeport Brewery in the Pearl. And new people kept on showing up, so I kept having to change our reservation size, until eventually they couldn’t accommodate us. So, then I got a new reservation at some Italian restaurant I’d never heard of before, but was well-liked on Yelp. But I realized at that point, we were probably all too drunk to sit for a two-hour meal, which would have killed the momentum of the night, so instead, I cancelled the second reservation and we just kept drinking and had perfectly decent pizza for dinner. It’s nice to have a plan and all, but don’t be afraid to change it.

Don’t stay friends with jerks There’s a weird part of my brain that imagines how cool it would be if all my friends, from growing up, to college, to adult life knew and hung out with each other. For some reason, I’ve always found it incongruous about the fact that I know a lot of awesome people, that could totally hang out, but they don’t know each other. Like, deep down, I knew would Brian, the high school teacher/sci-fi writer could kick it with Cory, the classically-trained-pianist/hardware store clerk/Canadian, so this party was an attempt to will that to happen. I don’t know if that’s an impulse other people have or if it’s just part of my weird brain. But if you have friends who turned out to be not so great people who wouldn’t get along with anyone else in your life (hey it happens), don’t be friends with them. Or, just don’t invite them to your 30^th birthday party.

Actually be in the present This is the one thing I actually wish I’d done more of over the weekend. I spent a lot of time working on logistics. Figuring out how to ferry people around Portland, how to get people to where we were going to be in 45 minutes, what we were going to eat, when we would start drinking, where I could park the rental van for the night, how to get it in the morning. I probably sent 100 texts  about logistics over the course of the weekend, and not nearly enough drunken hankface tweets or blurry instagram photos of the #hankgang. So the lesson is, once things are set up, stop worrying and just go with it.

Rent a minivan We rented a sweet, brand spanking new Dodge Grand Caravan and put 100 miles on it in two days. It was actually a pretty comfortable way to show everyone the town and get wherever we were going in style. Also, you could open the sliding doors with the remote, which brought me endless amounts of stupid technology joy.

Let it get weird Listen, if all you’re going to do on your birthday is eat and drink, that’s fine. But it’s worth throwing some curveballs in the mix. For instance, on our way from one bar to another, we stopped at Mary’s, which is absolutely one of the most awkward strip bars in the country. Like any other strip club in Portland, there’s no cover at the door, so in many ways, they’re all jut like bars where there just happens to be a writhing naked person on stage. But like all strip clubs everywhere, you get what you pay for, and at Mary’s, where you don’t pay anything, you get two strippers switching off every song, with awkward silence between the musice as they ask the audience for dollars to put into the jukebox, so they can continue to dance. It’s a dark, dark place that I’m absolutely ecstatic that I could bring out-of-towners to. I’m not saying you have to go to a strip club that would disturb Bukowski to visit. But definitely get off the grid.

Will it to happen My final tip is similar to my first tip. I had to make this party a reality, prodding people to book their tickets, looking up flights for them, loaning them the money for their tickets, promise we could watch the football game to get one person to come, push, press and pull to make this happen. At one point, my own girlfriend wasn’t sure it would happen. But I made it happen; I got to show Portland to a bunch of people who had never been before, I got to introduce my Portland friends to people from everywhere else and I got to celebrate my 30^th in fucking style. You want to do something in life, you have to do it yourself. Even if it’s a self-indulgent drinking weekend with all your friends.

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Henry Goldman is the founder of YR AN ADULT and yeah, he’s 30 now. Deal with it.

If you don’t follow comedy or cultural news or listen to Terry Gross or read the AV Club, you might have not heard of Tig Notaro. I can’t blame you, there’s a ton of internet out there and only so much time in the day to waste on it. However, if that’s indeed the case, then I have the great pleasure of introducing you to Tig Notaro – one of the coolest, funniest people on the planet (If you already know who Notaro is, you can skip this part). Tig is a longtime stalwart of LA’s cool comedy scene, that’s centered around small, non-cheesy clubs and home to comedians that all the critics think are great but whose pilots usually don’t get picked up by Comedy Central. What’s make’s Tig unique is she has this wry, mischievous, deadpan delivery that helps her sell jokes that are usually just silly. She went on Conan and spent a third of her set moving a stool around the stage. AND IT KILLED. She’s great. I’m saying.

Anyways, a couple months ago Tig went on stage at Largo in LA, a couple days after finding out she had breast cancer and threw out all of her old, admittedly silly material to talk about all the tragedy in her life (in addition to cancer, her mother had died tragically her girlfriend broke up with her and she got a life-threatening intestinal disease). And her rough, unrehearsed set immediately reverberated throughout the internet. I saw the morning after that Louis CK, current world champ of everything, had tweeted “in 27 years doing this, I’ve seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo” and a section the internet briefly imploded with desire to see the set and the news of Notaro’s diagnosis (though, almost immediately, the internet went back to writing frivolous thinkpieces about K-Pop, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and the meaning of the latest Paul-Ryan-tumblr-meme). After a month of speculation, it was announced that Louis CK would release the special, title “live” for $5 on his website. If you’re at all interested, you should just spend the money to check it out (some of it goes to cancer research). You’ll also probably want to hear Tig and Louis CK’s interviews on Fresh Air from a couple weeks ago, which were pretty good.

I’ve now listened to the special 3 or 4 times and thought I’d share a little bit of what it made me think about. I will try to avoid spoiling most of Tig’s jokes, but I will also assume that if you’re reading this, you’ve already taken the time to listen to the thing. Because why would you read this first?

1. This will never live up to the expectations. After Louis CK, literally my favorite writer/performer writer, said that this performance, which no one else would ever get to see was the best he ever saw, an immediate mythology got built around it. When I was first reading about the cancer/performance, I was like, ‘SOMEONE HAS TO PUT THIS OUT! IT MUST BE AMAZING!!!’ And then when it finally came out, I thought, ‘Well this certainly going to change my life and probably change the world. It’s going to be like if someone packed the cultural impact of the Beatles into one 35 minute mp3 of a comedy set.’ Not sure why I set myself up like that. It’s just what I do if I’m excited about a movie or album or whatever. And it’s always a letdown.

That’s not to say the album isn’t remarkably funny, personal and original. But it’s not perfect. Some jokes hit harder than others and there’s enough roughness around the corners that expose the fact that this is the first time Tig’s doing any of the material. Which would have been fine IF I hadn’t set myself up to be super excited for a perfect piece of art, like a cross between Chris Rock’s Bring the Pain and the Sistine Chapel. So it’s mostly my fault.

2. God I wish I’d been there. I mean, you can say that about any recording of a great performance. But the thing that I think blew everyone away was they didn’t know Tig had cancer before she came out and that her entire set was going to be about it. Louis CK, in the interview with Terry Gross, said that Tig only told him 60 seconds before she went on stage. I wish I could un-know the fact that Tig had cancer before listening to the set, because when she comes out on stage and opens with “Hello, good evening, I have cancer, how are you, hi, how are you, I have cancer…” you can’t get the visceral shock the audience must have had. The reaction, is ‘oh, that’s how she introduced it’. Funny, but not as funny it could have been if I’d been suckerpunched with it.

3. So, I’m probably going to get cancer. My dad had cancer. Everyone else in his family had it. I guess I should try to eat organic, right? Will that make a difference? Eff.

4. Murs. Do you remember Murs? He was a college-radio rapper in the early ‘00s, who I used to really like. (I guess he’s still around but not really). He had a song on his Varsity Blues EP where he opened by saying “I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is look in the mirror and say ‘I am going to die’”. It was super cheesy, and even to a stoned 20-year-old. I laughed at the idea that dude actually did that every morning. But something about listening to Tig, who at the time of recording, didn’t know whether she was going to live or die, made me think about my own mortality. And then I thought about how maybe I should do this every morning, to remind me to live life to the fullest and all that. I mean, it’s still cheesy, but it also kind of makes sense.

5. What woman is good enough for Tig Notaro? The one thing that Tig glosses over in her set is getting dumped by her girlfriend, presumably because it was personal and involved someone who was no longer in her life. But I couldn’t help wondering what kind of woman Tig would be dating, it seems like most comedians date other comedians, but there aren’t a TON of lesbian comedians. Wait, are there? I actually don’t know.

6. The dude who yelled out “this fucking is amazing” will go down in audience-participant history. I could never hope to be as funny as Tig Notaro, but maybe, just maybe, I could be in the audience for someone as funny as she is during the performance of her life time and yell out something so perfectly timed and cathartic as that guy did. Who is he? He should get a book deal.

