We Are All a Work in Progress

I am applying for a job as an editorial assistant for Slate magazine and for the application I was asked to critique one of their culturebox articles . The result is below, and the article is linked right before this sentence, please let me know what you think. “In Defense of Rap Rock” has a confusing opening that equates the term “the dream of the 90’s” with “nostalgia” and then later a “celebration of cultural touchstones”. It would have been more straightforward and simpler to mention that the 90’s brought a wealth of terrific pop culture, but as a whole rap rock was one element that we would all like to forget. The author quickly redeems himself by bringing us up to date on the current state of rap-rock fusion with his more than considerable knowledge of the scene lifting up the Wugazi mixtapes as a shining example of the good that can come from blending these two distinct sounds. Run DMC and Aerosmith’s hugely popular collaborative effort “Walk this Way” spawned a whole ...

Its been a pretty wild month for me. I've been back and forth from New York now 4 times for work and auditions and I finally struck gold. Starting August 22nd I'll be managing a street marketing campaign for Fiat for their first entrance into the American market since 1983. Basically I'll be driving the car around to various locations everyday and supervising a street team who will be promoting it. This is amazing news financially since obviously I haven't made a lot of money this year in my recovery from 2 stomach surgeries. All of my overnights have been spent at my former 65 year old roommate Eric Sigward's apartment on his floor. As many of you reading this may recall back when I was living with him i shot a series of terrific videos which capture all the eccentric personalities of my dear friend On my last visit just a few short days ago I decided to revisit these monologue style videos and encouraged him to talk about a recent movie he had just watche...

I hope your tastebuds were whetted appropriately by my last summer reading series way back like 2 weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. I'm a lot beardier and I just had my first audition in Hampton Roads in 6 years. It was a little different from auditions in New York where I would go into the audition room with like 8 other dudes. In the waiting room in Hampton, VA everyone for all the roles waited. It was a bunch of little girls and their moms, some 20 something brunettes, and me, the only person auditioning for the role of this crazy cult leader who kidnaps girls and young women. I'm not sure what kind of a lead in that is for my summer reading series, but hey this is a blog and I should write something besides how hungry I am since I am on day #3 of the Makers Diet to cure my digestive tract which has been a wreck for many many years because of Chrohns disease. I think specifically my digestion has been putrid since "overcooked hot dog Sunday" At Elim Bible ...

I'm proud to announce the second in my summer reading series of short stories. This one is called "Do You think when you're out you could get me some more hot dogs?" It is written in the style of a McSweeney's story and is about a particularly large and non-moving roommate I had in my first apartment in Brooklyn. It is also hilarious. I invite all questions and comments. Seriously bring your questions and comments please. Also if you are interested in publishing this awesome and previously unpublished story, please don't hesitate to contact me at my email address listed at the top of the page. It is also joshuadudley@gmail.com but the blogspot platform is super old and i can't figure out how to link an email address

My stomach isn't quite up to full functionality yet, so lately I have been thinking more and more about my writing as a creative outlet, but I am not quite to the point where I feel like I can sit down and write a great short story, even ones I have already started on. However, I used to go to a writing group in New York City, and everyone always loved my writing. The following video is the first of my summer reading series. The first time I read this in New York, no one in the group "got" the story. There were no questions. "Really?" I said no questions? Okay thats great whatever guys, that story is published already. And then everyone was like "oh im so sorry i didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or not" So I hope you enjoy a story with humor so dry and sophisticated that a New York Audience could't figure it out. Enjoy

I have a friend who introduced me to the gospel of Apple many years ago. This was in the early days of mp3's and to save money on music storage devices, I had bought some chunky, horrible 1 gig mp3 player (the big selling point for me was 1 gig of storage) with some poor forgotten name like the VD8300c music player or something else equally forgettable, and my friend was just laughing at my problems with trying to get my music onto this piece of junk. At that time he gave me some sage advice which has stayed with me all these years. "Dude get an Ipod" he said. I followed his advice and I really couldn't have been any happier. I was sort of proud to lug around two 15 pack cd cases for my 10 disk cd changer to show off my awesome taste in music. I really did have quite a lot of music with me, but the ability to carry "a thousand songs in my pocket" was such a revolutionary change that it was breathtaking. Which brings us to the cloud.... Last night I was visi...

