Washing the car with Dad about 20 years ago.
01.17 DRYER SHEET
JENN wearing American Apparel leggings photographed by Ben DeCamp
01.12 WEENING
DEAN WEEN fishing trip spread in VICE Magazine Vol. 17 #1
01.03 FRISCO DISCO
We didn’t have a Christmas tree in our offices this year. I think we’re trying to be non-denominational or some legal bullshit. A tree is probably way cheaper than a Chanukah menorah. Modern menorahs are covered in rhinestones or made out of precious metals. A lot of girls think I’m Jewish; apparently I “look Jewish” whatever the fuck that means. It’s not an ethnicity for Christ sakes. I very well may be 1/64th Jewish. Might start claiming that shit. But I’m only Jewish when it’s convenient. It’s sort of like declaring a specific minority on college admission applications; there’s usually an option to bubble in “other” and a blank line to write your own response. What are you supposed to put down? Ukranian-post-USSR post-Chernobyl-Navajo-African American-post-hipster-Jew? I wrote “Asshole,” and got a nearly full scholarship to Hawaii Pacific University. But let’s be honest, they’d have to pay me a fortune to go to that shithole of a school and become addicted to ice.
Actually one of my best friends is addicted to crystal methamphetamine. He borrowed $50 “for groceries” and drove an hour to my house to get it. 13 days later he called me from a random hotel room in Palm Springs yelling at me to stop knocking on his door and that he wouldn’t come out. When he got back home he mentioned his AA meetings a lot. I’m not sure if he was just wanted company or was hinting at the fact that most people only go for the free donuts.
Around the holidays last year, I saw a cute checkout girl at the grocery store wearing a Star of David necklace. 
This was when I was in my scamming prime; I think I was hitting around 90% at getting girls’ numbers. I hustled over to the “ethnic/cultural” food aisle. The manager further segregated the aisle, so if you’re from some bizarre tribe in the Amazon jungle, the store might possibly carry pickled or dried fruit bat, your preference. After a brief search I found a dusty box of industrial-sized Matzo crackers. I plopped the massive package on the moving checkout counter with a marble segregation rod, keeping my kosher pickup line away from some fat bitch with a bunch of Yoplait yogurt. When the brunette went to scan the UPC code, her eyes lit up. I mean, fuck, the box was like $29.99, but since Passover just ended it was on ultra-clearance for $2.75. I may be an asshole, but I’m a frugal one at that. I fed her some bullshit about being Jewish… No you weirdos I didn’t feed her the fucking Matzo crackers right then and there. But I did leave that night with her phone number and promises that I was Jewish and that I used to attend some temple in Upstate NY. God damn, sometimes I sicken even myself.
Anyways…back to the office. We can’t celebrate a specific holiday; otherwise we’d have to expense report all those fucking religious effigies. There is nothing more bizarre than Christmas: slaughtering a forest so that every suburban household can have a dying juvenile pine tree dropping needles and dripping pine sap all over the carpet. Then decorating the plant, and finally placing gift certificates and other thoughtless trinkets around it so some fat child molester can supposedly slide down the chimney in a red suit with all his gifts and leave something in a sock hanging over the mantle.
What about the families without a fireplace? Santa DOESN’T GIVE A FUCK. He just walks in the front door because he’s like the security guard in my apartment complex with a universal key to every lock. Santa and the security guard are probably running the same scam because they both have allegedly stolen food out of my pantry. Kwanza? Shut the hell up you unpatriotic piece of shit. If Catholics have dead plants, and
Chanukah is a Yankee Candle marketing scheme, what do Kwanzaans(?) use to celebrate? I’ll tell you what they have. In our office we’re going to build a plain un-finished wooden bench in the lobby with an engraved copper plate that reads “This is Kwanza; nothing special here. So take a seat motherfucker.”
Oh yea, and about that Jewish girl at the grocery store. I never called her. Why? Well, she’d probably want to share those fucking crackers with me, and I’d rather gnaw on a cardboard Macy’s shirt box than eat one of my garbage pickup lines.
11.7 PHOTOSYNTHESIS
LILLY photographed by Ben DeCamp
10.18 EVERY LAST DROP
This was an ad campaign for a hipster bar in California, but lacking a proper art director, stylist, makeup artist, etc. I quickly took creative control. The model was supposed to be riding a tricycle while drinking fancy champagne. We would soon learn champagne stings when it gets in your eyes. I say “we” because after I burst out laughing at her while she was in pain she coaxed me into to splashing some in my own eyes; soon I was howling like a little piece of shit. Apparently beer doesn’t hurt, so I started cracking PBR’s and told her to just spray it everywhere, and “see what happens.”
