February 2012
49 posts
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Tips for people who are too old for redeyes, but...
by Henry Goldman
Anyone on the west coast, who has had to fly east, for a quick trip, is tempted by the redeye. You know it’s going to suck, that you’ll be uncomfortable, that you won’t get any sleep, that you’ll show up in New York or Boston or Dulles feeling like a zombie, and have to start your shitty, East Coast day. Your nose will be running, because you got sick on the flight. Your clothes...
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If you want to make creative things, but don't...
…. a good place to start would be Jesse Thorn’s Make Your Thing, a lecture he’s been giving for a couple years now. If you’re not familiar with Jesse Thorn, he started out as a lowly podcaster, producing The Sound of Young America, a interview-show with culturemakers, from his bedroom. Now, TSOYA has morphed into Bullseye, a nationally distributed public radio show, and...
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Q&A with J-Zone, writer/former hip hop...
by Henry Goldman
In college, J-Zone was one of my favorite hip-hop artists. He made a series of loopy, funny and inventive albums, like Pimps Don’t Pay Taxes, $ick of Bein’ Rich and To Love a Hooker, among others. The beats were weird, the songs hilariously ignorant and the personality was a strict departure from any other notable artists from the height of the backpack rap era. And it didn’t go...
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Getting tested at the free clinic is a millennial...
by David Larson
There’s a dearth in rites of passage for North American millennials, especially if one is neither Jewish nor Catholic. Other than birth, getting a driver’s license, graduating high school/college, getting married and then finally dying, there are few collective rites that anchor us in space and time. So I try my best to celebrate the little things.
Like a...
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So, Sacha Baron Cohen? Still the best. Showing up to the Oscars in his “Dictator” character, he spilled Kim Jong-Il’s “remains” all over Ryan Seacrest, who was not at all amused.
Annnnnnnd I think we’re good on Oscar stuff. Thanks for playing.
-Henry Goldman
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The good thing about The Artist killing it at the...
by Henry Goldman
…beyond the fact that it’s somewhat charming, (and the fact that I was hip to it like, WAAAAAAAAY before everyone else) is that it won’t engender a bunch of knockoffs looking to repeat the formula. The novelty factor of a French-made silent film is so original that it’s a one-time deal. So that’s good. Also, people might see the OSS 117 movies, which...
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Like a coke dealer telling you not to do TOO much...
by Henry Goldman
….at a talk yesterday in Montreal, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter was quoted as saying spending too much time on Twitter was “unhealthy.” Kind of obvious, that furiously checking other peoples statuses and updating your own isn’t the best thing for your mental health, but it’s somewhat striking to hear that Stone would admit as much. It’d be...
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Why it's ok that my favorite new rapper is, like,...
by Henry Goldman
If you’re not familiar with the saga of Earl Sweatshirt, I’ll sum it up quickly. The best rapper in this massively hyped, angry young rap crew called Odd Future got sent to reform school in Samoa, cut off from the rest of the world, right as his friends we’re hitting youth culture hard as a sidewalk face-plant. There’s been too much breathless reporting on Odd Future Wolf Gang...
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A nice way to call Mormons out for being...
by Brian Laughlin
For decades, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been baptizing the non-Mormon dead, mostly Jews, into their Church, offering them a chance at eternal salvation. The ritual, often called “proxy-baptism”, is merely symbolic and is highly connected to the Church’s work at creating a genealogical tree for all of humanity. I am certain that I am wrong, but I imagine...
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Should you go to Coachella?
by Henry Goldman
If you’re like me, and have been before, the answer is probably no. Here’s my rationale:
Coachella costs a TON of money just for the tickets, not to mention food, drinks, travel out there. ATM fees will be like, $40 alone.
You either have to camp, with a bunch of teenagers and Australian/European backpackers, OR you have to get a condo or hotel, which, unless...
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Write a real letter, damnit
by Henry Goldman
Our generation has been given a lot of great, life-changing gifts by the gods of technology; toilets in public bathrooms that flush themselves, phones that you can play video games on, Natalie Portman’s new nose, the list goes on. But, as we enjoy all this great technology, something we’ve lost is long form communication.
Think about your best friends from growing up or...
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"You should be vegan," says homeless lady my mom...
by Henry Goldman
My mom sent me an email today, about the homeless lady who sells the homeless newspaper in front of the neighborhood food co-op.
My mom had a couple coupons for free chalupas, that she got at the Trail Blazers game last night. This is what my mom said happened.
Tried to give two Chalupa coupons to the lady with dog selling Street Roots: Comment “We are vegan and you...
