Totally Overhyped 2012 New Year’s Eve Party

I saw this posted on Teh Facebook this morning and shared it with my friends over there, but it’s too hilarious not to post here as well. The above mock flyer is for your archetypal New Year’s Eve party, and, hoo boy, is it ever on point.

From the promoters name (“Rohypnol Productions”) to the ticket price (“six months’ rent and your dignity”), everything about this flyer is sadly accurate. Thankfully, I’ll be spending this New Year’s with friends at a private gathering. No super-douchy dance club for me this year.

The New Year’s party scene, with its riotous antics, spirited dancing, wanton spending, and voluminous vomiting, is one with which I am very familiar. Remember, I worked in nightlife for years. Those experiences were what led to my penning my debut novel GUESTLIST, which will be available in February 2012. (You had to have known I was gonna tie #GLIST into this somehow.) While it is a world I certainly miss, I also recognize it’s a world I had to leave behind. I’m a grown ass man now.

Help Get @TastyKeish Back Online

Last night, my homegirl Keisha Dutes aka Tasty Keish hosted A Monthly Bondfire, a concert and open mic event with the goal of cultivating a nurturing environment for both artists and non-artists in New York City and abroad. I didn’t attend last night’s showcase – I’d just returned to NYC after spending the holidays in Memphis – but I have been to previous Bondfires, and let me tell you, it’s quite an event. I was saddened to learn that the series will be ending soon.

However, I was even more saddened to read my Facebook news feed this morning and discover that Keish’s MacBook was stolen by someone described as “light skinned […] with wavy hair about an inch or two long […] possibly Latino, Black or Middle Eastern.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Keish’s work, she wears many hats, DJ, voiceover artist, radio personality, and web series producer among them. She’s worked on a large number of projects over the past few months, many of which include interviews and footage that cannot be replaced. While Keish is offering a reward for the safe return of her MacBook, an effort to raise funds to help her acquire a new laptop, Get TastyKeish Back Online, has already been organized.

Posted on Keish’s Facebook status earlier today:

My macbook, bookbag, and all it’s contents was stolen after the show last night. I spent the morning in a police station filing a report. My livelihood has been compromised. I didn’t want to wake up at all today. When I did, i saw that you all have started helping me by starting a fundraiser (http://conscious.chipin.com/get-tastykeish-back-online). Thank you so much family. I doubt that i’ll get it back but i’m offering a reward for the return of my macbook unharmed. My recent interviews and projects were on there. I can’t get that back.

Book Review: The Alchemist by @PauloCoelho

I’m not big on fables. Between Aesop’s morality tales and the biblical parables taught in Sunday school, I’d read more than my share of fables as a kid. So it was with great hesitation that I approached Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

My buddy, soulhead CEO and founder Ron Worthy, insisted I read The Alchemist. It was full of eye-opening life lessons, he said, and I’d gain a better understand of “the struggle” once I reached the tale’s ending. Of course I looked at Ron askance. Was he really trying to sell a middling work of prose as something life-altering?

Mind you, The Alchemist was not my introduction to Coelho’s work. The first work I ever read by him was the stellar and sexy Eleven Minutes, a study of love, lust, and romance between a man and woman. It was a story firmly rooted in reality yet it still brimmed with a quality best described as “magical.” Despite a lack of true fantastic elements, I’d always said Eleven Minutes was a fairy tale for adults.

With The Alchemist, however, I knew I was in for a real fantasy, one replete with magic and omens and … well, and alchemy. And so, at my friend’s urging, I picked up The Alchemist and began to read. I read half of it before I put it down for a few weeks, but I picked it back up and finished it over the holiday vacation.

For those who are unfamiliar, The Alchemist tells the story of Santiago, a young Spanish shepherd who sets out to find a treasure hidden near the pyramids of Egypt. It is, he is often reminded, his “Personal Legend.” Along the way, Santiago encounters a host of characters, including a crystal salesman, a gypsy woman, an Englishman searching for the secrets of alchemy, and the titular alchemist himself, all who provide lessons and impart wisdom upon our protagonist. During a lengthy stay in a desert oasis, Santiago meets the love of his life, a woman named Fatima.

Santiago’s journey is fraught with danger—some of it is external, such as the warring desert tribes preventing him from continuing his journey; but there are internal conflicts as well, like Santiago’s struggles with doubt, insecurity, and faith. He encounters seemingly insurmountable obstacles on his quest to fulfilling his Personal Legend. In true fable fashion, what Santiago ends up learning is that the power to overcome these obstacles resides within him, and always has.

Happy Holidays from @JayFingers!

Once again I have been fortunate enough to spend Christmas with Mama Fingers and to see some of my family and friends. The holiday season has become increasingly important to me as the years have gone by. I don’t know what you want to ascribe this feeling to: nostalgia, sentimentality, old age. The only thing I wish were different is the amount of time I have to spend with family during the holidays.

The pic above shows the mantle above Mama Fingers’s fireplace. Festive, no?

Whatever you celebrate, whatever you’re doing, whomever you’re spending time with, I hope you’re enjoying the holidays this year. I wish you all nothing but love, life, and happiness!

Cheers,

Jay

Memphis is BEAUTIFUL! #GLIST

The other day I walked around my old Memphis, Tennessee neighborhood of Orange Mound to take in sights both familiar and foreign, get a sense of the nabe’s current vibe, and do a teeny tiny bit of research on my second novel, tentatively titled BEAUTIFUL.

Second novel? you say. But the first one hasn’t even been released yet!

I know, Dear Readers, I know. GUESTLIST isn’t even out yet and I’m already talking about what I’m doing next. But hey, that’s how you stay ahead of the game. Gotta be forward thinking. Can’t be stagnant. Can’t rest on one’s laurels.

(By the way, GUESTLIST is my debut novel and it releases February 28, 2012.)

Memphis Pizza Café

Every time I visit Memphis, it is a must that I stop by the Memphis Pizza Café. They’ve several locations in the city, but I prefer the location on Park Avenue in East Memphis.

The Café Supreme is my favorite pie: we’re talkin’ a thin crust topped with mozzarella, Canadian bacon, pepperoni, beef, sausage, green peppers, mushrooms, and onions. Nom! Pair it with a local brew from Ghost River or a bottle of Texas’s finest Shiner Bock and you’re about to have one hell of  a party in your mouth.

Thank You Already #GLIST

If you’re reading this, then you’re probably already aware that my debut novel GUESTLIST is being released in February 2012. If you’re reading this, you’re likely also someone who’s congratulated me for accomplishing something as insane and exciting as writing and publishing a novel. To all of you who’ve been on this incredible journey with me, and continue to support and encourage me, I just want to say, “Thank You!”