Articles Archive for April 2011
I wish I was in London today instead of a month from now. I’m not being sarcastic here. I’m always up for a big party, so that’s a bonus. And more importantly, every single girl is watching her deepest-held fantasy – to become a princess in a fairy tale wedding – unfold. Do you know how randy and/or vulnerable they’ll be tonight after a few pints? Goodness gracious.
Godspeed, gentlemen of London.
Godspeed, gentlemen of London.
Cross-marketing. But for a good cause, at least.
You have to hand it to them: the Jersey shore carnies sure know their audience.
Outdoor water slide. No thanks.
Gorgeous (if chilly) morning on the deck of my mom’s place in North Wildwood, NJ. Something tells me I’m going to be spending a lot of time here this summer. Provided, of course, summer ever comes.
While my lack of recent posting is based primarily on the fact that I’ve been both personally and professionally busy lately (lies) (mostly), it’s also because I got trapped in some long posts. You see, I’d start a post with the idea of making it long, but then something would come up to distract me; then I’d go back to it a day or two later, but by then I’ve lost some momentum and I’m forcing it; then something else comes up to take me away; then I go back to the post and though I think it now stinks, I’ve already written a lot of it, and don’t want to waste those words and that effort; then I wind up avoiding it and doing nothing. So you get nothing.
I know you could probably care less about this sort of “behind the scenes” blogging (and you’ve probably stopped reading altogether – not that I blame you), but I wanted to offer you at least a little explanation. After years and years of doing this, I’ve learned that blogging is like being in a fight or in an orgy – you can’t think, you just have to act. Just get in there, put your head down, let your basic human instincts take over, and try to make it through it as quickly and as safely as possible. If you approach it any other way, you’ll fail.
So here we are. Fuck the long posts, let’s just talk.
Two of the more interesting (to me) things that I wanted to catch us all up on so that we can move forward.
I saw the shit out of Elvis Costello. When I heard that Elvis was playing a small, April Fool’s Day 11pm show at the Gramercy Theater (with a seating capacity of about 500), I got all sorts of lusty. But then I got all sorts of sad, because there was no way I’d be able to get tickets – not just because it’s small place, but also because I’m lazy and would forget when the tickets went on sale and yada yada yada.
Well, fortunately, I have a friend who works at Live Nation who gave me and the lady the hook-up. And when I say “hook up,” I mean “front row seats with waitress service – and by the way, the waitress looked like a more Hispanic Jessica Alba.” Um, yes, please.
The show was terrific (OF COURSE). My girlfriend is not so familiar with Elvis Costello, whereas I am squarely in the “Super Fan” spectrum. As such, her biggest takeaways from the evening were a) he puts on a good show and b) there were a lot of guys in their late 40’s totally flipping the fuck out.
But my biggest takeaway from the evening was how incredibly old I’ve gotten, apparently incredibly quickly. Back when I was younger, seeing an Elvis Costello concert at 11pm on a Friday would involve binge drinking from 5pm until the start of the concert, having terrible (cheap) seats at the show, and then standing outside the concert hall for as long as it takes to meet Elvis, who usually signs autographs after his shows. Then, I’d go get more fucked up and text an ex-girlfriend before passing out on my couch at 4:12am with a slice of pizza and/or my dick in my hand. For this particular EC show, “pre-gaming” was dinner at CraftBar, not drinking beer (instead, whiskey) because I was worried about having to get up and pee during the show, taking a Pepto on the way to the theater because I felt poo pains coming on, seeing the show and acting like a maniac (which remains the same) from a distance so close I could have hit Elvis with a ping pong ball (which is different), and then going home and passing out immediately after the show’s ending – no waiting for Elvis, no nightcap, no pizza, no nothing.
I try not to dwell on how different my life has become in the last few years, because sometimes it makes me sad.
Boy, did I beat the IRS. As usual, I waited until the last minute to get my taxes done. As usual, it was a nightmare. There are two complicating factors when it comes to my taxes.
1) When you get paid a book advance, you receive the advance without any taxes having been taken out. So for example, if someone says that they got a $1,000,000 book advance, they got a check from the publisher for $850,000 (less the 15% agent fee).