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Q&A with Jeffrey Brown, Comic Book Artist/Adult
by Henry Goldman
Jeffrey Brown is a full-time comic book artist and all-around sweet guy. Beginning with his MFA thesis, Clumsy, which Brown initially self-published, Brown has a released a string of successful graphic novels and short comics collections, including Unlikely, Every Girl is the End of the World For Me, An Easy Intimacy, Cat Getting Out of A Bag, and Undeleted Scenes. His next book,...
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The internet DOES not control me
By Henry Goldman
This morning, my friend Eric Slatkin tweeted a very nice article from the Atlantic, which acknowledges the impossibility of completely unplugging from you digital life and then offers some solution to stay plugged in better. The article condenses a lot of common sense ideas about how to effectively ration your time online (don’t multi-task with thousands of windows open at once –...
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You shouldn’t show up at parties with 2 buck chuck...
by Josh Heller
When I was a kid, my mom would always shop at Trader Joe’s. I hated it. You couldn’t get Reese’s Pieces Puffs, you had to settle for Puffins. As I got older and my tastes refined Trader Joe’s provided my two favorite things (health food & booze) at affordable prices.
Around the time I was old enough to buy alcohol, I’d already been consuming lots of it. I realized that at...
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Role Models: Anthony Shadid
by David Larson
I don’t have too many heroes, and in fact most of the ones I do have either died of drug overdoses, self inflicted gunshots or, in one case, assassination by the CIA.
Anthony Shadid may have been the only wholesome hero I ever had. He died last week in Syria, covering the ongoing unrest under the oppressive Bashar al-Assad regime. He is survived by his wife and two...
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Spread the word: I need a new mentor
by Henry Goldman
If you couldn’t guess, I started this blog because I’m at a bit of a crossroads in my life. I’m close enough to 30 that I’m just trying to think of myself as already there, so I won’t be really down when it happens in 9 months. I’ve had a couple really cool jobs and worked with a ton of awesome people, but I don’t really have a career path right now. I’ve been picking up small...
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Am I too old or too irresponsible to skateboard?
by David Larson
Summer before last I realized I hadn’t skateboarded in almost 10 years, so I went to a shop and got a deck. It took a minute to regain bearings but by the end of the day I could hop over curbs again, and it was the most fun I’d had in a long time. I found that it kept me soberish, too, at least at first, because I actually preferred skating to drinking.
Until the...
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Your excuses for not stretching today are not very...
by Henry Goldman
The first time I went to see a doctor about lower back-pain, I was about 26 and had been working in a sit-down job for about a year and a half. I’d noticed some tightening in my lower back, so I booked an appointment with a back specialist to see what was up. I said something to the effect of, “Well, I guess I’m getting older, so I need to start taking care of myself,” which made...
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The source of my cheap-beer elitism
By David Larson
When I was 15, I drank micro brews. Sure, if the only other beer around was Pabst or Milwaukee’s Best, I’d drink it, but not without a bit of pretentious grumblings.
I suppose it made me feel sophisticated to like well-crafted products. I had an Esquire subscription that Henry Goldman got me for my birthday, and I actually read it. I was far from wearing...
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A few suggestions on pressing life’s pause button
by Henry Goldman
Ok, so lets say you’re 27. Your mid-20s are rapidly coming to a close. You’re stuck on a career path, which, though stable, but doesn’t exactly excite you (assuming you have a career path, ahem, ahem, David Larson). You feel like, if you keep living how you’re living, the next five years will go by in the blink of an eye. So, with that in mind, I compiled a few ideas that you...
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Should I be sober for job interviews?
by David Larson
I always thought I’d found a sweet spot for drinking and interviews:
Three pints of beer and a breath mint.
Job interviews are pretty contentious social interactions and they’ve always made me nervous. Though I tend to interview well, it’s only because I’m masking the fact that I want to jump out of my skin and run down the street screaming.
The rule I’ve...
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Neophilia: a thing that you have that is making...
by Henry Goldman
Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article about recent research into “novelty seeking” personality traits. They quote phenomenally well-named journalist Winifred Gallagher* (phenomenal name), from her new book, “New: Understanding Our Need for Neweness and Change”, where she contends that one of our healthiest traits as a species is our need for novelty. We have...
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Grown up responses to VD
By Henry Goldman
That’s right, we felt obligated to write about VD, peer pressured by the blogosphere, TV and that really sad lady at our work. Here’s our feelings about VD: it’s not something to take too seriously, unless you’re in a new relationship, in which case, ok, get into it. You finally got someone. We’re all excited for you. Enjoy your fancy dinner, dorks.
However, for the rest of the...
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Someday, this divorced guy could be you!
by Henry Goldman
That is, assuming you some day get married, then get divorced, already have TONS of money, and hire this interior decorator that specializes in divorced dudes to expensively decorate your bachelor/single-dad pad. Also, assumes that you will have made it through life without developing any taste or the ability to spend your own money or make your own choices. Let’s all decide not...