7. Everyone should buy this thing. It’s pretty damn good.

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Henry Goldman is the founder of YR AN ADULT, which he spells all caps now, consistency be damned.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a café in near my friend Cory Poolman’s house in Philadelphia. I’ve been hung over for days, I haven’t showered in approximately that same amount of time and having left my toothbrush at the hotel in DC, my breath is zombie rotten. This current trip I’m on is similar to a lot of short, wild drinking trips I’ve taken in the last decade, where I spend a few short days in a city with at least one old friend, drinking, eating, not sleeping, carousing, wearing the same “one cool” outfit I brought in my daypack for days on end, chasing the dirty hipster bars, the classy cocktail joints, the button-down-broseph brewpubs for (mostly) ironic purposes, the grimey weeknight dance parties, the latenight drunkfood hotspots, laughing, exploring the various neighborhoods of whatever city it is and pretending that if I actually lived there, it would be like this all the time.

Sometimes, the trip has been coupled with a work trip (usually to New York), meaning in between the roistering and bopping, there were times when I had to pitch a client or supervise a shoot or perform some other imposition of maturity. Other times, it’s been driven by an impulsive urge to skip town for few days, maybe by the chance to reunite with a larger group of friends or just a cheap last-minute airfare. These quick getaway benders could also be tacked on to other trips, an extended ticket after a wedding or an elongated stopover between an intercontinental trip. The current trip that I’m on is driven by the fact that I got a free flight to Washington, DC. I’ll come back to this trip, because it’s been exhilarating enough to recount the details, but one persistent thought that has continually come up during the trip, beyond, ‘where are we going next’ and ‘whiskey or beer’ and ‘god I feel like dogshit this morning’, has been, ‘how much longer do I get to do this’? I began writing for this blog because I was interested in the juxtaposition between how I both wanted to grow up at the same time that I didn’t want to grow up at all. But when I think about how much fun I’ve had on these little excursions, how hopeful I’ve felt about life, I realize this is a tradition I don’t want to grow out of.

Looking back, there’s certainly been an evolution to the trips, which officially began when I was still an undergrad, in the faraway land of Montreal, Canada. I’d take a train to New York City and crash with my friend David Larson or my older cousin Aaron, hopping from one lower-eastside pseudo-dive to another, always asking the bartender what their cheapest beer was before ordering, (ah, the forced frugality of youth!). I’d get hung up on girls I’d talked to for ten minutes at some bar, but hadn’t the nerve to pursue further, we’d run up and down the deserted subway cars in the time-honored tradition of young people in New York. Everything was equal parts vital and stupid.

After college, the east coast was further away, and in my broke early twenties, required more effort to get to. I took a couple epic, 10-day sojourns, where I’d start in Toronto or Montreal, and work my way down to New York by bus, before heading back west. Then, I got an actual white collar job, which paid what seemed like a mindblowingly large sum at the time, in the mid-30 thousands. Moreover, I GOT PAID TO TRAVEL. I remember I once convinced my manager to pay for a ticket to a First People’s Film Festival in Toronto (punnily named the “Imagi-Native film festival) that I had no real business going to, all because I had a place to crash with my pal Scott McCallum and a couple other friends to visit while there. The fact that work could possibly cover the flight, and all I had to do was cover the accommodation was a revelation. When I started a production company a few years later, trips to New York and elsewhere were, more critical for work, but because it was now MY money being spent, I was more budget conscious. I’d crash on sofas, in crappy guest rooms, living room floors, but it didn’t matter. I was living the dream of adulthood.

In the later twenties, though, standards became just a little bit higher for these short blasts of city drinking. Fast food dinners were replaced by long, leisurely meals, at restaurants with two to three dollar signs, where every 5^th Yelp review didn’t include the words “food poisoning”. But that didn’t make them less rowdy. At a post-modern sushi restaurant, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and I convinced a fresh-off-the-boat waitress to take sake bombs with us, a drink I don’t even like, but it was too fun not to. At Pied de Cochon in Montreal, my group outlasted every last patron and took shots of Calvados with the manager, before going off on a two-hour drunken midnight bike ride circumnavigating the whole of Mount Royal.

If me and old college friends are planning to meet in a town for a getaway, it’s no longer four dudes in one disgusting Howard Johnson room in Northeast, DC, where the hotel Chinese restaurant turns into a TERRIFYING nightclub on Saturday nights and you have to run a gauntlet of thick hookers in the hallway to get to your room (that’s another story, entirely). That budget-conscious way of travel has given way to actual hotels and Airbnbs (though the upgrade in accommodation doesn’t always result in an upgrade in maturity), Greyhound bustrips have been upgraded to Amtraks, PBRs have been replaced by $9 cocktails (at least at the start of the night). It’s an all-around a more pleasurable experience for late-twenties bodies that can no longer sleep on floors or digest fast-food or recover from hangovers with the grace of an inflatable blow-up-punch-dummy.

Which brings me back to this weekend. Saturday, my friend Dan came in from Richmond and we met up with my friend Kasia at her house near U-street. I’d previously warned Kasia that the plan was to rage like “24-year-olds, but with more money”, which maybe set the bar too high, because we wound up doing just that. We went on a proper pubcrawl, from a just-warm-enough German beer garden to a overstuffed, stylish cocktail bar, to a long, skinny bar that was playing great hip-hop, to a gay 90s dance party where we literally danced our faces off to middle-school-dance bangers we’d been too self-conscious to enjoy in our adolescence.

The next morning, before heading off to the train station (he was back to med school and I was off for this arbitrary two days in Philly), Dan and I got breakfast and went to the Ai WeiWei retrospective at Hirshhorn (yeah, we’re so mature now, we even go to museums!). At the museum, I couldn’t concentrate on the art because I kept thinking about how I don’t want this lifestyle to end. Friends are getting married and thinking about starting families. Some might move to the suburbs. Some couples have already moved to two-bedroom apartments in Oakland, which might as well be Celebration, Florida as far as I’m concerned (SHOTS FIRED!). It seems like as we graduate to our thirties (T-minus 2 weeks!!!!), there’s only a handful outcomes: we take family vacations together, I show up as the possibly-alcoholic ne’er-do-well old friend who drags people out to bars they don’t have any interest in, or we just stop seeing each other altogether, except at weddings and second-weddings. Maybe I’m just cynical, prone to overdramatizing growing older and prematurely nostalgic (I mean, I clearly am, but still). Maybe my life seven years from now will be just as fun and rowdy and silly and adventurous. Maybe there’s a way to have it all, to stay young and still grow up. As I stare down this box coconut water and try to beat back this hangover, steeling myself to turn it on for one last night hear in Philly, I can only hope.

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Henry Goldman is the founder of YR AN ADULT. He smells so bad right now, it’s almost unbelievable.

Me and my friend/absent collaborator Andrew Brown often meet up on weekdays to get lunch. Usually, we go to a pleasant Chinese café on Church St, where the lunch special is a whopping $5.75. The lunches are often impromptu, based of text messages sent at 11 amto see if we’d each like to break out of the monotony of our given workdays and take an hour to gripe about all things everywhere always. Today, however, with San Francisco’s Indian summer[1] in full effect and the temperature hovering in the low seventies minus wind-chill, we decided that in this sweltering heat wave[2], a meal that a a little colder/less heavy was in order. So, we met up at the sushi place in the Metreon, with the charming patio overlooking Yerba Buena Park. It was such delightful setting that somehow we chocked up a bill of 70$ in 45 minutes without even thinking about it. Like idiots.

The meal was fine, but it wasn’t anything special. At no point was I either tempted to take a picture of an immaculately plated, superbly original dish nor did I shove a piece of sushi in Andrew’s face, like, YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS IT’S SO FUCKING GOOD OH MY GOD. So, in a moment of after-the-fact self-reflection, I thought I’d take a moment to consider a few possible reasons why I spent what is an empirically unreasonable amount on an unremarkable lunch.

1. I’m fucking rich. See, if I were making going-to-get-my-taxes-raised-if-Obama-gets-reelected kinds of money[3], then spending this much on lunch wouldn’t be crazy at all. In fact, spending $35 for sushi probably wouldn’t be enough, as it would be my civic responsibility to spend as much as possible on everything to boost the economy/create jobs/inspire poor people to work harder.

But I actually just checked my online banking account. Turns out I’m not rich at all. In fact, this past year has been especially shitty for me from an income standpoint. So this probably isn’t the reason at all. Sucks.

2. American overconsumption has spoiled me. I like this possible reasoning because it implies there’s nothing wrong with me, there’s just something wrong with America/the culture that raised me. You seee, I, like most of the country, have been conditioned to always want more, to supersize the soda, to need 15 servings of popcorn at the movie, to add bacon and cheese and grilled onions and a fried egg and avocado to the burgeer, and to put it all on the credit card.

