I am writing to you from my new perch, nestled amongst the trees in my top floor studio apartment in Eastern Market on Capital Hill. The trees are almost naked and their yellow and brown leaves have become a thick blanket on the street. Ive pulled back the old wooden shutters so the afternoon light can come in from all three sides of my apt. I love having so many windows. Despite the cold weather one of them is open because the heat from the nearby radiator is so intense. I can hear someone playing a piano a few houses down, and there is a man down the street raking the leaves in the church yard of Christ Church, the second oldest church in DC. Jefferson, Madison and Monroe all attended there. Every few minutes he will stop and raise himself up and say hello to whoever passes. It seems like most people know him, and they exchange pleasantries and talk about what happened over Thanksgiving. What a street this is. A few doors down is a tan rowhouse with pink shutters that was John Phillip Sousa’s home (he wrote Stars and Stripes Forever, i think). The sidewalks are broad, the streets narrow, and they are bounded for blocks and blocks by tall slender rowhouses. I think i am lucky to be living in one.

In fact, I feel really blessed. Ive never asked for adventure, God just likes to drop it into my lap every couple months. The latest one has me in this apt, in this city, working in a place that many people spend their entire lives trying to get into. All I brought here was what my car could hold. So I am sitting on a cardboard box right now, and there is a stack of my favorite books in the corner. Tonight I will eat off of a paper plate and sleep on an air mattress. I plan on living like this until my first couple paychecks come in, and then Ill find a thrift store or flea market and buy some furniture. I might try to buy groceries this afternoon at the oldest continually running farmers market in DC…ts been in operation since 1873, and its only a few blocks up the street. With or without my junk its all beginning to feel like home, and this is only my first night.

I wish you all could be here. Joey, Ms. Wilson, Andrew, St. Thomas, Leah, Amy, Bethany, Kate, Chris- I miss you all. Come visit soon.

and now some pieces i pocketed last night as the tryptophan started to set in and my 2nd grade cousin, brother-in-law, and I took turns drawing each other on a pad of post-it notes. please don’t use any of these for your own work without the permission of the artist. do, however, leave your own critique of these works in the comments section - even though i’m not hip nor ever was and have really no hopes of ever being hip. enjoy…

WORK #1
Title: Joey with his pants on fire and then taking a poo.
Artist: Luke Kuykendall

WORK #2
Title: Joey getting projectile pooed on by Luke
Artist: Luke Kuykendall

WORK #3
Title: Joey
Artist: Brandon Huff, of Heroic Me fame

happy effen holiday.

WARNING: non-U2 fans skip on…

if you know me you understand the magnitude of this, and know that i’m not gonna avoid sounding like a giddy schoolgirl - the first U2 live experience. and oh man, was it ever! i’m not even gonna go into detail. just wanted to post the pictures i took with a 27 exp. crappy camera-in-a-box. (note: don’t ever let wolf camera sell you a picture cd. apparently someone sneezed on the scanner just prior). after 6 hours waiting outside in the cold we made it to the rail on the outside of the ellipse, 2.5 ft. from bono - kick ass!!! enjoy. i’m still smiling…

Jared R., Hipster
d. 2005
WASHINGTON D.C. November 21, 2005– Jared R., a hipster extraordinaire who over many years of effort (but not overtly noticable effort, because that would be uncool) assembled a fine vintage wardrobe and home full of bizarre second hand goods while perfecting the “middle finger to the man” attitude, has left the world of hip and mod. Most notably, Jared was recognized for his record collection and audiophilic tendencies. Friends remember his vehement disdain and boycotting of wal-mart and starbucks, and yet remember seeing walmart shopping bags used as trash bags in his apartment and also recall a consistnent pile of discarded starbucks frappacino bottles that would continually klank and rattle in the floorboard of his passenger seat. Jared rode vintage bicycles, wore chucks, used army surplus goods and applied a strong sense of irony and philosophical approach to most aspects of life. Never afraid to upset the expected with a shot of the unexpected, Jared was always open to edginess and shock value, turning his nose up at conventional values. He was always known for taking the road less traveled. Although his adventures ranged from photographing the war torn Balkans to mopping floors in a Southern Baptist Fort Jesus, Jared has cruelly departed the hipster world, bending over and giving the mop handle to the man.* Upon his departure, Jared failed to display any recognizeable trace of irony about his new career and yuppie haircut, devastating long-time hipster friends Leah, Amy, Chris Lawson, and Ben Arnold and further convincing them of his permanent entrance into worlds unknown.

*Editor’s Note: when this writer says “the man” he really means THE MAN.

there’s no sun up in the sky…

snapped this tonight, just before the winds came.

‘night.

if you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
should that be all i’ll ever need
or is there more i’m looking for

and should i read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
to make me handsome, rich, and wise
is that really what you want

i am a whore i do confess
i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle
i’m a prodigal with no way home
i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to you

so could you love this bastard child
though i don’t trust you to provide
with one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side
i am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers less wild
that i would take a little cash
over your very flesh and blood

i am a whore i do confess
i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle
i’m a prodigal with no way home
i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to you

because money cannot buy
a husband’s jealous eye
when you have knowingly deceived his wife

Sometimes I think that the sole purpose of the shuffle function on my ipod is to play every single song I don’t want to hear. I believe that my ipod has a brain, maybe even a personality (a contemptable one at that), and it is dead set on using its shuffling capabilities to thwart my music listening enjoyment by consistently forcing me to ask myself “why the hell do I have this song on my ipod?” One such song came up the other day- PORCELAIN, from Moby’s PLAY record. Whats strange is that I didnt press the click wheel to move on to the next song. Instead, I turned off the shuffle and played the entire record.