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Henry’s alternate reality college scenarios
by Henry Goldman
One of my favorite alternate reality scenarios to ponder, usually while I should be focusing on the road or the client-conversation I’m in the middle of, is what would have happened if I went somewhere else for college. Now, I regularly regard the decision to go to McGill as the best I ever made, based on the facts that it was cheap, it was a good school, it was in a big city, it...
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Amanda Knox’s tips for getting a book deal
by Henry Goldman
Over the weekend, the NY Times reported on an escalating bidding war between the big publishing houses for the rights to publish Amanda Knox’s memoirs. Publishing experts anticipate Ms. Knox, who has yet to share her story with any major news outlets, will receive a seven-figure advance and is likely to sell millions when her memoir comes out.
As we here at yr an adult know...
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Why moving to new orleans was probably a terrible...
by David Larson
It’s too soon to tell, but I have my suspicions that this place is either going to mesh perfectly with my sensibilities, or kill me. It’s one of those things: you don’t want to date someone that’s too much like you because you’ll never say no to one another. And if I don’t have someone around to tell me no, well, I tend to not eat my...
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Why you should travel alone sometimes.
by Henry Goldman
For most of my adult life, I didn’t travel by myself to go anywhere except to visit friends in cities where they lived. So when I took 10 days off, I’d do northeastern drinking trips, hitting friends for 2-3 day drinking binges. Otherwise, I’d wait until a friend or significant other wanted to go on a trip with me, and we’d travel in tandem.
That’s until this summer. I’d just...
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My calorie-counting app suggests I may have...
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Wait. Am I too old for south by southwest?
by Henry Goldman
My first trip to SxSW (aka ‘hipster burning man’) was in 2007, when I worked for a cool little online music startup. I fell in love with the mixture of free beer, branded parties, nonstop concerts, obscene bbq, tattooed young people and super important networking with other “creative class” members. And every year since, I’ve gone back. And not just gone, mind you, but gone hard....
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A few reasons why you shouldn’t be jealous of the...
by Henry Goldman
One of the most frequently reported human interest narratives around the news of Facebook’s impending IPO has been the story of graffiti artist David Choe. To those who missed the story, Choe was hired by Facebook to paint murals in their Palo Alto office in 2005. In lieu of receiving $60,000 for his work, Choe opted to take stock, stock which is now estimated to be worth half a...
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How to deal with getting a shitty Airbnb review
by Henry Goldman
Last summer, two of my close friends from college got married within a week of each other, one in upstate New York and the other in bumfuck-nowhere Ontario. Myself and three other old pals decided to take the week between the weddings to relive our lost youth in Montreal, where we all went to school. Now, in case you don’t know, Montreal rivals New Orleans as the best drinking...
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Science: "online dating sites won't find your...
Attention online daters (and prospective online daters)! Science has offered a new insight into online dating sites’ claims that they can find you a compatible match through their algorithms: apparently, it’s bogus.
According to a soon-to-be published study in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, just because the algorithm says you’ll be compatible with someone, that...
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Things My Parents Told Me: The Sheep Don't Care
by David Larson
Sometimes I get to wondering where I came from, or how I came to be. My mom tends not to talk about her past, about her childhood or previous marriages, including the one with my father. By the time my mother was my age, she had been married three times. And I know very little about how all of it happened. But I did manage to get her tipsy enough recently and she told me a...
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The “Getting My Shit Together” Clock Is Winding...
by Henry Goldman
Now that I’m 29, I’ve been coming back to the old (Hindu?) saying, “You spend your first 30 years making your habits. For the last 30 years, your habits make you.” Unhappily, I find this concept disturbing as I’ve spent the whole of my life embracing habits that were, at best, entirely unproductive and at worst, completely unsavory. If this random quote from the internet is to be...
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Text from my old roomate, on the eve of his visit...
Apparently he’s still a breast man.
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As good an argument as I’ve ever seen for exercising, these photos, from the MRI, of what the insides of athletes vs. non-athletes legs look like as old people.
Hat tip to tumbledore.
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Should I Care That I Look Like An Idiot at the...
by Henry Goldman
Ok, let me start off by saying I’ve put on, like, a lot of weight in the last two years. 20 pounds or so, and I was twenty pounds heavy to begin with it. Coupled with the thinning hair, the fact that I have twice the amount of back-hair that I had when I was 21 (and let me tell you, that was a lot), my shitty posture and my stained teeth, I’m doing pretty bad on the...
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Let's all be bummed this guy's ex-wife is making...
That’s right, dude’s wife leaves him, they have to sell their apartment and she wants to sell it as a “conventional apartment”. It’s just a bum deal for bro, he thought he found a woman who understood him and his passion for Star Trek. Now he doesn’t have a wife OR a Star Trek apartment. Real bum deal. More pictures after the jump.
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