As we were ordering, we did just keep on adding more. I should have been completely satisfied with the $14 tenzaru/tempura combo plate. That alone is a little much to spend on food for a casual lunch, but isn’t insane. Instead, we kept on adding dishes. A seaweed salad to start. And some gyoza, because what the fuck, it’s Tuesday. And an order of spicy tuna roll, because it’s a sushi restaurant, you have to have some kind of roll.

It feels to me like there is something uniquely American about ordering like this so, it does seems like this is a defendable argument, though we can probably all agree that it’s also a total cop-out.

3. Living in San Francisco has spoiled me. This explanation is two-fold. First of all, living these past five years of my twenties in SF has turned me into a oppressively obnoxious food snob. Before I moved here, I was happy eating McDonalds for lunch and having greasy tacos from grimey foodcarts for dinner. Nowadays, I only eat McDonalds at airports to annoy my girlfriend and grimey Mexican if I’m trying to prove to someone how authentic I am (I know, I’m terrible). But the point I’m making is that I like better food now, and have higher standards than I used to. That’s why the foodcourt at the mall is out and the upscale sit-down restaurant at the mall is in.

Moreover, the booming economy has habituated SF locals to expect extravagant lunches. When I go visit my girlfriend for lunch at her job at Twitter, the meals are catered, and offer so many choices, that many people get anxious about how to decide between the grass-fed hanger steaks or the soft-shell-crab-covered neoplitan pizzas, so they wind up getting it all. And maybe, for those of us who don’t work at well-funded startup, through some sort of metropolitan-area-cultural osmosis, we still want to eat like we do.

4. Um, I don’t have kids, which means I have a fair amount of disposable income. Lets be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve spent more money than I should for no good reason. I just don’t feel like I have any compelling reason to save money, because I just have to take anyone else into consideration. It’s just me, which is great. 

I think about thisa lot when I’m spending money on something frivolous, say a new big Jambox when I already have a normal Jambox or when I go on a gratuitous weekend visit to see an old friend and drink our faces off. When I’m hung over on the airport shuttle on my way home, I’ll say to myself, “Man, if I had kids, I wouldn’t have done this.”

I know it’s a cliché thing to say, but let’s all give thanks for the existence of birth control one more time.

5. Hubris. My favorite comedian, Kyle Kinane, has an awesome bit about how he just realized he might be an asshole (streaming link, scrub to 5:00 for the bit). Well, when you say to your friend, “Hey you know what we should do? Drop $70$on lunch!”, you’re probably an asshole.

6. Probable alcoholism. Did I mention we both had some beers during the lunch? That definitely added to the total check. Not exactly what responsible young professionals are supposed do during the workday. Granted, Brown had to actually go back to his office and be around colleagues. All I had to do was go back to my computer and answer emails/google myself/maybe do some writing. But either way, this isn’t the 60s  - we’re not supposed to smoke like we think it’s healthy, be overtly mean to minorities or drink before 5pm on a Tuesday.

7. I’m just really, really shitty with money. I feel like when I was hovering around the poverty line, I was much more responsible. I always new how much money was coming in, how much was going out and to only use the credit card when I needed to get my car fixed or pay a super important bill. I even gave myself a set amount to spend on the month and never let myself go over. Now that I make marginally more money, I have no idea where money goes. If I want something, I just get it, and worry about it later, be it a pair of sunglasses on zappos, a graphic novel on my iphone, a plane ticket to wherever or an overpriced, unnecessary meal.

Looking back at this list, I’m gonna guess that it’s a mix of reasons 5-7 and a little of number 2. Either way, hopefully laying out my complete absence of financial canniness will shame me into being more responsible in the future.

But let’s be honest. Once an asshole, always an asshole.

Eli Markstrom is an old high school friend turned SF-drinking-buddy. Moreover, Eli is a master Tetris player, who has competed with some of the world’s best players in international tournaments. That’s right. Tetris. For the Nintendo. A 30-year-old game for a (nearly) 30-year-old gaming system has international tournaments. And to a micro-culture of literally dozens, it’s apparently a big deal. Over the weekend, I happened across an FB post of Eli’s, where he linked to the livestream of a World Championship of Tetris competition in Portland, Oregon that he was competing in. And I’ll say, as I watched the quarterfinals, it was pretty intense. Sadly, Eli, got knocked out in the semis. I wanted to ask Eli about Tetris, the competition, and having a hobby that is a little bit weird. So I did.

YR AN ADULT: So, first of all, you’re a serious Tetris Player, right?

Eli: Yeah. I’ve been playing for my whole life.

YAA: And would you say it’s your favorite video game?

Eli: Yeah. It’s the only game I play. I don’t even really like video games.

YAA: So then why do you like Tetris over regular video games?

Eli: Because it’s primarily a strategy game. And it’s high-pressure. I like pressure and having to think clearly in tough situations and Tetris exercises that.

YAA: How long ago did you find out that there was a world of competitive Tetris?

Eli: Well, the thing is, the world itself is only three years old. Before then, it was just people trying to max out (get 999,999 in points) and you’d look on YouTube and see people posting their results and their recorded games. So there was just a bunch of guys who were trying to get that score and that’s all there was to it. But then, these filmmakers made this movie called Ecsatcy of Order, and as part of the movie, they created the first tournament.

And I didn’t know about that at that point. But after that, as they were promoting the movie, I found out about the next years tournament, and that’s when it started for me. About a year and a couple months ago, that’s when I started playing with two ambitions. Playing to win a championship and trying to max out the score.

YAA: And just before this tournament last week, you maxed out for the first time, right?

Eli: Yeah, like two days before.

YAA: How did that feel?

Eli: Oh man. It was amazing. It was kind of like a big relief. It’s such a stupid thing to try to do, because you can put a lot of time into it, and the success is meaningless. That fact, that even when you do accomplish it, only, like, 10 people care, makes it even worse then, to not accomplish it. So to get that done, it was a validation of a ton of wasted time. It felt like it’d been slightly less of a waste of time. You can score 998,000 or 990,000, but if you haven’t maxed out, you’re not seen the same way. You’re not a legend in the Tetris world.

YAA: You’re not quite a Tetris master until you’ve done it.

Eli: You have to have a perfect experience to max out and everyone that plays knows that. So to be close doesn’t really count.

YAA: So do you consider yourself a master Tetris player now?

Eli: Absolutely. I considered myself a master before, but now I definitely do. Did you see the tournament?

YAA: I watched the quarterfinals on the livestream, so I didn’t see you lose in the semis. How did you lose?

Eli: I was playing the guy who won it. He’s probably the second greatest player of all time. I’m probably the third or fourth. I would say I’m fourth.

YAA: Ok.

Eli: There’s one guy who is, like, the god of Tetris. He’s so good he won’t even play anymore. He’s gotten to level 30, he’s maxed out from level 19. He’s just absurd. But he’s a weird story, because he doesn’t compete anymore. But then the other two, Jonas and Harry, are the other two that are legendary. But I think me and Harry are pretty close in terms of skill level, but Jonas, the guy who beat me, is just a little above both of us.

YAA: Has losing this last tournament focused you more on Tetris or are you gonna take a break?

Eli: That’s so funny that you ask. I was intending to win and quit, give my Nintendo back, like, “I’m a world champ, I maxed out, and I don’t need to do this anymore.” But now, I don’t know. I’m a pretty competitive guy. Like, in high school, I ran sprints in track. And in the 100 meters, I got second place by 1/100^th of a second in the state final. And watching the guy who won celebrate just lit a fire under me. I was so focused for the next year.

And it was almost the same experience this time. Watching this guy celebrate again, knowing I could have beat him, I’m actually probably going to get more focused. I’ll take a little bit of time off and then just play only level 19, which is the fastest level you can start on. I’ll play that for a month, so the game will slow down for me. I just want to win. I want to be the champion at something.

YAA: Do you ever feel like this is a silly thing to want to be the best at?

Eli: Absolutely. But how many times can you even have a course towards being the best at anything?

YAA: I mean, most people don’t get a shot at anything.

Eli: Exactly. Like, right now, there’s poker. Lots of people can get lucky for a week and say they’re the best. But most things are heavily influenced by your genetics, in terms of your physical or mental abilities, and then your willingness to work your ass off. So, a lot of people don’t have a maximum that would put them at the level to be number one at anything. So right now, even though it’s an arbitrary, stupid pursuit, it would still be cool to say I’m the best in the world.

YAA: How many hours do you think you’ve spent playing, since you’ve found out about the world of competitive Tetris?

Eli: A rough estimate would be an average of five hours a week. I play about an hour and a half at a time. But there are some days where I don’t get the chance to play. Because I don’t play in suboptimal situations, like when I’m tired or hung over or in a rush. There’s only certain blocks of a time that I can do it. So it probably averages about four days a week, for about an hour and half.

