This week, we had a pretty damn good time here at The Solitary Life. We had a lot of discussions with the advertisers about all sorts of stuff (more on that later). We received a whole bunch of contributions (more on that later, too). And, we actually added a couple of brand-new staffers along the way, as well. For more on that, keep reading.
We'll start introducing the readers to the new staffers over the course of the next month or so. But, we'll start off with our old friend, Michael Brooke (who we routinely call "Mike", "Mikey", or "Brookesey" around the office here) of Concrete Wave Magazine. Mike contributed an essay on his experiences with Volcom at September's Surf Expo (scroll down to check it out), and is already working on something or another to do with Charles Dickens. I tried to tell him that we're not exactly "literary geniuses" around here (obviously)... but clearly, we have a little bit more convincing to do on that front.
With the addition to "The Crew", we also gave Mike his first taste of our in-house "hazing" process. When he sent over the draft for his "My Ears Are Bleeding" piece, Mike very un-wisely forgot to send a title along with it. Of course, no good article is complete without a title. I mean, c'mon! So we, being the true editorial assholes that we are, decided to take a few "liberties", and create one for him. And, this is what we came up with:
Now, if you've never heard the sound of a contributor having a heart attack over the phone, you're totally missing out. Because when Mike first spotted our "embellishments" to his otherwise fair-minded and even-keeled op-ed piece, I swear that our buddy over there nearly clocked out on us. But, trust me on this one: It gets even better.
The central point of Mike's piece was that Volcom was blaring some sort of awful-ass techno-torture at the trade show. Which, to hear Mike describe it to us, sounded just disgusting. This is, after all, a guy that once worked in the music industry. So, you know he's heard some real crap in his time. Still, he was at a total loss to even begin explaining Volcom's music selection. If Mikey can't even explain it, then it's gotta be either The Village People, or Wham!
Feeling like we needed to "duplicate" the trade-show experience (on Volcom's behalf, of course), we started searching YouTube for "The Gayest Song Ever". And, we damn near used this one in Mike's essay, instead:
The thing that we want everyone to always remember is that skateboarding... and, everything related to it... should always be "fun", first and foremost. Hopefully, Mike had some fun collapsing on his keyboard after we called a mega-zillion-dollar corporation "Douches", and stuck his name under it. Whatever the case may be, we sure had a butt-load of fun* art-directing that piece. We hope that Mike keeps contributing these sorts of things, because we all know that if he can't use anything at all, an elevated pulse rate and higher blood pressure are two things that he could definitely use more of.
Before I log off for the night, I also wanted to take a moment to say thanks to everybody else that makes all of this possible. The advertisers, the staffers (notably AJ Kohn, who will forever have the distinction of being "Staffer Number One"), the contributors, the sources... and all the way through to you guys (and gals), the readers. Everybody is important, and everybody has something to add to the discussion.
We encourage you to do just that, because I do get awfully tired of hearing my stupid ass talk all the time...
Bud Stratford
Editor,
The Solitary Life
*Pun alert