(Well, that’s not true, as you either get book advances in thirds – when you sign, when the publisher accepts the manuscript, and when the publisher prints the manuscript – or in halves – when you sign and when they accept.)
(Also, just for the record, I did not get a $1,000,000 advance. If I did, we wouldn’t be talking right now, as I’d be way too cool for you. And also I would have died, like, months ago, probably only hours after receiving the $850K check.)
Because advances are untaxed, it is the author’s responsibility to save or put away a portion of the untaxed advance to pay off the taxes later. If by “put away” we mean “put away up my nose in the form of something that makes me feel indestructible and great but makes me sad the next day,” then yes, I put away a lot of the portion of the untaxed book advance I got in 2010. But if we mean “put away” in the save-some-for-taxes sense, well, whoops.
2) Though I may not be considered so by you, by most of my family and friends, and certainly by book reviewers, according to the government, I am a writer. Yes, I have my 9-to-5 gig, but because I make income from writing, I gots me two jobs, so says the IRS.
The good thing about this is that I can write shit off like a mother fucker. I’m not going to get too into here (because doing so would surely get me audited), but any research or promotion related to the book can be thusly written off on my taxes. And because in 2010 I did a lot of promotions (e.g., various book tours and travels that were paid by me and not the publisher), I had my work cut out for me.
So last week, after downloading a year’s worth of bank and credit card statements, I spent hours and hours of my down time going through the statements, line by line, trying to determine what I could and could not write off (which also helps to explain the lack of posts). This is a long and laborious and terrifying process, particularly because it’s downright alarming to see where a year’s worth of money goes (I don’t know who owns Dempsey’s, but, before moving out of the LES, I was apparently putting their children through college; likewise with Amazon, as the “Prime” shipping was both the best and worst thing to happen to my financials in 2010).
BUT, things somehow worked out. I went to my main Armand at H&R Block and though I was expecting to break even, I’m actually getting money back. So when you’re making up a list of things that are wrong with America today, please add this to that list.
But hey, at least I’m putting that money to good use – I’m about 90% sure I’m headed to London the last weekend of May for the Champions League Final. More details to come, but I can’t think of a better way to thank Uncle Sam than by taking my money out of the country and spending it on shrimp-flavored potato chips.
(Please don’t audit me.)
I know you could probably care less about this sort of “behind the scenes” blogging (and you’ve probably stopped reading altogether – not that I blame you), but I wanted to offer you at least a little explanation. After years and years of doing this, I’ve learned that blogging is like being in a fight or in an orgy – you can’t think, you just have to act. Just get in there, put your head down, let your basic human instincts take over, and try to make it through it as quickly and as safely as possible. If you approach it any other way, you’ll fail.
So here we are. Fuck the long posts, let’s just talk.
Two of the more interesting (to me) things that I wanted to catch us all up on so that we can move forward.
I saw the shit out of Elvis Costello. When I heard that Elvis was playing a small, April Fool’s Day 11pm show at the Gramercy Theater (with a seating capacity of about 500), I got all sorts of lusty. But then I got all sorts of sad, because there was no way I’d be able to get tickets – not just because it’s small place, but also because I’m lazy and would forget when the tickets went on sale and yada yada yada.
Well, fortunately, I have a friend who works at Live Nation who gave me and the lady the hook-up. And when I say “hook up,” I mean “front row seats with waitress service – and by the way, the waitress looked like a more Hispanic Jessica Alba.” Um, yes, please.
The show was terrific (OF COURSE). My girlfriend is not so familiar with Elvis Costello, whereas I am squarely in the “Super Fan” spectrum. As such, her biggest takeaways from the evening were a) he puts on a good show and b) there were a lot of guys in their late 40’s totally flipping the fuck out.