Seriously, how do you date anyone? I know, it seems like a ridiculous question, and I suppose it would be for almost anyone else but the mysterious process whereby you go from asking a girl to dinner or a movie to dating her on a regular basis and having her introduce you as her boyfriend is completely foreign to me. The movies always make it look so easy, like guy meets girl, they kiss, they're in bed, and all of sudden being chased for their life by the Terminator or someone else and by the end of the movie an hour later they are in love and it is clear they are going to be married or do by the films closing credits. I think the main problem for me is there is no clear highlighted roadmap on how to get from point a to point b. I usually end up turning left and falling off the cliff next to the Coyote from Warner Bros. cartoons. Up till the point when I was in my early 20's I was either doing something entirely different or girls at that age just recognize when a guy asks you ...

I have to admit that I felt a little lost recently. My general health seems to be mostly restored to the point where I took 2 different jobs last week. My first job was to setup a laptop in Richmond to webcast a bar where people were watching the University of Richmond play Kansas in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. The bar was packed with drunken revelers who by all admissions were there to watch Shaka Smart and VCU shock the world again I was trapped in the corner with the laptop and aware that I was enjoying the game like a thousand times less then everyone else there because I was paying attention to the safety of the laptop and sending out corporate tweets about the game as part of work. My next job was background work on set of the film "J Edgar" starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Clint Eastwood. I did background work a thousand times in New York so the actual thing to me wasn't a big deal. However, it was pretty cool watching Clint Eastwood wor...

I go blogging in my sleep. That was a joke that approximately 12 percent of the audience will get as it was a reference to a top ten single from Billy Joel from the mid 90's called "River of Dreams" I wish I had written more this week except that I didn't have anything I was incredibly interested in to blog about and I wasn't feeling that great. Between life anxiety and medical anxiety, I was just full of anxiety this week. And anxiety never makes for a good blog and I've already decided to leave out the gory details of how my "stuff" (stuff is how i will refer to the apparatus's that are around my stomach region) is doing until I write my best selling book called "What to do when Stomach Surgery threatens your whole way of Life" or I could call it "Don't Panic but your stomach looks like a Meat Locker and the Doctor is coming over with a worried look on his Face" I bet that would sell. Probably the highlight of the week w...

No, wishing won't just create a new blog, only writing a new one will. And I hate to report it but im feeling awful again today. I had a rash of days in a row where I felt on top of the world and just thought "well this is it." but today im back to feeling a little miserable. And guys this has to be said I'm getting tired of feeling this way. I just want these bandages to fall off and my wound to be healed and for my ostomy bag to go away and get me back to normal where I will have no idea what I'm doing. That's right If I don't go back to New York which doesn't seem to be in the immediate cards then I really don't know quite what I'm doing. Fortunately I still have a while to figure that out. I know, I know. I should have written a real blog on tuesday or monday when i was feeling great. Just not feeling it sorry. If i had more feedback maybe I would write more. Oh thats terrible why would i say that? Well, time to get back to eating ice cream...

As an avid follower of technology and news, and a proud Verizon Iphone owner with way too much time on his hands, I have read a great number of stories about recent tech products since my near demise. Many of them fall under the same basic premise, to wit: you do or don't need said product, and you should or shouldn't wait until the next iteration of said product. Usually its an apple product being bandied about; the verizon iphone, ipad 2, and Iphone 5 (universal gsm?) have been making the rounds in these discussions. But, and this really should be said more often in articles, if you need or really want a piece of technology and it won't destroy your finances to get it, why shouldn't you get it? For the love of God, I thought that was the American way. Tonight I just read, probably without exaggeration, the 30th piece of this type in the last 2 months and I just got all kinds of fed up. Here is a link to the article should you wish to waste your time on this drivel, an...

I keep having these 2 nagging dreams. In one of them, I've lost the keys to my dad's car, and in the other one my old roommate Super Christian has turned into some sort of zombie like creature. This was the beginning to the blog yesterday when I tried to write it and was interrupted by what could have been 10 thousand different things but I'm pretty sure it was my dad who wanted to yell at me a few times in the car so we could go to the grocery store. So, I definitely can't do that opener anymore. I can't remember that nagging dream, and I'm pretty sure I made up that dream about Super Christian even though he basically was a zombie for the Lord. I used to be on the couch with chunks missing out of it in Astoria trying to sit down to enjoy a game of Super Mario Galaxy and he would walk past me with that same look of resignment on his face wearing slippers on his feet and rubber gloves on his hands which he put out in front of him when he walked kind of like Mr. ...

