Essay: An introduction

Um, hi. It’s me, Dan. I run this site and write all the crazy stuff you’ve been reading (hopefully) over the past few months. How are you? You don’t have to answer. As you may know, this blog was originally my personal site that I just did in my spare time. And when I blogged just on my own time, all I really wrote was essays. It was fun. And I miss doing it.

I’m going to start writing essays again, right here on the blog, and though it doesn’t really fit with the theme/motif/personality I’ve been cultivating over the past few months, I think it’s okay. After all, it is a blog. It’s not like I’m hurting anyone by being myself. Maybe the site will eventually turn into all essays. (Though I doubt it, there are unintentionally funny headlines to mock.)

After the jump, an essay I’ll call “An introduction,” for lack of a better idea.

I got this job because I went to Las Vegas last April.

Really, I did. No, I didn’t win a bet against Review Publishing that forced them to hire me, though that’d probably be a more interesting story. Last April, I was working at The Evening Bulletin, and took my first day off on a Friday so I could go to Las Vegas with a few friends from college.

I mainly went just to say I had gone to Vegas — I had really only been west of Pittsburgh once in my life, for the Bulletproof Monk press junket while an editor at my college paper — and, you know, it was Vegas. I had to go. And I went and had a great time and didn’t lose too much money and all that good stuff.

And when I got back, I mindlessly sent an e-mail to my friends who had gone. It was a fake gossip column about our trip; as if some gossip columnist was writing about what happened during our trip to Vegas. Yes, before you say it: this is probably the nerdiest thing anyone has ever done. I wrote it one night after work, sent it on my lunch hour and didn’t think much of it afterwards.

A little bit later, one of my friends on the trip was working on a cover story for Philadelphia Weekly. She was discussing with Tim Whitaker, head honcho here at PW, about writers who are funny but not annoying. And, presto, she forwarded Tim the e-mail I sent to the group. I thought it was full of inside jokes and stupid one-liners; apparently Tim thought it was funny.

Based on his e-mail, Tim also found my blog, also titled Philadelphia Will Do — I’ll be honest, the other plan was to find a new title but we couldn’t come up with one — and he sent me an e-mail asking if I’d like to meet with him. Here was a guy I didn’t know, contacting me based on “my blog,” which was basically a series of essays about how lonely I was.

Soon I was sitting in Tim’s office, listening to him tell me the e-mail story, hearing him tell me how funny he thought it was. I was, obviously, a bit confused, but, hey, whatever works, right? A writer from Sports Illustrated once told me he got a job because of a newsletter he had written just for members of his family, so maybe this isn’t such a rare thing.

A few months later, I was hired to do various tasks, including that of PW’s blogger. I started August 1, wrote a cover story at the end of the month, started the blog at just about the same time and have been contributing regular stories to the paper since.

Why do I tell you this, dear reader? I think you should know. There’s really not any reason why you shouldn’t: it’s kind of a funny story, it was fun for me to write and I think you might enjoy it. (I hope you have so far, there’s a “point” coming up, so if you don’t like those things you can return to laughing at the Metro typos elsewhere on this blog.)

I feel like you should know. And I’m not quite sure why I haven’t told you before.

I don’t think I’ve been enough of myself on this blog so far. When I was hired, the idea wasn’t for me to write essays about missing old friends all the time, but Tim (and others) wanted me to keep the same voice and writing style that I had before. To an extent, I have, but I miss writing personal essays about, say, puppies — the puppy obsession isn’t a new thing, if you’re wondering; I just think they’re cute and I’m too allergic to have a real puppy. And I’d like to bring them (stories and puppies) to you, because I think you might enjoy them.

I always thought that the whole personal essay thing didn’t fit on this new snark blog in the style of, yes, Gawker and Jossip and Philebrity et al. (Blogs I admire for their humor, style, etc.) But I was walking down Sansom Street yesterday and realized that I could make it fit if I just laid it out for you, the reader. I also realized that, uhm, it’s a blog. I can do whatever the fuck I want.

And so I hope to bring you more essays like this — just my personal observations, nothing too spectacular — in the future. I hope you’ll enjoy them. Or you’ll send me hate letters. Either way, it’d be nice if you’re reading.