But my biggest takeaway from the evening was how incredibly old I’ve gotten, apparently incredibly quickly. Back when I was younger, seeing an Elvis Costello concert at 11pm on a Friday would involve binge drinking from 5pm until the start of the concert, having terrible (cheap) seats at the show, and then standing outside the concert hall for as long as it takes to meet Elvis, who usually signs autographs after his shows. Then, I’d go get more fucked up and text an ex-girlfriend before passing out on my couch at 4:12am with a slice of pizza and/or my dick in my hand. For this particular EC show, “pre-gaming” was dinner at CraftBar, not drinking beer (instead, whiskey) because I was worried about having to get up and pee during the show, taking a Pepto on the way to the theater because I felt poo pains coming on, seeing the show and acting like a maniac (which remains the same) from a distance so close I could have hit Elvis with a ping pong ball (which is different), and then going home and passing out immediately after the show’s ending – no waiting for Elvis, no nightcap, no pizza, no nothing.
I try not to dwell on how different my life has become in the last few years, because sometimes it makes me sad.
Boy, did I beat the IRS. As usual, I waited until the last minute to get my taxes done. As usual, it was a nightmare. There are two complicating factors when it comes to my taxes.
1) When you get paid a book advance, you receive the advance without any taxes having been taken out. So for example, if someone says that they got a $1,000,000 book advance, they got a check from the publisher for $850,000 (less the 15% agent fee).
(Well, that’s not true, as you either get book advances in thirds – when you sign, when the publisher accepts the manuscript, and when the publisher prints the manuscript – or in halves – when you sign and when they accept.)
(Also, just for the record, I did not get a $1,000,000 advance. If I did, we wouldn’t be talking right now, as I’d be way too cool for you. And also I would have died, like, months ago, probably only hours after receiving the $850K check.)
Because advances are untaxed, it is the author’s responsibility to save or put away a portion of the untaxed advance to pay off the taxes later. If by “put away” we mean “put away up my nose in the form of something that makes me feel indestructible and great but makes me sad the next day,” then yes, I put away a lot of the portion of the untaxed book advance I got in 2010. But if we mean “put away” in the save-some-for-taxes sense, well, whoops.
2) Though I may not be considered so by you, by most of my family and friends, and certainly by book reviewers, according to the government, I am a writer. Yes, I have my 9-to-5 gig, but because I make income from writing, I gots me two jobs, so says the IRS.
The good thing about this is that I can write shit off like a mother fucker. I’m not going to get too into here (because doing so would surely get me audited), but any research or promotion related to the book can be thusly written off on my taxes. And because in 2010 I did a lot of promotions (e.g., various book tours and travels that were paid by me and not the publisher), I had my work cut out for me.
So last week, after downloading a year’s worth of bank and credit card statements, I spent hours and hours of my down time going through the statements, line by line, trying to determine what I could and could not write off (which also helps to explain the lack of posts). This is a long and laborious and terrifying process, particularly because it’s downright alarming to see where a year’s worth of money goes (I don’t know who owns Dempsey’s, but, before moving out of the LES, I was apparently putting their children through college; likewise with Amazon, as the “Prime” shipping was both the best and worst thing to happen to my financials in 2010).
BUT, things somehow worked out. I went to my main Armand at H&R Block and though I was expecting to break even, I’m actually getting money back. So when you’re making up a list of things that are wrong with America today, please add this to that list.
But hey, at least I’m putting that money to good use – I’m about 90% sure I’m headed to London the last weekend of May for the Champions League Final. More details to come, but I can’t think of a better way to thank Uncle Sam than by taking my money out of the country and spending it on shrimp-flavored potato chips.
(Please don’t audit me.)
My sister recently got professional pictures taken of my nephew, Liam. This is one of them. As you may notice, in this picture, he is wearing Daisy Dukes.
Now, my sister denies that these are Daisy Dukes (do I capitalize this?), saying that it is a “jean diaper.” But the exposure of the thighs, the fringe cut, the close fit around the crotchal area – these are clearly Daisy Dukes.
Perhaps my sister is setting Liam on the path of his uncle, who has made an actual career out of embarrassing pictures of himself as a child. If so, good start, Liam. Good start, indeed.
There is no more invigorating time of day than the post-work mad dash to masturbate before your live-in girlfriend gets home.
