Idolator

Hey y'all, Jess here once again, and I'll be your guest blogger today. (As I was yesterday, even if we forgot to mention it.) Since my last introduction was rather ... tongue-in-cheek, I figured I better give it a second go. Especially since there's also a special announcement kinda deal after the jump.

So I'm 29, a Pisces, and an irascible drunk. Back when the first great Web rush was just petering out, I started (or contributed to) about a billion music blogs and online sites. Editor-types eventually offered to give me paper currency—which can be converted into things like beer and burritos—to write about hip-hop mixtapes and and dance songs and noise records and pop-punk singles. At that point my mother's dream of her little art school dropout going back to college was probably never to be fulfilled.

The reason for this brief backstory is because I'm going to be around for a minute or two. Gawker recently drove a brand new Canyonero full of Web 2.0 money up to my apartment and asked me to become Maura's second-in-command starting on August 6.

In order to blog for you on the daily, I'll be leaving my position of two years as music editor at Baltimore's pretty freakin' awesome City Paper. As for my other writer-type credentials, I've been contributing to Pitchfork for about a little longer than I've been an alt-weekly editor. I was scribbling for rags like the pre-Evil Empire Village Voice, Seattle Weekly, and many others for several years before that.

I've also been BFF with your beloved editrix-in-chief for six years now—she's the hair metal chick, I'm the disco freak—which means she's managed to put up with me longer than three girlfriends, two jobs, four cell phone plans, and a cactus. Together we've bonded over the same disturbed/fascinated/jaundiced/awed/amused/amorous obsession with popular culture that's basically a prerequisite to do this kinda thing.

I'll be filling in each Wednesday for the next few weeks so you can at least get a better window into my soul—in the form of jokes about T.I. and Hannah Montana—as I juggle lame duck status at my old gig and try not to go insane in the process. Change is scary, but hey, at least there will be plenty of new MS Paint drawings on the regular.