Yesterday I posted asking you for questions for my new growing up advice column, and you guys gave me a ton of great material to work with (i.e. COMPLETELY PSYCHO GAY BEST FRIENDS). And you guys also gave me some of this…
…which is the most valid comment ever, so I feel like I should explain further what I’d like to do here.
I’d like your help with this, lovely people.
If you’re wondering about growing up and you want to be advised on the subject by a 24-year-old who has 180 plays on the Fifth Harmony single that came out late last night, then ASK AWAY.
PLEASE AND THANKS.
Until April 10, 2013, I, Darren M. Sharp, carb connoisseur, had never walked inside an Arby’s.
Arby’s changed my life.
I turned 24 yesterday. I don’t think 24 is a major milestone for most people, but for whatever reason I’ve grown up thinking that this would be a benchmark age for me. Let me explain.
Read/share as your birthday gift to me pls.
The memory of the clip above is engrained in my memory so strongly that I feel like it must’ve happened last year or the year before that at most, not 1997. I was eight years old then, begging my parents to let me stay up well past my bedtime to finish Game 7 of the World Series where my beloved Florida Marlins—-I was a bandwagon fan, let’s be honest—-had taken the heavily favoured Cleveland Indians into extra innings. I remember feeling so grown up, awake at 11 p.m. to watch a game that I had no reason to care about as much as I did. I sat glued to the TV, palms sweaty as the Marlins loaded the bases and Edgar Renteria, my new hero, lined a single over Charles Nagy’s glove to give Florida its first ever championship.
It’s about sports but it means a lot to me idk.
“Reckless abandon” has never been a gear I could put myself in. The closest I came was when I was 21 and went through a Skins-fueled phase where I decided I would go all Jim Carrey in Yes Man and never say no to any experience I was offered. The only results were constant exhaustion, a bank account that bled money, and a single week in February when I hit rock bottom and took up smoking cigarettes to properly display my twentysomething angst. But even those few months were calculated; I made a conscious choice to be young and free, it didn’t come naturally.
The social politics of being an Internet personality are exhausting. The strategy involved in deciding when to like a status, when to favourite (or, when you’re feeling especially Internet relationship savvy, retweet) someone’s tweet, or when to reblog a gif set runs so deep that I’m not sure anyone can really explain it anymore. I once went into a sharp spiral of depression started by losing Twitter followers, which is completely absurd but defensible only because that number is essentially Internet currency, where having more or fewer followers than someone places you in a ridiculous house of cards power hierarchy that means nothing yet somehow means everything. It turns any gathering of Internet types into a poorly veiled Mean Girls rendition. You’ve only got 1000 followers? You can’t sit with us.
I wrote about the Internet.
Earlier today, Jezebel alerted me to this story. In a nutshell: Lena Dunham loves Taylor Swift’s music, and Lena Dunham fans aren’t too happy about that. The reason for their ire is obvious; Dunham is supposed to be the picture of Brooklyn cool, and despite Taylor’s ubiquity, announcing that you identify with Swizzle’s tales of heartbreak and…well, heartbreak, is the social equivalent of saying that From Justin To Kelly is your Citizen Kane. Being an open Swift fan means society labels you a little uncool, at best, and completely tasteless, at worst.
1. Put it into a savings bond and let it accrue interest, though to be honest I have no idea how those things work.
2. Order a pizza within a pizza, which is everything that it sounds like it is.
For twentysomethings, New Years is hyped as the night of all nights, the evening where you’re supposed to be wild and free and make mistakes and get too drunk and make out with a stranger at midnight (or earlier, or both, or multiple strangers) and generally celebrate the fact that by golly you’re still young.
I spent last night doing puzzles with my parents. And you know what? It was pretty fucking awesome.
I’m going to be doing daily essays this year. I’d love it if you followed me on my writing blog!
Is it just the margaritas, or is this a new music blog?
My Pop DJ is the brainchild of Darren Sharp—-the ‘D’—-and Jackson Griffey—-the ‘J’—-two massive pop fans who are constantly talking music but have, to this point, had nowhere to post those thoughts publicly. Too often we send each other messages like this…
…and it’s about time we bring these conversations to the public. After a little struggle—-neither of us know a thing about building a website ourselves—-we’ve finally managed to put the basics of the site together, and we’re ready to share our love of pop with you.
We don’t know where this is going to take us, but we’re both very excited to start writing and see where it goes. We’ll be posting our Best of 2012 lists shortly as a sort of primer for what you can come to expect from as us heading into 2013. Feel free to ‘follow’ us here and on Twitter, which we’ll start using effectively in the near future.
If you’d like to know a little more about Darren and Jackson, such as our favourite Carly Rae Jepsen song besides ‘Call Me Maybe’ and who we stan for the most, head over to our about us page.
Follow this because it’s mine pls.