You guys – all the porn is saved. Ben called me via FaceTime (“FaceTimed me?”) and walked me through it. I went from 4.19 GB free to 12.82 GB free and didn’t have to delete a single video of people fucking each other.
But I’ll tell you, technology’s something. I just had a video conference call on my cell phone from NYC with my buddy in Seattle who showed me how to move hours of porn to an external hard drive in about five minutes. When I was in college, as recently as 2001, my porn collection consisted of six VHS tapes (that I watched on, you know, a VCR) and I didn’t even own a cell phone, and knew maybe a half-dozen people who did.
God *damn* the USA is the greatest.
Homes,
Is there a way I can delete my porn from my hard drive (or whatever) but still have it all saved in the Time Machine? I only have 4.2 MB of available space on the computer, and it’s been acting wonky lately.
I mean, if I have to delete the porn, I will – RedTube and PornHub have made a private collection near obsolete. But to delete it would break my heart. It would break my heart.
Love,
Jason
— Me, in an email sent to my buddy (and Mac genius) Ben about 20 minutes ago. As you can see, there may be some emotional days ahead. Please keep me (and my collection) in your thoughts. Thank you.
Is there a way I can delete my porn from my hard drive (or whatever) but still have it all saved in the Time Machine? I only have 4.2 MB of available space on the computer, and it’s been acting wonky lately.
I mean, if I have to delete the porn, I will – RedTube and PornHub have made a private collection near obsolete. But to delete it would break my heart. It would break my heart.
Love,
Jason
— Me, in an email sent to my buddy (and Mac genius) Ben about 20 minutes ago. As you can see, there may be some emotional days ahead. Please keep me (and my collection) in your thoughts. Thank you.
“If God wanted the races to mix he’d have made everyone the same color. This is just a defiance of God’s will. If a woman lies unto a beast the beast shall be put down- Leviticus 20:16”
— This is a quote from a commenter on Philly.com in response to an article about Phillies’ slugger (and ginormous black dude) Ryan Howard getting engaged to Eagles’ cheerleader (and smoking hot white chick) Krsystle Campbell.
When I read something like this, I can see God, with His big white beard and in His big white robe, sitting at the computer in the rec room of His cloud house up in heaven, browsing Philly.com, reading this article and happening upon this comment. And then after doing so, He puts down His coffee, shakes His head in sadness, and then perhaps He quotes another of my gods (lowercase) and mutters to himself, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And then He lets out a heavy sigh and His whole day is ruined. Look at the poor guy – He can’t even finish His coffee.
I’m not gonna get into some religiousy debate here, but, my friends, here’s all you need to get by: BE NICE TO PEOPLE. Do this, and when the chips fall where they may, you should be in good shape. It really doesn’t have to be any harder than this.
— This is a quote from a commenter on Philly.com in response to an article about Phillies’ slugger (and ginormous black dude) Ryan Howard getting engaged to Eagles’ cheerleader (and smoking hot white chick) Krsystle Campbell.
When I read something like this, I can see God, with His big white beard and in His big white robe, sitting at the computer in the rec room of His cloud house up in heaven, browsing Philly.com, reading this article and happening upon this comment. And then after doing so, He puts down His coffee, shakes His head in sadness, and then perhaps He quotes another of my gods (lowercase) and mutters to himself, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And then He lets out a heavy sigh and His whole day is ruined. Look at the poor guy – He can’t even finish His coffee.
I’m not gonna get into some religiousy debate here, but, my friends, here’s all you need to get by: BE NICE TO PEOPLE. Do this, and when the chips fall where they may, you should be in good shape. It really doesn’t have to be any harder than this.
Every time I come here, I get more and more grateful that I neither live nor work in Midtown. What an awful place.
I was late getting into work this morning. When I finally got into the office building, I rushed into a closing elevator, frazzled. A co-worker was in the elevator, and as I had my iPod on (as per usual), he greeted me and asked what I was listening to. Caught off-guard, I said, “Um, Led Zeppelin.”
I was listening to “Escapade” by Janet Jackson.
I was listening to “Escapade” by Janet Jackson.