YAA: Most people don’t even HAVE any sort of hobby that they take as seriously as you take Tetris, much less the goal to be the best at it. Do you feel like this helps you as a person.

Eli: It’s a reflection of how I am as a person. So, I come up with something I’m going to do, and then I just go for it endlessly until I do it. Like, I’m trying to start this fitness website. Most people would have given up. But I’m going to keep pushing and get it done and be successful. And that’s my approach to everything I do in my life. So this just happens to be the thing I do. But I don’t think it helps or is detriment.

YAA: So is there’s anything you’ve learned from it, besides just how to be really good at Tetris?

Eli: I can pack the shit out of a suitcase. I can put stuff in my car. I was visiting my girlfriend’s family and her cousin came, and she was leaving the country for two years and had all this stuff that needed to go into a Camry, along with 3 people. And I was like, “Oh, Jesus.” So then I wrapped my head around it and then got it done in 15 minutes.

YAA: That’s a skill.

Eli: Yeah, I’m good at organizing stuff and Tetris helped with that.

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Photos provided by Eli Markstrom.

At the moment when a twenty-something man realizes that he will not live the rest of his life with his full head of hair, he will generally go into an immediate state of mourning for his hair before it is even gone. At least, that’s what happened to me, when, at 24, I noticed that my hairline was receding, slowly depleting the dense mass of my glorious jewfro. Young men have lots of time-tested responses to going bald. Some shave their heads clean as if they were some sort of professional athlete. Others adopt a trademark piece of headgear, say a ballcap or a fedora, which they don at all occasions. Many allow themselves to be bullied by self-esteem-assaulting commercials for dubious “medical” treatments for their condition. Some join weird online communities about coping with hair loss. And plenty just feel shitty all the time about their follicle-challenged crowns.

If you find yourself a present or future bald guy, you can take any of these approaches, if you’re so inclined. But you can also just keep on living your life and being who you are, without worrying about your loss of hair. Which is the recommended approach. To that end, we present this list of awesome bald guys who OWNED their baldness, whose lives would have been no less awesome had they had kept their hair for the duration, to provide inspiration on how you should be living your life.

Bill Murray In the late 70s, as Murray was beginning his ascent into the upper echelons of America’s collective heart, his hairline was already receding. Go back and watch Stripes or Ghostbusters or Groundhog Day – Murray always gets the girl, not because he has a perfect head of hair, but because he’s charming, funny and awesome. Even in middle age, when he played the aging Casanova character in Broken Flowers, it was believable – what he lacked in looks he made up for in sweet Fred Perry jumpsuits.

Pablo Picasso Despite going bald as he entered middle age, Picasso continued to get laid by some of the world’s most beautiful women up until his death, which should be an inspiration to us all. He did have a leg up, in the fact that he was the single most important figure in 20^th Century Art. But still, look at that mug shot. Fame or no, dude just looks vital.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise I know it’s fucking heresy and all, but as a young Star Trek fan, I always liked Picard better than Kirk. Though most traditionalist nerds would disagree, I still stand by that preference, mostly because the guy who played Picard is one of the most accomplished British actors ever and the guy who played Kirk is a giant blowhard doofus.

Michael Jordan Jordan will go down in history as the best basketball player ever, the original sports brand and the dude who made it cool for black guys to be bald (I didn’t make that up – it’s a pretty common thing people say about baldness). While LeBron James continues to hike up his
headband to camouflage his expanding forehead, Jordan owned it. Bald-dude hall-of-famer (as well as NBA).

Jesse “The Body” Ventura Now, while I wouldn’t have voted for Jesse Ventura, and disagree with most of his politics, I have to admire his accomplishments. He, in no particular order, was elected to Minnesota’s
governorship on a third party ticket, trained as a Navy Seal, was a champion professional wrestler and co-starred in a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. AND, he didn’t rock the Hulk-Hogan-covering-my-baldness-with-long-hair-and-a-bandana look.

Paul Simon Sadly, there aren’t enough rock stars on this list, because either they rock toupees (David Lee Roth), look kind of creepy (Michael Stipe, Billy Corgan, Moby) or have awesome full heads of hair (like, all the other musicians). But Paul Simon is super underrated as he’s one of the best American songwriters of the last 50 years. AND, for years, he rocked the long, thinning hair look, which, if you made Graceland, you could do too.

Larry David America’s most beloved curmudgeon Jew has given the world two of the funniest TV sitcoms in history. He also once famously said, “Women love a self-confident bald man. Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man—there’s your diamond in the rough.” Words to take to heart as you rub monoxodil into your scalp and pretend that the sparse peach fuzz it encourages makes you look any better.

Jason Statham I purposely avoided putting too many people on this list who shave their head, because it’s somewhat of a diversion technique, isn’t it? But Statham gets a pass for two reasons: Crank and Crank 2:High Voltage. Best action movies of the last decade. Not to digress, but how about that scene when another cool bald person, Dwight Yoakam, playing Doc Miles, says to Chev Chelios, “Chev, I’m a certified heart surgeon. Well, I was. Lost my license after I fucked up my ex-wife’s vaginal rejuvenation procedure in our basement. That’s irrelevant right now. The point is – if you get hold of your heart, I’m reasonably sure I can put it back in for you.” Is that not one of the better lines in all of American cinema?

David Cross I remember being a teenager, watching Mr. Show with Bob and David, and thinking that David Cross looked so young to already be so bald, but he really didn’t seem to give a fuck about it. In the ensuing years, Cross’s comedy taught myself and millions of other cynical, sarcastic millennials to call bullshit when we saw it. He didn’t give a fuck then and hasn’t given a fuck since.

The bald lifeguard on Baywatch – His name, in both real life and in the show was Michael “Newmie” Newman and apparently, he really was a lifeguard, so he essentially played himself. But to a generation of syndicated TV watchers, he’ll always be “that bald, mustachioed lifeguard from Baywatch, who never said anything but was in, like, every scene.” If he wasn’t bald, would we even remember him?

David Simon I’ve written in the past how David Simon is the best, but to quickly re-cap: David Simon made The Wire, which is the most important American work of culture since Huckleberry Finn, and I don’t say that to be hyperbolic or snarky. I say it because it’s staggeringly true. I defy anyone to name another work that redefined the scope of a medium while masterfully boiling a true representation of their American moment down into a sprawling, heartbreaking, interlocking narrative that prompted everyone who experienced the work to demand all their close friends to experience it as well. Name one. You can’t. I rest my case. Beyond that, David Simon is a guy who steadfastly believes in right and wrong, and, who became a journalist because he believed a strong press is a moral imperative for a free democracy. He’s not only a role model for bald dudes. He’s a role model for everybody

Winston Churchill Little known fact about Winston Churchill. He was a LADYKILLER. Not really. But he did spend 40 years in public life, serving his country in the armed forces and the government, going on to be one of the Big Three and helping the Allies secure victory in WWII, all while not having that much hair. Also, he was selected as the Greatest Briton of all time. Suck it, John Lennon.

Tony Soprano While I was sick in bed over the weekend, I rewatched a season’s worth of Soprano’s episodes. One of the things I forgot about the show is that female characters were always talking about how attractive Tony was. Now, if you look at a picture James Gandolfini, the first word that comes into your mind probably isn’t “attractive.” More likely than not, it’s something like “Philly cheesesteak” or “double bacon donut burger”. But in the show, Gandolfini’s Tony moved with such agency and force, baldness and huskiness made no difference. He was a fucking heartthrob (to a certain class of Italian-American New Jersey-ite).

Rob Corddry There’s already a handful of comedians on this list, making clear the point that if you can make up for the loss of your hair by being funny, you’ll (probably) get to be rich, famous and happy. Though I do think Corddry is hilarious, I mostly wanted to include him on the list because of what he says at the start of this old ‘This Week in God’ segment from the Daily Show. I really, really like that joke.

William Shakespeare Yup. You never thought about it before, did you, but look at the picture. Old Billy Shakespeare had a forehead like Beldar from Planet Remulak. Did that stop him from being the greatest writer in the history of the English Language? Nope!

My Dad If I could be cheesy and serious for just one minute, I should note that while my bald dad never got to be rich and famous, he did spend 40 years teaching school principals how to be better school principals. It was hard work that he was proud of and that he believed made the world a better place. Being bald didn’t stop him from building a happy, successful life, marrying a great woman or raising two sons, who would both grow to be bald themselves. Huzzah pops (and congrats on retiring!).

