Lady-bro.com

Birthdays are often a time for reflection. Tomorrow, I turn 25. Feeling like the youngest person in the room for the past solid decade will make me say, “Sorry” for every time I mention my age. Mostly because you all will always seem so much older to me, and mostly because I don’t want to make anyone else feel old. Somehow that is more important to me than standing up for my own birthyear. 

But something is different about this birthday. Not just because it’s the “Quarter-Life” milestone, but for the first time in a long time I’ve felt the confidence that can only come from realizing something really, truly has changed within your personality. So fuck it dude, I’m 25 - and if that makes you feel weird take solace in the fact that you can be proud of your age, too. 

For years I’ve been telling myself various motivational idioms that I KNOW to be true, but never fully applied to my life. I would like to share these with you, now:  

1. Don’t Work So Hard

Don’t work so hard. You’re killing yourself. Stop looking at what the person to the left of you is doing, appreciate the opportunities they’ve been given. Stop noticing when people around your age are landing tremendous success. They are on a different timeline than you, they are not you. Your time is coming, be patient and don’t quit right before it happens. Stop worrying about “wasting your opportunities,” - unless you are actively sabotaging yourself from an obvious chance given to you by the Higher Powers of Hollywood, you are right on time. There is no such thing as being sentenced to mediocrity, we all make choices - don’t be a dick, make things that make the 12-year old version of you lose their fucking minds, push yourself to outdo yourself every time, get stoked on you. 

If you’re bummed and say - you’re an actor and you tell yourself, “Well I’m just waiting for them to call me to make this all happen.” Stop putting the responsibility of your life on someone else’s shoulders. They do not care about what happens to you. You should care about what happens to you by doing everything that’s within your power to make your life the best it can be. Make a Ch 101 show, write a pilot, take a sketch writing class, start doing stand-up - do stuff that makes you feel happy, and don’t write jokes that you think other people will like - write what you like - and without even realizing it you’ll start to convince everyone else to like it too.

2. Stop Saying ‘I’m Sorry’

Stop being embarrassed about the things you like. There are no guilty pleasures, you like what you like - own it. If someone makes fun of you for liking Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones, and movies and TV shows that are deemed to be “socially uncool,” they’re the uncool one. They’re living their life in misery and insecurity because they don’t have the passion or excitement you have over the things you like. They are jealous because they wish they had that enthusiasm for something else the way you do for The Adventures of Pete & Pete. 

3. Fuck Everyone.

No one is in your relationship but you and another person. Stop worrying about what “everyone else is going to say,” (there are strong exceptions to this - if the person you want to date just got out of a relationship, please don’t date them. They are not ready to date you. They are not really going to be dating you, but the idea of you laced with their memories of their ex. This will cause a scene regardless of how careful you are). If you worry about breaking up with someone because you’ll lose all of their friends - this is valid, but if those people were REALLY your friends, they would stick by you in the end. If they don’t follow, then you don’t need them. Fuck who you want to fuck. 

4. Be Lazy.

Find time to do nothing with your friends. Schedule hang-outs, brainstorm weird parties, research mini-adventures. Friendships are more important than your career, friendships and family are your foundation - that is who you are, not your profession. Work hard to find a balance between staying in and getting your script done to going out and staying up til 3 in the morning. These two things are codependent, they can not exist without the other. Begin to think of them in this way starting now. Also, tell your friends that you love them the moment you think of it. They will appreciate it. Everyone needs to hear it, and you will become better friends.

 5. Forgive Your Dad. 

Or Mom. Or Aunt. Or Uncle. Or Sister. Or Brother. Unless what they did to you is something covered on “Law & Order,” they didn’t mean any harm by it. They had good intentions, but lacked the social tools to execute them well. They didn’t mean to not be there for you, they deserve forgiveness. You can’t afford to hold onto that grudge for one more minute of your life, it is too heavy - your spiritual back hurts, let it go. 

by Josh Androsky

Quick. 

Name the last people who will ever see you alive. 

If I got asked that same question, some of the names on the most remote part of my list— after Laura Krebs, the only girl who braved my thunderously pubescent sweat-and-acne-drenched 260 lb. frame to dance with me in the sixth grade— and before… I dunno, Tilda Swinton? Would be the band Buckcherry (you know, the ones that sing that song “Crazy Bitch”)

Read More

by Julia Prescott

8:00am

I am alive, but my will to go on is dwindling. 

I stumble through out the open space within my studio apartment. Weak, but eagerly thinking strong thoughts. Light burns through the crevices of my drapes, taunting me with the hope of a day filled with productivity that other people - even the young Hispanic couple who hungrily makes-out at the bus stop at Sunset/Alvarado and whose concerns are solely concentrated on whether or not to continue making out even after a homeless man shouts, “WELL IF IT ISN’T SPRINGTIME. HELLO! HELLO!” right into their young impressionable faces - even they accomplish more than me in a single day; I scoff at the thought of their blossoming love. 

Read More

by T.J. Peters

At this point it’s common knowledge that news media outlets all over the world have become one amalgamated cesspool of politicized, over-analytical, posturing, ratings-crazed debasers.  From Fox News to MSNBC to Al Jazeera, it would seem there is little hope for the future of honest journalism.  However, there may be salvation those who yearn for a source of pure, unbiased reporting.

I give you HuffPo Cats.

Read More

by T.J. Peters

EDITOR’S NOTE: T.J.’s sentiment within this brief article echoes through out the writing staff of lady-bro. Please know that we have not forgotten about you this mid-June, but are in fact waging a war between ourselves and the world outside in simply getting out of bed. 

——

Yeah, I can do this.  5:09am?  It’s not that early.  I’m going to do this.  I’m getting out of bed.  I mean, people do this every day.

Read More

by Julia Prescott

All my life I’ve wanted a collection of tiki mugs: glass ones, wood ones, the kind that you only get in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road; the kind from Hawaii in the ‘50s with a painted-on ecstatic font of swirling nostalgia. I’ve made this a mission of mine from an early age, and I clutch on to few other determined focuses when I walk over the threshold of yard sales, thrift stores, and swap meets. 

Read More

by Julia Prescott

From time to time I find myself in a particular kind of quandary: How do you express yourself in ways that Hallmark has yet to touch upon? “I Love You”; “I Think You’re Cute”; “Roses are Red, violets are blue…something something punny….” Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. If you didn’t slam your head into your MacBook keyboard like I did after thinking about the countless Valentines with the same “Here’s lookin’ at you” colloquialisms, then we are not destined to be friends and/or lovers. 

You see, being original in your romantic professing of raw, human emotions can be just as important as the feelings themselves. Luckily I’ve devised a solution to your lovey dissolution: Go the opposite, go bluer than a regular comic at Live! At the Apollo, get knee-deep into some super sweet nasty gross confessions of tenderness and maybe just maybe the person who appreciates it is destined for you for all time. 

And since everything disgusting is made super sweet through the yarn lens of needlepoint, this was an embroidery project BECAUSE OF COURSE IT WAS. 

Here’s how you can replicate it!

Read More

by Rachel Hastings

Governor Scott Walker’s not-outrageously-big win in Wisconsin’s recall election was a somewhat-outrageously-big loss for labor unions. Particularly, public employees – including teachers - in the state have lost most of their collective bargaining rights during Walker’s term, and over $1billion has been cut from public education thus far.

So, in a special round table discussion, I sat down with Walker’s win and, a very special guest, Wisconsin’s citizens’ desire to seek revenge against their teachers. 

Read More