The Advent of @ocdustino: A History

the face of @ocdustino…look how pretty he is when he’s not talking.

People  almost never  always ask me about my preferred social media handle — which is @ocdustino for those of you who neglected to read the title of this post — where it came from, what it means, why I have it tattooed on my left ass cheek, etc. And with it being my twitterversary week (yes, that’s a thing; no, I’m not dating anyone. I fail to see the connection) it seemed like a good time to explore the legend of @ocdustino. Buckle in, cadets, you’re in for the sort of history lesson they don’t give you in school. Except maybe homeschool if I homeschool my future kids and I’m really hungover/scrambling for some filler topics that day.

The year was 1867, I was a freshman in college, and the lightbulb had just recently been invented, which meant that we could use our computers indoors, any time of the day or night! This quickly led to the invention of something called AOL Instant Messenger (or AIM for short, because you know if your acronym needs an acronym, you’re doing it right). AIM was primarily invented as a means for people to post their favorite Brand New/Something Corporate lyrics or disparaging passive-aggressive comments about their boy/girlfriend, but quickly evolved into a sort of instant messaging service that was kind of like a two-person internet chatroom, but somehow not as creepy as an actual internet chatroom. Meeting and then getting captured/raped/killed by strangers from the internet wasn’t a thing at the time (craigslist hadn’t been invented yet), but because superheroes/secret identities were still really popular (our Batman was Michael Keaton — ha! Can you believe that? Michael Keaton!) everyone used pseudonyms (known as “screen names”) to effectively hide their true identities from strangers, while also expressing their interests to those same strangers. Screen names like “CheerKick44”, “Platypussy02”, “ExtraExtraSloppy”, “GoldfishDanzer”, “Star19Catcher”, “DivaQueen02” were the norm (fun fact: I only made two of those up). Pretty rad nicknames right? Your screen name said a lot about who you were, and you wanted it to be cool, concise, and clever. With some numbers at the end like the year you graduated or your jersey number from high school athletics because someone probably already had the version of the screen name you wanted that didn’t have numbers.

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How I Lost All My Followers

Special disclaimer for attractive girls: good news, none of what I’m about to say applies to you, so you can just skip ahead to the end or read another of my posts or go back to taking selfies or whatever it is you do between getting hit on and tanning.

Everyone else, buckle in, because you need to hear this. I might’ve just unfollowed you on Twitter or Instagram or Google+ (ha just kidding about that last one, I don’t even know how to activate Google+…unless wait, is this it? Are we on Google+ right now? Is me typing this going to be in one of their sad commercials?).

I love you.

(I figure if they do use this in a Google+ commercial, me typing “I love you” is the part they’ll wanna use, for the strong emotional context it provides. I don’t really love you, but I do like you, and I’m glad we’re friends. Unless we’re strangers, but that’s cool too because it’s the internet and nothing bad ever happens from meeting strangers on the internet)

But I digress.

Vocal About Backgrounds (Part One of Many or Maybe Just This One)

Lyric videos are sweet, here’s a lyric video that I  made  found on the internet, using technology. You may be wondering: What makes this lyric video special — besides the fact that it’s one of the songs I sang background vocals on for the new House of Heroes album? Nothing. That is the only special thing about it.

Because Americans are lazy, and usually overweight, I’ve embedded this lyric video (only because I couldn’t link to the cheeseburger that you actually want):

There’s an official, people-filled version of this music video as well, but I’m not posting that version because I think it distracts from the background vocals. Background vocals where I was intentionally asked to sing, not like my usual musical requests which typically vary in range from “please stop” to “stop” to “Denny’s doesn’t have a karaoke night, you need to leave.”

The album, called Cold. Hard. Want., by House of Heroes (feat. Dustin Heveron), releases July 10th. If Carson Daly were still a thing, he would say that the album “drops” on July 10th, to try and sound hip/relevant. Then he’d say some snappy one-liner about the album, something like “Hey, do you have any change I can borrow for cab fare?” Carson Daly had (and maybe still has, I haven’t checked) a talk show on at 1:30 in the morning — its primary competition in that timeslot is the night’s second repeat showing of the Shake-Weight infomercial and a blue screen that plays the Emergency-Broadcast System beep on a nonstop loop. It’s an ideal show for people who fell asleep while Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was on and still haven’t woken up to change the channel, or people who’ve masturbated too furiously for their forearms to have enough strength left to operate their TV remote. People Magazine once praised it as “a show that is on television.” House of Heroes will be on tour this summer, you should go to their webbed-sites for more information, and buy their album when it comes out in July. If you want to buy only the tracks that have my BGVs on them, I don’t blame you, and I will post some sort of list on my webbing-site that tells you which ones have them. I’ll also call them and ask if they’ll release a version of the CD that only has tracks I sang background on, to save you the trouble of having to ask them yourself. Currently there are no plans for them to sell a T-shirt with my likeness on it.

I read a blog post about 27 tips on how to make your blog more accessible to people, and it says you should end posts with a question to the reader. I’m not doing a very good job of following its advice so far.

Cheers,
Dustin

The Nine Phrases You Need to Stop Using in Your Bio

Spoiler Alert: social media is kind of a big deal.  We live in a fast-paced, media savvy world where we, as individuals, are less often required to simply describe ourselves by a list of hobbies and stats as we are called upon to sell ourselves as a brand or product.  Presenting yourself in a compelling and unique fashion isn’t a luxury for those with the gift of gab, it’s a necessity to showcase what makes you better than the next guy.  Potential employers are skimming your facebook page, potential love interests are scrolling through your twitter profile, and potential stalkers are checking your foursquare account so they can plan “accidental” run-ins with you at Whole Foods (w/ @ocdustino & 9 other people http://4sq.com/89ExVc).

All that translates into a world where — if you want to put your best virtual foot forward — you need to have something better than “LiVe LaUgH lOvE” in your About Me section.  Since I have a weekend’s worth of bad karma to undo (and by “karma” I mean “liver damage”), I’m gonna give you a head start by presenting…