Biography

My name is Joe, born November 3, 1985, in rural southern Wisconsin, complete with cows, raspberry fields and star-filled skies. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a degree in journalism and mass communication in May 2008, and moved to Chicago shortly thereafter. I work as a writer and reporter and am currently employed as the Chicago editor of The Huffington Post. My work has also been featured in the Village Voice, Gapers Block, Windy City Times, EDGE Media Network, ChicagoPride.com, Chicagoist and elsewhere. I also formerly proofread for a dot-com, spent a strange week working as a magician’s assistant and I’m rumored to be working on a novel.

The original title for this blog – ‘Reality TV Makes Me Cry’ – was very much based in fact. I am a self-confessed sucker for the sentimentality of televised false realities. The blog was started in November 2007 as a place to spout off about the world around me — particularly within the world of music, politics and queer issues.

As my writing career has evolved, it’s become more of a “blogfolio” – spotlighting my work and offering me somewhere to vent. The new title – ‘Unsuccessful Writer No Failure As Hero!’ – is taken from John Irving’s “The World According to Garp.” I don’t particularly consider myself “unsuccessful,” but I certainly aspire to hero status some day.

When it comes down to it, I am just another queer male, writing just another queer blog about the silliness of it all. I enjoy electronic music, Diet Coke, theater, Middle Eastern politics, art and bubbles.

And yes, I really like music. As a hobby, I DJ under the moniker Josie Bush and help organize community fundraising events/DJ nights as part of the Subject to Change collective. I’d tell you more about that, but couldn’t find a better way to do so than copying and pasting the results of a “the first 25 songs to come up randomly on your mp3 player” chain letter thinger, conducted on 10/23/09. Here they are. These are my defining songs.

• To the Lighthouse – Patrick Wolf
• Feeling Good – My Brightest Diamond
• I’ll Dream of You Tonight – Hem
• Closet Romantic – Damon Albarn
• Listen Now – The Knife
• Vanished – Crystal Castles
• Idioteque (BBC Remix) – Radiohead
• Permanent Scar – O + S
• Fish to Fry – The Ditty Bops
• Heads Will Roll (Passion Pit Remix) – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Hollow Talk – Choir of Young Believers
• As Tears Go By – Marianne Faithfull
• Immature – Bjork
• Apres Moi – Regina Spektor
• Heart It Races – Architecture in Helsinki
• Gangsta’s Paradise – Coolio
• Transliterator – DeVotchKa
• Pon De Floor (Chewy Chocolates Remix) – Major Lazer
• World In My Eyes (Cicada Remix) – Depeche Mode
• Sans Soleil – Miike Snow
• I’m Not Scared – Ladytron
• Teardrops – The xx
• Daylight and the Sun – Antony and the Johnsons
• Day-O – Harry Belafonte
• Rise & Shine – The Cardigans

Yep, that’s pretty representative. Especially the Coolio and Cardigans tracks. (Mash-up idea?)