From now on I’m only drinking out of cans, preferably tall boys. I’m not sure if it’s the slight metallic aftertaste, or if that’s just my imagination. Somewhere along the line, upper-middle-class-pretentious hipsters appropriated the 1940’s working class vices: Parliament cigarettes, army boots, suspenders, and PBR. Wait a second… that sounds kinda like me, I should kick my own ass. Anyways I was trying to make a statement about the irony of paying for overpriced vintage t-shirts and then destroying them to create trash-chic fashion, but figured it would be easier to just to have her get messy in something lacey from Victoria’s Secret.
One of my friends is in a bet to collect all the Arizona Iced Tea tall cans. I was driving back from Las Vegas with a serious hang over, the girl in the passenger seat was still dancing to techno music, and the girl in the rear was passed out on top of a 14ft. flamingo. I was moody and I wanted to shank anything within a ¼ mile radius. Franny, the flamingo, was the ultimate carnival prize that I obtained without ever going to a carnival. I won’t go near those fucking places because usually everyone I attend with wants to ride the roller coaster and I have an irrational fear of those stemming back to being “this tall” and slipping out of the lap bar on Space Mountain while everyone else groped each other during the dark tunnel plunge.
When I went to the guy’s house I met off Craigslist he offered me a $10 discount if I let him take photos of my struggle to fit the flamingo into the back seat. If you’re gonna jerk off over photos of my ass bent over against my car… just say so; I wouldn’t be offended. I couldn’t manage to jam the bird in there so its head was sticking out the sunroof; I inadvertently created a traffic hazard and a complete chick magnet. At every stoplight girls wanted to talk to me, hell it was better than having a dog and I didn’t have to pick up its shit either.
One of the rest stops near Las Vegas had 14 versions of Arizona Iced Tea, I emailed my buddy after the trip and he nearly had a stroke. That rest stop was something out of a generic horror movie, eerily quiet with moldy peanuts and cheap Route 66 tank tops for sale. A Zoltar machine guarded the entry way and the sheik with a head scarf would tell your fortune for $1.75. I couldn’t figure out where to take a leak, and then realized I had to piss into some fake waterfall, or a Koi pond. I don’t know what the hell it was, but it didn’t have urinal cakes and the presence of painted fish on the wall made me uneasy. My friend claims he’s up to 23, but he’s stuck on finding the elusive final can. You can’t even score it on Ebay. It was an extremely short-run in Walgreens or some shit. It’s the Arnold Palmer half-lemonade/half-iced tea, “with a real golf ball on top!”; “limited collector’s edition.” I’m not sure if this thing exists, it seems so far-fetched that it’s more than likely an urban legend. Are you even supposed to play with the ball? It’s such a collector’s item it’s like going to the batting cages with something signed by Babe Ruth. In any event, it was an idiotic marketing scheme, because any golf ball sitting on top of a tall can seems like a fucking choking hazard lawsuit waiting to happen.
9.29 SWEET TOOTH
PHOTO // WILLIAM J BRIGGS
MYSPACE PRISON
I logged into MySpace recently and it was all in Spanish; granted I was in Chile, but it pissed me off. I was completely disoriented so I started hitting random keys and ended up on some amateur porn website. Apparently while I’ve been dicking around the past couple years, some asshole schemed up MySpaceLatino, it’s really just a ploy to capitalize on anyone south of Mexico because Central and South Americans love new brands and products. They’re kinda like eternal hipsters, but with less money and a closer proximity to pure Colombian cocaine. Actually I’ve had aspirations of “moving up in the world,” so I applied for an internship with Tom over at MySpace. In my cover letter I told him about an idea I had that could be really profitable: MySpacePrison.
All the inmates could have laptops and communicate with each other, make friends in prisons overseas, or at least find some lonely divorced woman to lure into visiting hours. Maybe even rub one out to phone sex while staring at her cleavage through three inches of Plexiglas. I think prison Internet would significantly reduce the amount of illicit notes being passed around, and all messages could be filtered through a central agency to reduce drugs and violent activity. It seemed too good to be true…Wireless Internet would be mandatory, because the cords could be turned into a noose. Soon prisoners would form MySpace groups aka e-gangs, the Bloods would control a certain message board, probably “Love and Relationships”. God forbid you learn some skills and hack a profile; you’ll get stabbed in the shower.
