Joshenilia (5)
By:
November 29, 2015
One in a series of posts exhuming the juvenilia and significant objects of HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn.
In an early display of self-promotional but also self-deprecating and -defeating acumen, at some point during the 1985–86 school year at Boston Latin (my senior year), and (I might add) several years before Shepard Fairey’s far more focused and successful “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” street art campaign, I hand-lettered scores of stickers promoting… what, exactly?
In part, I was promoting Jude: A Modern Day Saint — a semi-autobiographical, semi-fantastical novella that I’d written. Of course, only one copy existed and I didn’t really allow anybody to read it, but still… I promoted it. As part of the promotional effort, I began calling myself “Jude.” In the novel, Jude has a sidekick named Tonto, so I promoted him, too. What was “Racer X” and “The Few”? I forget. Perhaps the fictional Jude was in a band called The Few?
I believe that “Hack” was another character in the novel. Not sure what “SFB” means. Was there another fictional band called The Ugly? What are Urban Lumberjacks, and the Urban Lumberjacks of America? Let’s just say I was way ahead of the “lumbersexual” trend.
READ MORE essays by Joshua Glenn, originally published in: THE BAFFLER | BOSTON GLOBE IDEAS | BRAINIAC | CABINET | FEED | HERMENAUT | HILOBROW | HILOBROW: GENERATIONS | HILOBROW: RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION | HILOBROW: SHOCKING BLOCKING | THE IDLER | IO9 | N+1 | NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW | SEMIONAUT | SLATE