Today is what I in the Ostomy care/ Wound Sufferers community like to call "not one of my better days". I would describe why but I have a feeling the specifics of anything about my daily life problems are a turn off to my readership. Perhaps I should link you to pen and ink drawings offsite? I think I'll elucidate a little bit and say that things have really been flowing today. Too Vague? Should I have said that I'm really in the stream of things? No? I also want to stress that I'm sure this is in no way related to the extremely authentic Mexican restaurant me and my Dad went to for lunch today because of their advertised 3.99 lunch special which included an out of service toilet, Telemundo and a poor Hispanic family with 3 kids and an overweight mother. PS. I'm now the mayor of this place on Foursquare. Well regardless Ive been in mild pain and discomfort for most of the day and it has also made me a bit tired, so tired in fact that I haven't even been ...

Ever since my accident (and yes it was an accident, it wasn't a happening, or an instance, or a happenstance, or an unfortunate circumstance, or even a series of unfortunate events) people are always asking me "So Like How are you Doing?" And I try not to be glib and say something like "Well you know pretty good, I'm standing here and talking to you right, how bad could I be? No one would know how to handle it if I was glib or semi-serious about dealing with my near death circumstances even though that's how I usually am about everything. In other words, if I seem to be joking or only half serious to you, then I am probably doing fine. It reminds me of an old Seinfeld routine where he was explaining how men think to women, he was like "Go Ahead. Guess what I'm thinking about right now." "Nothing" To wit, what am I worried about right now? Nothing I do kinda feel like I'm in purgatory right now though. At this moment, I really could...

Guys I just feel like its getting too heavy out there and I'm not just saying that because of that superhero behind me. It's the way Im feeling and I wanted to tell you guys that. Ive been encouraged all day and all week and I wanted to express that adequately in my blog but all of a sudden my left arm is getting sore and my back is complaining to me and im growing tired and i need to change my bandages. Ouch! PS the picture above is me and a charismatic young man nicknamed " C-Lite " Im telling you guys. I so want to rip into the truth right now and let it flow out of my fingers but I just cant do it yet. I still can't focus like I want to and really get on it and write something to move people, to change them, to inspire them like I feel right now. I feel like every day I'm alive is a gift and looking at life's little challenges as anything but compared to certain death creates quite the confusing sentence and illustrates the jumble that is my physical ...

Warning: the following graphic image may be disturbing to almost anyone. If there are any small children present or anyone that may be offended please ask them to leave the room immediately. I'm not starting until everyone leaves. Okay are they gone? Great. I didn't have time today before dinner to go on and on and on about how horrible the hospital was in fact, I've barely started on that topic, but I know a lot of you out there are probably getting tired of reading about it. You're thinking, "Wow, I wonder what Josh is going to write about today. I can't wait to check because I'm so excited to read the same old boring thing." Whoo Wee who needs that kind of motivation? I certainly don't. Right now the hospital is just a fading dim memory of a time that seemed like it would last forever and now im in the time where my wound seems like its taking forever to heal and not really doing much of anything and if it never heals then i never get the ostomy...

So much happened to me while I was in the hospital, that it makes me tired to think about. Since I get tired now from doing almost anything, I don't like to think about the hospital much anymore. But the people demand the truth, and who am I to deny them. The truth is, I think in my last blog I completely forgot to mention the fact that when I woke up in the hospital after about 3 days of being heavily sedated not only did I have a huge scar and a bag attached to my stomach, I had 3 separate drain tubes stuck onto me also. If you are reading this, and know what a drain tube is, then you are clearly a nurse, or related to someone who has had drain tubes stuck to their body. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "hey wouldn't people related to nurses know what drain tubes are also?" the answer is: not really. Nurses understand that people they are related to don't want to hear about the icky parts of their job and so don't generally share them wit...

Okay, so probably at least like 13 or so of you guys were getting really crazy amped up about my new adventures with chrohns disease and the ostomy bag that saved my life. I should have been writing more. I apologize. I'm serious. Also I have no idea what I am going to write and I hate that and I know that readership is going to drop dramatically which is pretty important to me in my ongoing life saga right now. So, at this moment I am feeling a lot of physical discomfort which is making it hard for me to focus and put out superstar quality writing but I'll do my best. This is for the Fans... Hospital Stories So, Id been at the hospital for several hours and my cousin who had just come up from Virginia to visit and take me out to a surprise dinner was now watching me anxiously as i was strapped to a bed and getting ready to be wheeled in. She works at a hospital and assumed that made her part of the brethren there at Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital and was poking around the...

Are not going to be told today. I know I had promised my Aunt Louisa that it was happening but it appears in fact that it is not. My days just sort of seem to slip away from me and before I know it its dinnertime and then I go to bed and do it all over again. By 9oclock my back hurts and I just want to sit down and I just can't focus on writing right now at all. I'll try to do it tomorrow, maybe earlier in the day. We'll see.