The whole point of this list has been to say that despite our body-obsessed culture and the men’s magazines surveys that say women prefer men with hair, bald dudes can be just as great as dudes with hair. In reality, there are, like, two things you can’t do if you’re bald: be in a boy band and be president of the United States of America after 1980 (seriously, think about it). And you weren’t gonna do either of those things anyways. So, bald and balding peers, take a good look at this list. The two things all these guys have in common is they all lost their hair and they’re all fucking awesome. God is already taking your hair away. Now it’s just up to you be awesome.

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Henry Goldman is founder of YR AN ADULT.

“You’re circling failure in a rapidly decaying orbit. That’s the reality as we talk now. But you can change that. It’s in your power to change that. Yes, you’ll have to work hard, you’ll have to do things you haven’t done before and still your chances are very slim. But still, you can change it.”

-Garry Marshall’s “Chairman of CBS character” to Louis CK’s “Louis CK” character in the first episode of Louie‘s three episode “Late Show” arc. I thought the three-part arc was pretty great. Nicole thought it was whatever. Either way, hearing Garry Marshall say this to Louie, was goosebump-ey. You can watch the whole scene here.

YR AN ADULT started as kind of a joke title, thinking we would come up with something better down the line or raise the money to eventually buy the domain “adultmagazine.com” (ha!). But the name has kind of stuck, for better of for worse. It’s oddly catchy (in our minds) and the obnoxious spelling somehow feels right for a site about barely-adults who grew up on the internet. But we’ve never been sure how to print it in posts. In the logo, it’s lowercase, which looks fine in the hand-print font, but not that great when written in posts. If you look back at past posts, you’ll see that we’ve tried all kinds of different ways of printing it: italics, bold, all caps, just the first word capitalized – but nothing has stuck. So, I thought in our first poll, I’d let the readers of the site give us their take. So, if you could please take a whole 2 seconds to think about it and let me know what you think, that’d be great. Here’s to solving other people’s problems! (click thru below to the poll)

Ben Folds Five – “You Can Do It Anyway” This video has all kinds of things that I like:

• Fraggles.
• Rob Corddry.
• Messages about how you can get your life together.
• Bands from the 90s!

Enjoy!

“Someday when cultural historians look back at this era of cinema and television, they’ll wonder why we so obsessively documented the lives of upper-middle-class city-dwelling Americans between the ages of 22 and 28.”

- AV Club Critic Noel Murray, in his review of the new Greta Gerwig/Noah Baumbach film, from the Toronto Film Festival.

I recently got a short-term gig at a reality show production company. It’s been a fun little trip, because, while I’d worked in TV before, I’d never done pure reality production and wanted to see what it was like. Truth is, it’s probably not for me, but for the short term, it’s been super interesting. And despite having my first full-time, need-to-go-into-the-office-every-day gig in 9 months, I still spent most of my free time thinking about my generation and how growing up is weird. So, putting both of them together, I came up with a few ideas for reality shows about new adults/non-adults that I might like to watch, but no network might like to make. These aren’t shows about weird families who run a dark, dirty business, or formulaic looks at terrible wives or ex-wives or cretinous rural children. This is the real shit, the shit that you and me are living in, which is why they probably won’t be on TV anytime soon.

My Super Sweet 30^th Birthday Party

The holy grail of reality development is finding an easy-to-recreate format, that will drive a narrative and keep viewers watching for the whole show. This show, apes the format from another reality show (another common practice in reality development), My Super Sweet Sixteen, but instead of showing obnoxious, rich teens’ birthdays, would depict young adults as they reached a different milestone.

The first act would introduce us to a character, upset about hitting an arbitrary aging milestone, depressed about where they are in their lives and just feeling generally old. Then, we follow them or one of their friends, as they plan to get all their soon-to-be-30-year-old’s friends together from around the country for a blowout party weekend in some exotic party locale. It could be anywhere from New Orleans to Vegas to Dubai to Aspen to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, as long as there’s booze, women and scenic landscapes for interstitial shots.

There’s a transition act, where the friends all meet up to travel to wherever they’re going to party, drinking in airport bars, eating at roadside diners, reminiscing about their twenties. And the payoff would be the party, which would ideally include drunken shenanigans, interactions with random strangers, gratuitous hook ups, food fights, fist fights, dancing injuries, D-list celebrity cameos and all kinds of puking. It would be the best kind of exploitative TV.

(Foodie) Intervention

With characters nominated by friends or family, this show would be an intervention-style show for people who tweet or post a status update or take an Instagram of every fancy meal they eat. Mind you, this is for addicts who can’t go a meal without taking a well-composed, filter shot of every single dish. They  will never be like the rest of us, who know how to moderate our impulses and only share pictures of meals on special occasions or when we’re on vacation.

For these foodspotters, hooked on over-sharing their eating habits, a Dr. Drew-style host would lead them through exercises to help them break the habit. The show would take them to eat extraordinarily embellished, bourgeois meals, i.e. jerk-spice infused pho, marinated duck tortas and the like, ALL with their phones turned off. (The horror!) Also, to help them break the impulse, they would be forced to look at pictures of thousands of other peoples meals, and acknowledge how obnoxious it is. And they would be taught strategies on how to avoid taking foodshots in the future, such as, when they find they’re enjoying a meal, just keeping on enjoying it, without their phones. Like a normal human being.

Ikea Wars

A basic reality challenge show, where two couples each with an empty, unfurnished apartment are pitted against each other. They are given a weekend to buy, assemble and arrange all the IKEA furniture they need to fully fill their apartment. Whichever couple fights, bickers and argues less during the process gets to keep the furniture/their relationship.

(I’d say they each should also be judged on who does a better job of designing their apartment, but it’s IKEA. All the apartments are going to look the same.)

America’s Next Top Mixologist

Picked from North America’s hippest, most elite mixology bars, cocktail lounges and bobo hotspots, a collection of charismatic, tattooed, bespoke, AUTHENTIC bartenders would all move in together and duke it out to create the best $13 dollar cocktail they can. Challenges would be to create original alcoholic concoctions using specific items (i.e. bacon, avocado, butter, etc…) or for specific audiences (i.e. create a cocktail poor people would like). The judges would be anchored by a couple celebrity bartenders (which, according to google, is apparently a thing), and rounded out by a rotating cast of hip celebrity judges/drinkers that would come through to test the concoctions (Jon Hamm, James Murphy, Lindsay Lohan, etc…).

At the end of the season, the winner gets a job as, um, well, a bartender, which they already were. But I don’t know what else they could win. I guess when you’re serious about mixology, the cocktail is its own reward. Possible spin-offs could include ‘America’s Next Top Homebrewer’ or ‘America’s Next Top Barista.”

The Real Girlfriends of Silverlake

A docu-soap style show following the lives of a group of young, tattooed, hip, former (read: “failed”) actresses who live with their boyfriends in and around Silverlake. Episodes would follow them as they meet for cappuccinos at Intelligentsia, shop at curated vintage clothing boutiques, and go to (or teach) yoga classes. Viewers get to watch as rivalry, jealousy and vapid-ness encroach on the girlfriends’ friendships, spoiling their relationships and even affecting their part-time careers as interior designers, food bloggers or still-life photographers. You haven’t seen a catfight until you’ve seen it break out between two bobo hipster girls in an immaculately designed raw food restaurant!

Spinoffs could include Real Girlfriends of the Mission, Bushwick, and Wicker Park.

Project Roommate

Set in the San Francisco’s tremendously competitive apartment market, the city with the highest rent and lowest number of available apartments, where a room in a communal house can be upwards of $1500 a month and the average “roommate-wanted” posting on Craigslist will elicit 500 of responses. This would be an elimination style show, where applicants compete to get the privilege of renting the open room in a twentysomething communal apartment. Each episode would reveal just how hard it is to find a reasonably priced, comfortable place to live, near public transportation that isn’t in an economically, dangerous neighborhood with no good organic markets.

Each episode opens with an open house, where we meet the current roommates and see a tour of the house. We find out how small/overpriced the room is and what the rules are vis-à-vis cleaning duties, bathroom shelves, having people sleepover, playing loud music, etc. Then, a parade of desperate, anguished room-seekers would parade in, in their best “I’m cool but not TOO cool” outfits, with credit reports handy, quick to explain how they love keeping apartments clean and that while they DO have a significant other, their girlfriend/boyfriend won’t be at the apartment all the time, because, haha, they KNOW how annoying that is.

After a handful of competitions, both practical (i.e. putting dishes away, leaving notes on the fridge that aren’t too passive aggressive) and taste-based (“make a playlist for the party we’re having this weekend”), the new roommate is selected, winning a spot in the apartment, while other contestants are given a consolation prize of a map of Oakland and a canister of pepper spray.

That’s it for now. I would happily produce any of these shows, so if any network development folks are reading this, you know, holler. (I know they’re not reading this).

