Jon Lindsey

Jon Lindsey on Wolf Urine, The Orion Nebula, Costco Socks, and more.

April 3, 2023

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Jon Lindsey is the Los Angeles-based author behind one of my favorite (debut) novels of the last few years, ‘Body High’. He has stories published in Muumuu House, New York Tyrant Magazine, and Forever Magazine, among others. He’s also working on a new story collection with artist Andrew Sexton, an anthology about suicide with Cory Bennet, a screenplay of Body High w/director Morgan Krantz, and his follow-up novel. Jon is incredible writer, but he’s also who pushed me to DJ for the first time at Allie Rowbottom’s ‘Aesthetica’ release party back in November. Lucky for us, Jon is here to tell us what he’s been into.

Rec

🙃

Do the Thing People Tell You Not to Do

That thing is your style. Probably it’s still raw, which is why others don’t see what you see. Refine your thing, your idiosyncrasy. Sharpen it but don’t smooth out all the rough edges, these are what stick in people’s brains. Be inelegant. Be brave.

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🏄☠️🥰

Surfing

I don’t actually want you to surf. Already there are too many surfers. If you do try surfing, you will not look cool—you will look like a kook. The worst look in the world. After years of embarrassment, maybe, maybe you will learn to ride a wave without looking like a kook. Still, the ocean will try to kill you constantly because, fundamentally, you remain a kook. But being so close to death where life on Earth started will cause you to reassess your place in the natural world. You will never dump your petroleum lube down a storm drain that leads to the ocean. You will never eat goosefish because it’s in the red on Seafoodwatch.org. You will learn to laugh at yourself, because in one way or another, we’re all kooks flailing to keep from drowning. On second thought, I actually do want you to start surfing. If you’re in Los Angeles hit me up, I have an extra board you can borrow.

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🧘✌️

Glo

My second date with my wife, Allie Rowbottom, was a yoga class. I was wearing jeans so she let me borrow a pair of her mom’s maternity sweatpants. I was bending over in prasarita padottanasana when I ripped the ass. I like to believe that’s the moment Allie fell in love. Probably that’s wishful thinking. Now we do yoga videos nearly every night together on Glo.com. I also enjoy in-person classes, but in these situations there are too many variables out of my control. Other people's farts, yes, but my real fear is encountering an instructor with a mean streak and too little understanding of male anatomy. With Glo I’ll never again be trapped in a dimly lit room, grunting through a torn cremaster, too embarrassed to head for the exit.

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🍻🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Dublin House (79th St. and Broadway, Upper Westside, NY)

In a neighborhood of bad Irish bars this is the best. They just celebrated their 100 year anniversary and most of the clientele are approximately the same age.

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🐕🏖️

Dog Beaches

My first date with Allie was a dog walk. The uncomplicated joy of dogs running free allows for the clarity to make good life decisions. No leashes, no masters.

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🧦

Costco Socks

You have to be a member to shop here. Members only. Sorry. It’s called luxury branding. Can’t let just anybody in on these deals. These softer than soft, warm, fuzzy deals. Better luck in the next life. What’s that, you don’t need a membership to buy online? Aw naw!

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🧴🙂

Kiehl’s Facial Fuel

I discovered this stuff in Morgan Krantz’s medicine cabinet while we were writing the screenplay for Body High. It has SPF. Ladies go crazy for Morgan, so I used some to shine my old shoe face. Then I peed in Morgan’s shampoo. Take that pretty boy.

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🐺☔

Wolf Urine

Coyotes are a problem where I live. They have no fear of humans because we’re mostly wimps. So they cruise around without a care, day and night, looking for garbage, puppies, and slow children to eat. Yesterday, a coyote ran up on my dogs so I beaned it with a bag of their poop. Wolf urine isn’t 100% effective as a coyote deterrent but it works better than Morgan’s shampoo. Plus it’s an aphrodisiac.

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🌟🫣🍆

The Orion Nebula

Ancient Egyptians believed that once you die your soul makes a leap into this spot in the heavens. There you must pass a series of tests before gaining entry into the afterlife. New Year’s Eve 2020, I smoked DMT in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida and tried to astral project myself to the nebula. Luckily, I went somewhere else. To find the Orion Nebula in the night sky look to the constellation of Orion, below his belt, at a cluster of light some say is his sword but looks like his penis.

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💫📺🤯

Ancient Apocalypse

This new limited series on Netflix is causing a lot of controversy in the archaeological community. Graham Hancock, the host, loves to say, “Human beings are a species with amnesia.” To prove this he travels around the world to pre-historic sites and makes the argument that an advanced human civilization existed during the last Ice Age before being wiped out by asteroid strikes around 12,800 years ago. I’m a natural born skeptic, but I’ve read several of Hancock’s books and they raise a lot of questions that archaeologists haven’t, or can’t, sufficiently answer. Sometimes I wonder why I’m so interested in the mysteries of prehistory. The conclusion I’ve come to is that they calm me by making my own problems—finishing my Perfectly Imperfect, writing the next book, death—feel less significant.

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Jon Lindsey

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