This is an unpublished, original short written and reported in one day for the second issue of Longshot Magazine, entitled “Debt.”

If there’s one place in America that knows about the highs and lows of debt, it’s the pawn shop.

We called up Rich Pyle, store manager for American Jewelry and Loan in Detroit, Mich. to find out the most popular — and bizarre — items he’s seen during his tenure behind the counter.

The pawn shop is featured on the TruTV television show “Hardcore Pawn.”

Pyle’s 8 Most Popular Pawned Items

“The most basic thing they bring in is electronics and jewelry,” Pyle says.

1. Watches
2. Ladies’ rings
3. Chains and charms
4. Loose diamonds
5. DVD players
6. Televisions
7. Laptop computers
8. Musical instruments: guitars, flutes, clarinets, horns

“The smaller and easier the item is to bring in, the more often we see it,” he says. “People are lazy.”

Pyle’s 5 Most Memorable Pawned Items

1. A real-life Olympic torch. ”It was actually on the Early Show on CBS yesterday.”
2. A Prince Albert genital piercing. ”That was the first time I’ve ever seen that. I’ve been here 24 years. Hopefully it’s the last time.”
3. Gold teeth, straight from the mouth. ”We’ve had people bring in gold teeth and spit it out onto the tray for money. That’s always fun.”
4. Guinea pig with a gold chain. ”We took the gold chain but we gave him the guinea pig back.”
5. A horse. ”The owner walked him right into the showroom. It took a shit right onto the floor. And we actually bought it. We wanted it.”

As seen in the September 2010 issue of DRUM! magazine.

Johnny Kelly stepped outside, took a deep breath, and thought about lighting a cigarette. He wouldn’t, of course. He couldn’t do that to himself.

The day after the death of close friend and longtime bandmate Peter Steele, lead singer and larger-than-life frontman of Type O Negative, Kelly promised the doctor he would quit, and he couldn’t turn back now. Steele’s sudden death at age 48 made Kelly think of his own mortality. And besides, lighting up reminded him of his father’s emphysema.

But Kelly still needed a moment to think, and the only way he could do so was to leave the funeral parlor and get some air outside.

In a moment, he would change out of the suit he was wearing, which sagged around the shoulders from overuse. Then he would get in a car, head to the airport, and board a plane bound for Los Angeles, across the vast country and far away from this place.

Steele’s funeral was one of ten Kelly would attend in the span of a year and a half. He never thought he’d lose his father, grandfather, and bandmate in the same short span of time.

But he couldn’t think about that now. He had a job to do. He had to be the drummer in a rock band.

[Read the rest in PDF format here.]

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Rock music magazine Revolver put together a special July 2010 collector’s issue for the band Avenged Sevenfold in the wake of drummer Jimmy Sullivan’s death on Dec. 28, 2009. In it, they repurposed my Nov. 2007 profile of him from Drum! magazine. This is the re-edited version.

“No.” That’s how 5-year-old Jimmy Owen Sullivan, now better known as Avenged Sevenfold’s drummer the Rev, responded to his parents when they first suggested that he take music lessons. “I fought them on it,” he says. “But I was always kind of interested.”

A little over two decades later, that interest has led him to a Manhattan recording studio, where the Huntington Beach, California, native is working on his band’s follow-up to its platinum-certified 2005 album, City of Evil. It’s been a long couple of months for the Rev. Much of his year has been spent writing and recording basic tracks for the record, and just a few days prior, his iPod went berserk, vaporizing the 4,500 songs he had stored for inspiration. “I don’t do too well with technology,” he professes, arms held wide in surrender.

What the Rev does do well with is a drum kit, though his first was “a serious mail-order drum kit,” he says, laughing, “a piece of crap… I got my own kit a year later.”

[Read the rest in PDF format here]

As seen on New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog.

Earlier this week we discovered that Michael Mraz and Hudson Morgan, in the free time that the media bestowed upon them after Men’s Vogue shuttered, wrote a seemingly awesome screenplay and are shopping it around. And it got us to thinking: What happened to the rest of Mogue? An entire magazine existed one day, with a full staff, and then one day it didn’t. This might be an interesting project, to track down an entire masthead’s worth of laid-off staffers. So we got a former intern from the magazine, Andrew J. Nusca, to hunt down as many of his colleagues as he could find. After the jump, we have details on what nearly every member of the edit staff is up to now. Surprisingly few of these former Condé Nasties are traveling around Latin America to find themselves, which comes as something of a relief. If we lost our jobs, we’d be traveling around our parents’ kitchen to find the liquor.