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Henry Goldman is founder of yr an adult. He often wonders why his best creative ideas are for blog posts that very few people read.

Photo credits, all used/modified under cc license:

Birthday: Flickr user dpstyles

Foodie Intervention: Flickr user desideratum

Ikea: flickr user: ktsaltishok

Girlfriends: flickr user tjblackwell

Kitty Pryde got slightly internet famous for a couple songs that were more interesting than they were actually good. That’s not to say they were bad. They we’re just interesting. Like, “Oh yeah, teens who grew up on the internet during the ’00s got a whole lot of weird influences and can make shit really easily.” Unlike another white female, child of the 00′s/the internet rapper who got famous on pure surprise value, though, Kitty actually seems self-aware. Today, FADER has her guide to living with her parents, which makes her seem like a sensible 19-year-old. If we all could have been so lucky.

Bianca Kosoy is a badass. No other way to say it. The NY Times has a brief but enlightening article about Ms. Kosoy, the creative director for Equinox, that high-class, high-style brand of luxury gyms.  Now, usually I find stories about cooler-than-everybody ad execs to be obnoxiously overblown. But. after reading about Kosoy’s work and life, I’m convinced she might actually be cooler than everybody.What makes Kosoy so cool? Well, the number one thing that caught my eye was the fact that, while she may be in charge of the image for the country’s highest-profile luxury gym brand she doesn’t work out. In the article she states, “I never work out. I think fitness is a fraud. That’s why I try to make it look like fashion.”

!!!!

Just because she’s a high-powered executive at Equinox, she’s proud of the fact that she’s not into the product. We should all be so bold. Though, it probably helps that she’s good at her job.

A few other awesome things about Kosoy:

• She says her best friend is Johnny Walker.

• Her parents call her “The Great White Tattooed Lesbian Hope”.

• In the article, Kosoy contemplates buying a gold plated necklace in the shape of a maching gun for her new girlfriend, who she has dated for three weeks, and provided with an expensive gift every day, because she’s deeply enamored. So, essentially, dating Kosoy is like dating a high-born Saudi, except she’s a woman, she’s covered with tattoos and more baddass than everybody.

• She rides a custom Vespa, with the plates “Ey Jude”

After reading up a bit about Bianca Kosoy, the lesson I think us aspiring adults can take from her is, if you’re really good at what you do, you can be as baddass as you like.

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Henry Goldman is the head writer for yr an adult. His adult life just isn’t turning out as baddass as he’d hoped. So let’s all try and get better folks.

“This shit special!!!!!!!!” DJ Khaled bellows in his reverb-twisted voice on the intro to “Hip Hop”, a track off his sixth album. After several verses, when the track is winding down, Khaled says it again. If, somehow, the listener had forgotten that the shit was special, Khaled is there to remind us that this shit, indeed, special. Between contributing this grammatically incorrect but still somehow appropriate line, Khaled’s contributions to the track are hard to pin down. He doesn’t rap on the track; that’s handled by hall-of-famers Nas and Scarface, each doing a somber take on Common’s hip-hop-as-a-woman motif. Nor does Khaled produce the beat for the song; the beat was produced by young fruity-loops virtuoso Lex Lugar.  There’s even some token old-school scratching. Was that Khaled on the Serato? Nope. That’s DJ Premier, also a hall of famer. Khaled’s only clearly manifest contribution to the song is saying “This shit special,” twice. And that’s what makes him kind of awesome (emphasis on the “kind of”).

Khaled Bin Abdul Khaled, a heavyset Palestinian-American, got his start as a radio personality in Miami. That’s probably how he was able to adopt the “DJ” moniker without ever, you know, actually DJing. On Khaled’s new album, he is credited as a writer on each of the tracks. Whether he get’s that credit JUST for shouting on the intro of each track, or if he was actually doing some writing in the studio, that’s unclear. On “Bitches and Bottles”, another track off the new album, Khaled’s only contribution is saying, over the outro, “I make hits, I find hits and I play shit out.” Which begs the question, do you either produce or write hits, sir? Because if not, why do you get to make albums?

I’m willing to believe that Mr. Khaled is mostly a curator, a job title which has grown to be ever more expansive in our lifetime. He probably picks the beats, picks the rappers, maybe gives them some sort of a song concept, then goes and stands on the balcony of his Miami condo while other people make the songs (probably while drinking a fourloko). Curation is on of the best jobs out there, these days, because the only qualifications are to have good taste and then to be recognized for your good taste. From there, you’re day-to-day is just selecting artists or works to highlight. However, most “curators” I know are responsible for their startups’ Tumblr or are programming a small film festival. Khaled is curating verses from the biggest rap artists in the world. That’s definitely a step up from spending your day looking for weird art videos on the internet. And not only does Khaled, curate these songs, he get’s to be the front man for them. “Hip hop” is technically HIS song, featuring Nas and Scarface and DJ Premier. That’s a gig.

The thing about Khaled is that he’s actually actually a good curator. The rap radio song of the summer last year was “I’m On One” DJ Khaled featuring Lil Wayne, Rick Ross and Drake, produced by T-Minus. Great, weird, catchy pop rap song. IF, and it’s still an IF, Khaled actually made that song happen, then he deserves some credit. Think of it this way; there are plenty of pop singers who have their songs written and produced for them, who have their image and brand manufactured for them, and whose vocal performance digitally enhanced to the point where it might as well be a robot singing their radio hit. DJ Khaled is certainly doing as much, if not more work then they are. And basically living inside a rap video all the time. So, I’m not saying I would do what Khaled did to get where he is. I mean, if you look at it on paper, you’d have to assume did a deal with the devil to get what he’s got. But I still want his job. It looks pretty fun.

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Henry Goldman is founder of Yr An Adult. He is living out HIS dream gig, occasional freelancer/internet addict.

A few months ago, responding to the steady stream of media reports about Detroit’s creative/hipster renaissance, I wrote a list of hyperbolic things you could say about “America’s Comeback City.” I just didn’t believe that a small cadre of twentysomethings in live/work lofts and urban farms actually constituted anything more than an anecdote. Anyways, I also included a callout to people who live in Detroit, because, never having been there, I was curious how it felt to live in inquisitive glare of GOOD Magazine and the New York Times Sunday Style Section, while also living in a shrinking, former economic juggernaut of a city. So, after posting the article, I had a nice chat with Achille Bianchi and Michael Burdick, two locals who had a lot to say about the whole thing.

So first off, who are you guys, and how did you each end up in Detroit?

Achille: I’m a journalist and photographer in the city. I’ve been down here for nine years, now. Graduated in 2003, came down here pretty much immediately after I graduated. My sister was down here studying design at the College for Creative Studies and I didn’t have much direction, so I applied for university here, and haven’t left since.

Michael: I grew up outside the city, in a suburb about twenty minutes away. Went to College for Creative Studies for illustration when I was 18 and yeah, also never really left.

So you’ve both been there for a while. I’m curious when you became aware of this media narrative that there was a surge of hip, young people moving to Detroit?

Achille: I can pinpoint that exactly. It was 2009, and actually [Michael’s] boss, Toby Barlow, broke a story about a $500 house in northern Detroit, with a couple friends of ours, Mitch and Gina, who run the Powerhouse Project. And then, kind of before then, 2003 to 2008, there was some cool stuff going on, but no one [nationally] gave a shit. But as soon as that story hit the New York Times, that’s when it all started.

Michael: And then, two years ago, Phil Cooley, the owner of Slows, got on Huffington Post person of the week, or something like that.

Achille: So, I’d say 2008-2010 was the “ruin porn” era, and the 2010 to present is the “hope porn” era.

You guys are both from greater Michigan. Do you guys find that most of the people that you know who have moved to Detroit are from the general region? Or is there an influx of transplants that you hang out with.

Achille: I’d say about 80% of the people we know are [from] Michigan. Whether or not they left at some point and came back, that depends. Most were not born and raised in Detroit, but maybe the metro area. I think in the last few years there have been an influx of people coming from bigger US cities, like Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco, etc.

It seems to me that that’s what happens in most areas, young people move to the biggest city near them.

Michael: It’s a pretty good mix. I think a few years ago, the main crowd I spent time with was definitely college friends, a lot of whom were from Michigan. [A lot] had the mentality of wanting to be in school or in a city but still be in Michigan. Continuing that, through the years, a lot of people I knew were from Michigan. But there started to be a trend of people who’d traveled a lot, or were transplants who’d spent time in other areas around the world who just wanted to do what they were doing somewhere else, or in Detroit specifically. No one’s really defined why they wanted to do it there, but there is a good mix of people who wanted to be here.

Is there any sort of backlash to people who moved to Detroit because they thought it was cool?

Achille: I just had the conversation with somebody today, actually.