This photo represents an ex-girlfriend, and the submission came from a loyal reader. It’s unrelated to the story, but I figured a little T&A was relevant to this website, and you bet your ass I’d drool over this in prison.
Anyways, I’m not even sure Tom exists; he’s more of a concept. The company just needed an image that was akin to a scapegoat when the server crashed. “Damnnit Tom!” The guy never returned my email; he probably didn’t even look at my resume either. Not that my experience bussing tables at a New England seafood restaurant was pertinent, but I digress. So I took my gig over to the crew at
Facebook, they loved the idea! I had instant visions of working in a plush office overlooking some metropolitan area, maybe even a park with a toddler chasing a cute puppy. But it was kind of problematic; after all, what if prisoners woke up in the morning, logged on and discovered they were “poked” in the middle of the night? Someone would immediately create a Facebook event invite and send out a mass RSVP. They might call it something like “Southern Mexicans vs. Blacks vs. Aryans/Neo-Nazi’s/WhiteGuys/Ex-WalMartEmployees BATTLE ROYALE! “Maybe attending” my ass; better be ready for the biggest fucking party of the year. Fans in the recreation yard might get a little antsy before the event and fashion a USB jump drive shank and start a rampant killing spree. Or at least hold up the cafeteria for some extra dessert. It’ll be problematic when relationships get into that status of “it’s complicated,” or they see themselves drop down on others’ Top Friends list. Prisoners would be devastated and might have to go to couple’s therapy, or start drinking alcoholic contraband… actually no one would even see the prison doctor for health problems anymore. They’d just Google that shit.
DOS AMIGOS DOS
Girls kissing me on the cheek are usually recipe for disaster. That’s how I’ve gotten pneumonia twice: back-to-back. I think it all started from not washing my hands after grazing alongside some brunette gazelle in the women’s restroom of a local pizza joint, and the subsequent burrito consumption from Dos Amigos Dos. Two weeks later I had bronchitis and was coughing up grey pus from deep inside my chest cavity.
I didn’t even get laid that night, but she thought it would be cute to put her red wax all over my 5 o’clock shadow preventing me from meeting any other girls. I like lip gloss, especially the raspberry flavor; there must be sugar in it because I don’t consume anything unless it’s sweet. I wonder if lip gloss contributes to tooth decay; perhaps kissing contributes to cavities? Her mouth definitely wasn’t as clean as a dog’s. I absolutely despise girls that kiss dogs and then want to kiss me, yea I know a dog’s mouth is supposed to be the cleanest thing in the world, but fuck you. Really it’s just because I don’t like the bacon flavor of dog treats. Any lip products
with glitter should be outlawed. The disco ball spins like a police siren lighting up my face; all the other girls on the dance floor know better than to get near an asshole like me.
“No really babe, I just wanna ‘dance with you!’”
(Kinda like when Britney Spears pseudo-fucked that little metal chair on MTV back in ‘98.)
Speaking of Brit, she looked jacked up with a buzz cut. Natalie Portman looked amazing; it’s all about the bone structure. Leather pants and psychotic dance moves can only mask the fact that you’ve got a schnauzer face.
I can’t figure out why Pledge furniture polish smells like lemons and contains 0% real fruit juice. I tend to gravitate towards products that claim to be healthy, but you can’t eat them. My shaving cream contains oatmeal; I ran out of actual oatmeal, so I spread it on a cracker. I should’ve known better that the neon-blue gel wouldn’t mix well with the burrito from Dos Amigos Dos. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, if I had to give up one of my senses it would be smell. Sex smells awkward, coffee never tastes as good as it smells, and I hate the smell of my puke from the Dos Amigos Dos. There’s only one sense that I truly need. Hearing: because my orgasms can’t sound any more disgusting than hers. 
Actually my friend fucked a deaf girl recently; her interpreter advised him to go home with her. Apparently the chick’s orgasms sounded so bizarre he couldn’t keep it up. I’m not sure what to make of that. I mean if it was me and I had limp dick, I’d buy the girl a Prince CD or a $10 iTunes gift certificate from the grocery store checkout aisle. But then I’d probably have that sinking feeling in my stomach after I already dropped it off at the post office. I’d rush to a payphone, jam in an irrational amount of quarters, and warn her not to open it; it was an honest mistake! I knew she wouldn’t like it!
“I’m so sorry! Babe, are you there? Can you hear me? BABE. CAN YOU HEAR ME???!!??”
Oh wait…