TOP EDITORS:
Anna Wintour (Editorial Director): Still at Vogue.
Jay Fielden (Editor-in-Chief): Still at Vogue.
Courtney Sava (Art Director): Relocated to Los Angeles.
Stephen Watson (Fashion Director): Now a contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio.
Michael Mraz (Managing Editor): With Hud Morgan is shopping their first screenplay, Wet Dreams, a feature comedy about a disgraced Olympic swimmer who is forced to work at a water park.

FEATURES
Corey Seymour (Senior Editor): Currently editing and writing for Tar, Rolling Stone, and men.style.com.
Tasha Green (Associate Editor): Designing for fledgling fashion label Hester with Mauricio Quezada.
Hudson Morgan (Associate Editor): See Michael Mraz.
Ned Martel (Editor-at-Large): Reviewing television shows for the New York Times. [Ed: And, we hear, interviewing for a certain highly placed newspaper job.]
Sarah Jenks-Daly (Media and Entertainment Editor): Has written for Teen Vogue.
Taylor Antrim (Articles Editor): Writing about books for the Daily Beast.
Nicholas Mosquera (Features Assistant): According to Facebook, he’s been traipsing through India.
Liz McDaniel (Assistant to the Managing Editor): Freelance writing.
Chloe Kamark (Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief): According to Facebook, analyzing policy for Blue Star Families for Obama.

FASHION
Sara James (Fashion News Editor): Acting style editor at WSJ., the magazine, and currently pitching next young-adult fiction series.
Alvaro Salazar (Style Editor): Spending time in Brazil.
Mordechai Rubinstein (Associate Market Editor): Is still snapping photos onMISTERMORT.com and recently did a shoot for Paper.
Mauricio Quezada (Associate Fashion Editor): Designing for fledgling fashion label Hester with Tasha Green.

Bonnie Morrison (Special Projects editor): Returned to public relations.

ART
Stephanie Waxlax (Photo Editor): According to Facebook, just became mother to a baby girl!
Jamie Prokell (Associate Art Director):. Freelance art director for several magazines.
Renee Rupcich (Assistant Art Director): Went on to briefly be associate art director of Domino.
Quinn Shamlian (Photo Research Editor): Photo editor at CITY magazine.
Jonathan Owen Black (Photo Assistant): Producer/agent for Atelier.
Jason Storm (Art Assistant): Freelance photographer and graphic designer.
Ellen Zguta (Production Manager): Digital asset manager at NVIDIA.
Jenna Todd (Production Assistant): Editorial production, The New Yorker.
Daron Murphy (Research Chief): According to his website, he’s producing music at Gowanus Sound Initiative.

By: Andrew J. Nusca

FILED UNDER: INK-STAINED WRETCHES, MENS’ VOGUE

As seen in the February 2009 issue of DRUM! magazine.

Paul Thomson is locked out of his house. He’s 45 minutes late to our scheduled interview, busily trying to figure out how to break into his Glasgow pad. This was not how Thomson had planned his evening. He may be a jack-of-all-trades — having mastered the roles of drummer, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, singer, disc jockey, artist, tap dancer, choreographer, and dedicated father — but locksmith apparently doesn’t play a prominent role in his skill set.

[Read the rest in PDF format here.]

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As seen in the December 2008 issue of DRUM! magazine.

Not long after ringing in the New Year, Chris Raines found himself almost a couple thousand miles away in Atlanta, sitting in the Venice Beach headquarters of Ross Robinson, producer to such critics faves as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, At the Drive-In, and Glassjaw. The 29-year-old was about to begin penning songs with his four bandmates in metalcore band Norma Jean for what would become the group’s latest album, Norma Jean Vs. The Anti Mother. Raines had played his first show with the band only four weeks earlier.

[Read the rest in PDF format here.]

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As seen in the November 2008 issue of DRUM! magazine.

Matt McGinley is miles away. It’s a hot, lazy day in June, the kind of 83-degree day in Pomona that makes the tar on Mission Boulevard slowly come to life. On any other day, thoroughbreds would be hurtling down the track at Fairplex Park, the thundering echo of their massive hooves rippling through the roaring grandstand — but not today. Today, lip piercings and eyeliner replace bits and bridles, and the collision of shiny patent-leather army boots meeting faded orange Boss Distortion pedals is responsible for most of the thunderclaps. It’s that time of year — the 2008 Warped Tour is in town.

[Read the rest in PDF format here.]

Click the image to read the rest in PDF format.