Michael: I think there’s a couple different backlashes that are common. A big one is the transplants. It’s a difficult town to live in, so I think for a lot of the kids who come, and want to check it out, we’re a little skeptical at first. Because it’s not like other cities, so you definitely feel, [as you said in your post], they’re “just stopping through on their way from Brooklyn to Portland.” So, it’s hard to befriend people at first, because you don’t know if they’re just here because they think it’s going to be sweet or if they’re gonna find out it’s not what they imagined and leave. Or if they actually want to stay. Or if they’re the come to do good, stay to do well types. Or if they’re in it to experience an [imagined] scene for a little bit and then move back to New York or whatever..

Achille: The people who want to be here want to be here. There’s people that come from across the United States because they have these preconceived ideas of what Detroit is. You come here and you either like it or you don’t. I’ve met people who have been here for a year that are leaving, because they can’t do it. But some people are like, “I fucking love this city.” It all kind of depends on how hard you’re willing to work and how much you’re willing to sacrifice to be here.

Michael: And what you’re breaking point is. [Achille’s had his] car broken into. I’ve had my car broken into a few times. You get mugged and stuff like.

Can you elaborate on what makes it hard to live in Detroit? Are you guys in the city center? Does where you live matter?

Michael: We live in Corktown, which is between Downtown and Southwest.

Achille: We’re roommates, by the way.

Michael: Corktown is just on people’s agenda right now because of Slows, and everything. But I guess what’s difficult is you have this constant reality of what the city actually is. You get a daily reminder that it’s a very economically depressed city. It has failing schools. We don’t have a public transportation system.

Achille: We have buses, but it’s not great. The mayor wanted to cut Sunday service.

Michael: It’s not a proper public transportation system. You need to rely on a car, here. And then there’s a lot of homeless people. So you have this environment that is kind of depressing. Then you have people who live in your neighborhood who are in pretty poor economic situations whose only way out is through crime. A lot of times you deal with break-ins or muggings. I think most of our friends have encountered a situation like that. You have a lot people who have been here for a while, and reach a breaking point. How many times can you have your car broken into until you’re like, “Enough of this – I’m going to move somewhere else.”?

Achille: I include in my yearly budget the cost of a new window or a catalytic converter or something along those lines. I think it also depends on the timeline. You live in the city long enough, and something’s gonna happen to something you own or yourself. But I got mugged in 2008 and that was four years ago, it’s been so long, I kind of forgot about it. The first few months after it happened, I was on my toes a little bit. You tend to forget about it.

But then, I got hit by a car in December, probably on purpose, in Southwest, and that’s like….

(Interupting) Wait. You got hit by a car on your bike on purpose?

Achille: Yeah. That sucked. But the long enough timeline, you look at it, and you know, shit happens. But for me, it’s like that kind of stuff happens and it makes me want to stay here and work harder. But that’s probably contingent on us being Michiganders. I think if people didn’t have a stake in the city, like we do, then they’re the ones who have less hefty breaking points.

Michael: And it’s not like those incidents are a rite of passage or a badge to wear.

Achille: No. They just suck.

Michael: They suck and it’s the reality of living in area where that stuff happens. I remember when I got mugged, I thought well, I can either stay here or leave and the idea of leaving just reminded me that everyone I knew was leaving. And I didn’t want to, because I was sick of people giving up, I guess. I wanted to make an impression on myself, and solidifying my desire to be here. I felt like, I’m this white kid, who lives in this very black, economically depressed neighborhood and I’m a target. It humbled me. I thought about how can I not look like an asshole and how can I get respect from other people.

Achille: I think it’s a humbling, maturing experience in general. It’s not something to be proud of or wear as a badge. You learn how to carry yourself day to day, and respect your area. You don’t flash your shit around and be humble.

You don’t carry $400 in your pocket.

Michael: Yeah. You don’t wear jewelry.

Achille: I’m not walking through Brush Park or Mexicantown on my iPhone or fumbling through my wallet. I just don’t do it. Like I said, it’s a maturing experience. It puts you on a fast-track to knowing where you’re at. But some people take it and they say fuck it. Others say that shit happens.

Michael: Contigency seems to be the word. Your rent is low, so you can afford to get a new window once every six months. But after a while, you learn not to leave your backpack in your car.

Achille: My car is pretty much spotless these days.

Ok. We should probably talk about what’s good about the city. I get the sense it’s not all young kids starting food tricks.

Michael: It’s totally not.

Achille: [What makes Detroit a good place to live] is not about food trucks and photography. I think it’s the general mentality of people here. One of the things I noticed before the media rush of 2008 was there wasn’t necessarily a willingness to embrace a collaborative spirit that there is now. Now, I think, everyone realizes the more they work together, the more they can get done and that’s a great thing about living in Detroit now. It’s been happening for decades, but I feel like there’s an evergrowing DIY movement here. As we talk, we’re in a hackerspace that I’m a part of called Omnicorp Detroit, which is 25 members sharing a workspace and tools and hanging out and making stuff every day. So I think it’s the opportunities, here. It’s not just the cheap rent, but the fatigue the mainstream of everything. Living in a city like New York to work my ass off to pay rent, I don’t have to do that here. I can work three days a week to get by or I can work extra extra hard and do a ton of awesome stuff.

Really build something.

Achille: Exactly. One of the opportunities of here, we have the opportunity to sculpt what’s going on here. Where if I were to move to a bigger city, you’re kind injected into the flow of things and you really have no say. But in Detroit, the more you do, the more you get to have a say. It’s like planting your stake, you have to put work into it if you want it, but it’s there.

Michael: Everyone says their city is unique, but I’ve never really been somewhere this inspiring because of how diverse the landscape is. There’s a great music scene, which is really refreshing, and everyone likes to party. There’s a lot of opportunities on various projects, although they’re not always paid, it’s great to contribute to things where you believe in what you’re producing. As an illustrator, that’s just rad for me. I can make posters or logos for cool projects. There’s a really great sense of friendship that I’ve found.

It does sound pretty different from some of the places I’ve lived, like SF or LA, where there’s definitely an anonymity that’s a little oppressive.

Achille: So, if you’re familiar with Matthew Dear, he’s one of my favorite musicians, and I forget what magazine it was in, but an interview came out this year and he was talking about the time he spent between New York and Detroit and he said, when you’re in Detroit, you have this great sense of ownership over this void that sucks you in. The thing that really resonated with me was that in New York, it feels like you’re not as accountable for your actions there. You can get lost in this group mentality where you can go with the flow and piss somebody off and it’s no big deal, because there’s nine million other people there. But if you’re not a good person here, people know about it before they even meet you. So it’s sort of a self-censoring city to an extent where we keep each other in check.

Michael: There’s a soccer league that includes twenty different neighborhoods and rule number is don’t be a dick. And within that league, a lot of relationships are formed. You go to each other’s neighborhoods and people fucking talk to each other. You really have to be on check, here.

Achille: You’ll get laughed out of Detroit if you’re an asshole.

Michael: People talk.

Achille: It’s a very tight knit community. You’re less than 1 degree removed from everybody. That’s not to say we’re a gossip city, but word tends to get around, whether you’re doing good or bad.

Do people connect their idea of Detroit contemporarily, as the “historic motor city”?  Do you think about the legacy of Detroit, or is it just happen to be where you live.

Achille: I did a Huff Post piece about this once. Yeah, to some extent, but most of us are too damn busy to really consider the past. You know, I’m not really invested in the culture of the history of Motown or the Motor City. It’s cool to think about. I’ve been to Hitsville. I’ve been to the Packard Plant, but I think most of us are really thinking far forward. This is our home town and we have ownership of it, and I think the same is true for any other rust belt city.

Michael: I think a lot of us have dropped the nicknames. It’s not Motown. It’s not the Motor City. It’s not the Paris of the Midwest. It’s not the D. You had all these different decades of nicknames. For me, using those nicknames is just people being nostalgic, wanting something from the past. You see that a lot of that when older generations come to visit. They’re talking about what Detroit used to be like back in the day. But you know what, who cares? Every decade has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Now, we’re focused on what’s happening now. Who knows what that this is beyond people working on stuff they care about, but that’s what it is.

It’s interesting to hear you say that, because when the national media writes about it, there’s definitely a sense of nostalgia, like Detroit the former workhorse of American industrialism that’s fallen on hard times.

Achille: In journalism, we like to call that drive by journalism.

When people come from out of town who don’t know the city, what surprises them?

Achille: I don’t know what necessarily surprises everybody, but I do know that everybody is surprised. I think that people find the more underground stuff. They come here for the DIA or Midtown or Slow’s, and that’s cool, but they see all this other great stuff that’s happening that they never even heard about, because no one focuses on it.