Stop laughing and I’ll tell you why.

Seriously. Shut up.

It happened a few weeks ago, right as the weather began to turn. The afternoons were still warm but the evenings were cool, and there was no humidity and a consistent breeze. The sky was big and blue and dotted with huge fluffy clouds, and I was on my way downtown via interstate. My earbuds were securly snug in my ears (and yes, I know that is illegal, but there should also be a law against jared driving a car without a stereo) and the windows were down. PORCELAIN came on and the weather and the wind and the sound and the song hit me all at once and sent me on a series of intense memories of Sarajevo days. You see, six years ago I spent a summer in Sarajevo, where the days were warm and the nights were cool and the sky was big and blue and dotted with big fluffy clouds. And everywhere I went in Sarajevo, no, everywhere I went in Europe that summer, I heard Moby’s PLAY. It was literally EVERYWHERE-cafes, stores, clubs, tv, radio…I even think that it was blasting out of the call to prayer speakers that are fastened to the tops of the many minarets of all the mosques in Sarajevo.

My most distinct memory is of the ART PLACE. The ART PLACE was a little gallery/cafe/reading room that Hajdi and I frequented. It was right next to the river that ran through the middle of the city, and it was the place of our first date. Hajdi (pronounced like Heidi) was beautiful. So beautiful that I had no idea of why she wanted to be with me. But she did, and I think we were in love…in love with each other and in love with language and art and books and music. The ART PLACE (and i never knew if that was the actual name of the place, or if it was just what Hajdi and I called it) was simply decorated- blue walls with a few posters and pieces of local art, lots of hand written advertisements for clubs and dj’s and rock bands and parties. The chairs were a mix-matched mixture of red, orange and yellow and they orbited white table tops that supported used cups and bottles and overflowing ashtrays, full of the remnants of previous conversations and silent thoughts gone up in smoke.

Hajdi and I would always order a coke in a bottle or a cappacino and PLAY would be on the house speakers. We might talk about the books we had read or tell each other about our families or share childhood memories and PLAY would still be on the house speakers. Sometimes she would tell me about the war, and sometimes we’d sit quietly and flip through magazines. She would read and i would look at the pictures, and PLAY would be on its second or third full rotation on the house speakers.

I loved those afternoons in Sarajevo with Hajdi, and I suppose that its those memories that cause me to keep Moby on my ipod, so that when I happen to hear those songs I can be taken back to one of the most beautiful places Ive ever seen, with one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever known.

Here is a photograph of Hajdi on the tram in Sarajevo:

tonight, whilst canoodling (well, maybe canoodling isn’t the right word. snuggling? no. snuggling sounds too…i dont know. we were sitting close. intentionally close) with a lovely girl at barnes and noble (and yes, i know, i know. i’m supposed to be against such corporate behemoths. and i am. dont get me wrong. but 10pm on suday in birmingham doesnt leave you with many options) a song came over the house speakers. its a song ive liked since the first time i heard it, but a song that is often seen as a trifling and silly 60’s sugary psychadelic pop semi-hit. and what song is this you ask? well, it is in fact THE best trifling and silly 60’s sugary psychadelic pop semi-hit: Tommy James and the Shondell’s CRIMSON AND CLOVER.

The first time i heard CRIMSON AND CLOVER was sometime in the summer 1986 or 87…i was 9 or 10 years old and somewhere in the middle of 18 holes of putt-putt golf. my family enjoyed the occasional evening at the putt-putt course, i always used a red ball, my brother a blue, and we generally finished with scores descending in family rank…dad first, mom second, big brother 3rd, little brother last. we frequented a course unlike those fancy places with windmills and waterfalls. instead, it was putt putt generic- i.e. matted green indoor/outdoor carpet bounded by hollow metal barriers welded at right and 45 degree angles. i can still hear the PING! sound the ball would make upon contact of those orange painted railings. the course was located back behind the chuck e. cheese pizza out on centerpoint parkway, next to the steak and ale restaurant, and it was illuminated by large halogen lamps on high poles around which millions of knats and moths and mosquitos would hover, creating buzzing clouds of chaos bent on infiltrating the halogen energy or breaking down the invisible armor of deep woods OFF bug repellent we had showered in before embarking on our evening’s excursion. in various places large loud speakers (think the kind of loud speakers found on a high school football field) spat out flat sounds of oldies radio in mono. but depite the general monochromatic feel of the place and sound of the speakers, CRIMSON AND CLOVER came out in technicolor that night. no, not technicolor. it blasted out of those speakers in bright neon hues, and it was like nothing else i heard before. my mom and dad thought i was ridiculous for liking it. but i was so into it that i think i might have even skipped my turn on one hole so i could listen all the way through the entire 5 minutes and 32 seconds of the song. i dont know what grabbed me so. maybe it was tommy jame’s moaning/groaning vocals or the plodding, chugging rhythm or the wah-wah solo or the background vocals going “nah nah nah nah nah nah” or the distorted repetitive rhythm guitar. and if it wasnt any of those things, then it was the break somewhere near the end where the music drops out and the vocal changes to a trippy, watery echo effect that gets layered and built up to a crescendo. i thought it was cool then, and i think its cool now. and just as i skipped a hole to hear the song back in ‘86, i completely dropped out of the conversation i was having at the bookstore tonight just so i could listen (which is saying a lot because i think that the girl i was warming up to is awfully cute). its just that somehow CRIMSON AND CLOVER grabs my attention, over and over…