I think it’s really hard to define, because it’s so dynamic and widespread. There are little networks of people doing everything everywhere.

Michael: Everyone whom I’ve had visit has left a little astonished. It’s hard to explain. I had a friend come visit from Portland, and when he left he emailed me to say, “I’ve never been more motivated.”

So what did he see?

Michael: It’s honestly just taking him to meet people.

Achille: It’s definitely the people.

Michael: Yeah. My sister, who lives in Brooklyn, I made come out for our birthday, and I’m more extroverted, she’s more introverted. I made her stay up with me all night and hang out and party. She was really impressed with the relationships I had with people. We ran into peope the next day getting coffee, who’d we’d seen last night and [she was surprised] by the way we acted. She said, “These people act like they haven’t seen you in six months.”

That’s what I’m excited about. The motivation a lot people have, that drives you to do whatever it is you’re passionate about. And this solid Midwest work ethic. And then the relationships are very personal.

Is there stuff to do every night?

Achille: There’s too much to do every night. I was just telling Michael before we called you, I was like, Dude, I gotta go to bed early tonight and get some sleep. It feels like there’s like 7 different things to do every night. Because everyone gets off their asses and does stuff. Whether it’s an art opening or a DJ party or whether somebody’s doing a video or doing a photoshoot. There are a whole variety of things to do every night in the city.

So in closing, it definitely seems like there’s some sort of zeitgeist going on in Detroit, but the story of it is not as much a story, but there’s just a personality that’s dominant there right now.

Michael: I think what’s bothersome about the story is there’s this grand, utopian, optimistic ideal of what Detroit is. A lot of people read these articles and want to move to Detroit and work on an urban farm. And it’s not that simple. You have to work really hard.

Achille: It’d be like me as a journalist trying to go to New York and capture the New York story in a single piece. You can’t do it. It’s too dynamic. This city is huge, too.

Michael: I haven’t read the article that’s actually described it. We had this little joke of saying that Detroit is more incredible and fucked up than anyone could ever blog about. Aren’t you getting tired of hearing about the Detroit, too?

Yeah. That’s why I wrote the post. Every time I see a story about Detroit now, I thought, this is a joke and I’m sure people in Detroit hate it.

Michael: People are just here, working.

Achille: It’s like any city. Some people are working on education. Some people are trying to improve public transportation. Some people are freelance. Some people are just being lazy and partying. To everybody in the country, it’s like some huge deal, but to us, it’s just everyday. Everyone’s just trying to pinpoint where the next movement in culture is going, and Detroit is a good story for now.

_________

Photo credit: Flicker user buckshot jones, used under CC license.

“I’m always finding myself clarifying, he’s not gay, he’s not straight, he’s an ocean-deep, planetwide labyrinth of kinks and turns. He represents the part of all of us that doesn’t get turned on by Budweiser ads, and sometimes feels a little lost because of it, but that heroically, CHARGES ON in the discovery of himself.”

- Dan Harmon, on Community character Dean Pelton, during his REDDIT AMA yesterday, via Splitsider. If you haven’t already, now would be a fine time to read our ‘Does Community get adulthood right?’ post.

Earlier, this week, like many of those hooked to the reflective glare of the internet, I was riveted by a Tumblr post by NYC-based comedy writer Matt Fisher entitled, “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court”. In a straightforward way, Mr. Fisher outlined how his sister’s greedy, shitty insurance company did everything in its power to avoid paying a claim, essentially acting the way greedy insurance companies always do, all the time. Not only was the story equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating, it also inspired me to take action.

What kind of action, you ask? Did I research advocacy groups that are fighting for insurance reform, to which I could donate my time? Well, um, no. Did I get a group of my friends together to take up arms, come up with our cleverest anti-vampire-capitalism slogans (i.e. ,“Quit playing CLAIMS with my heart”), sharpie them onto cardboard signs and then go march on the nearest Progressive management office? Again, I did not. That would be a lot of work. So what did I do?

I retweeted Eugene Mirman’s tweet about it, and then went on with my day.

I know, pretty epic. But I didn’t stop there. I also continued to follow the story throughout the week. I scanned the official Progressive Twitter responses and trending satire about it. I used Google news searches to stay apprised of new developments, like when Progressive released a statement saying, “We didn’t defend this guy’s sister in court!” And then Fisher was like, “Yeah, you kinda did,” And then, earlier today when Progressive settled with the Fisher family, I patted myself on the back, patted the whole internet on the back, really, as if to say, “Good job outraged Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter users. We really shamed the shit out of that company.”

Sure, there are other things I could have done. I could have researched whether MY insurance company was equally as evil as Progressive. But I didn’t, partly because I know if I did, it might mean having to switch companies, which would have been a HUGE headache, right? I also could have written an explicit letter of support to Mr. Fisher and his family, as this time of public scrutiny I’m sure has been trying. But again, I didn’t. You know, because I have other stuff on my plate.

When I hear about a company being extremely shitty to customers or to the environment or supporting a cause I find especially noxious, I do totally care. I really do. BUT, I only put the absolute minimum amount of energy/ emotional investment into caring about said issue. It could even be said that I couldn’t possibly care any less, because my level of concern is already at the absolute minimum.

Another story that caught my eye this week was this story of United losing an unaccompanied minor in Chicago’s airport. In short, the airline, due to bureaucratic disorganization, impetuous outsourcing and institutional apathy, lost a 10 year-old-kid on her way to camp and didn’t give half a fuck until reporters caught wind of the story. United is still in the midst of being publicly shamed for this specific instance of negligence, though they’re probably not going to make any sorts of procedural changes, because that takes work. And chances are the furor will die down, as the winds of internet outrage are fanned by different shitty, greedy companies being shitty and greedy.

So what am I going to do? Will I initiate a large-scale boycott among my fellow, influential bobo friends? Am I going to forswear ever using United again? In short, no. Because I always just book the cheapest fair, and take for granted that the airline fucking hates me.

This is all to (sarcastically) say that the internet shaming of organizations is still one of the best things about the internet. It’s right up their with Google maps, cat videos and free pornography. But it’s also a really fucking superficial. The company catches a modicum of heat for making sneakers out of baby porpoises or backing the horrible regime, they say they’re sorry, wait it out, and everyone keeps on living their lives.

And this is mostly directed at the man in the mirror (no, not MJ. Me). Remember the SOPA thing, how we all said we were gonna quit the evil, Republican Go-Daddy for our domain hosting needs? I definitely tweeted about how I was going to take the domains I had on my account, including such gems as imlivingmylifewrong.com, lookatthisfuckingjew.com and youreagrownman.com, elsewhere. Did I do it? Well, it’s technically still on the to0do list. Though, I haven’t registered any new names through them, so that’s a start, right? Also, as I type this, I’m literally eating a Spicy Chicken Biscuit sandwich from Chick-fil-A. I mean, it was right there, and I was hungry! And let’s be honest, my $4.99 was a drop in the bucket. Albeit, an incredibly lazy, intellectually dishonest drop in the bucket.

Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you take all these issues seriously enough to vote with your dollars and only spend it on shit you believe in, to attend protests and meetings and know the name of the intern who answers the public hotline at your congressmen’s local field office. If you are, you’re free to think I’m an asshole. You’re not the first.

But for, me, I’m resolved to do something different in the future. Not sure exactly what it is, but I’m all ears. My only hope is that it doesn’t feel hollow and that I don’t wind up getting self-righteous or pretentious or obnoxious about it (borderline inevitable). I don’t want to be the kind of asshole that says things like “I use this app to only buy sustainable stuff. Meeeaawww” All things considered, I’d rather be the kind of asshole I already am.

_________

Henry Goldman is founder of Yr An Adult. He wasn’t always so apathetic.

Photocredit: flickr user lewishamdreamer, used under cc license

“The obstacle course and attacks from fellow competitors would teach them that life is hard and that especially when money is involved, people can be cruel. And fighting for a seat only to find that your chair is worth $200, while the guy next to you randomly sat on one worth $10,000 — that would teach youngsters that life is often unfair and inexplicable. Educational television at its finest.”

- from a review of the TOTALLY EXTREME TV version of musical chairs, ‘Oh Sit’! I guess Jamie Kennedy is still around, which doesn’t make me feel anything at all.

“It probably sounds really fucking pretentious, but I think that people’s inability to distinguish between “need” and “want” is a very real problem. And I don’t ever want to be the guy cluttering my apartment with a lot of garbage that makes me happy for only a few days until the next thing comes along. I’ve read all those studies about money and happiness and every one I’ve read says that spending on experiential things rather than material things is the best way to get joy from money, so I try to do that with the money I save.”

- West Coast Gawker Editor Cord Jefferson on why he doesn’t spend money on stuff