How Jonathan London Ruined My Social Life (The 25 Songs of Christmas Part 5)

Today Geekscape founder Jonathan London turns 32 years old. While having a long and bizarrely complicated relationship with Mr. London I only actually got to meet him in person very recently. He is without a doubt one of (if not the) biggest driving force/motivation to my move to LA in July. Geekscape has indirectly (and directly) been one of the most important things in my life but I've never really told the whole story. I think it'd make an awesome blog entry myself.

Back in December of 2006 I got my first laptop; it's currently been my ONLY laptop. It was a mac-book pro that my friend (who worked for Apple) got me using an employee discount. I now had access to iTunes and I decided I'd check out these things called podcast I've been hearing so much about. I didn't really know what I wanted and somehow (and I honestly don't remember how anymore) i noticed a title that struck my interest... Geekscape. The episode was Episode 5: Nutpunch featuring co-host Scott Culver, to this day he is still one of my top 5 favorite Geekscape guests (despite NEVER returning for a second episode). I remember laughing my ass off and feeling like I could really relate to these guys, but what really struck my attention was hearing these two guys talking about bands like Don't Look Down who I knew of, but only thought I knew them because of growing up in the Tri-State area.

Using Facebook and Myspace I decided to track down the creator and host of this show, Jonathan London. London will tell you, he's one of the easiest internet personalities to get in touch with and it's true. His facebook has his screen name on it and I immediately IMed him, I told him how I just watched an episode and how great it was and we talked about different punk bands. Everyone week I'd listen to the new episode and then IM him to tell him how much I liked it. But that was really the extent of our friendship and relationship, until December of 2007.

Geekscape was getting ready to celebrate it's one year and I contacted Jonathan with an idea. "You should do a what a difference a year makes type segment, looking back at the first episode and seeing how far we came". Jonathan's answer was simply "if you're willing to watch episode 1 and give me notes... I'll do just that." So I did.

I think this single decision of doing exactly what he asked me to do is what changed our friendship. He started asking me if I'd be interested in doing other things, Join the forums, run the youtube page, run the facebook page, even write an occasional article. Geekscape started to become a second home; I'd spend hours on the forums, sometimes refreshing the page every couple minutes to see if someone had posted a new post. I even got my girlfriend at the time to become a scapist, and when my girlfriend dumped me... Geekscape was there to support me in ways that I was never able to ask my friends here in PA for help.

I began to distance myself from Geekscape in the spring of 2009. I just stopped watching, I'd still post occasionally, but I really stayed out of the loop. I'll never completely know why I did this, but I did. By the winter of 2009 I was at my lowest. I had no girlfriend, no job and was living with a married couple (though very good friends). I never really felt at home there, while M & L were very welcoming, I couldn't help but feel like I was always in the way, invading a honeymoon if you will. During this unhappiness, I started to watch the months of old Geekscape episodes.

Then I watched their coverage of that Summer's San Diego Comic Con. As I watched I couldn't help but think to myself... why aren't I out there? Almost a day or two later it was announced that Geekscape was going to have a booth at Comic Con that year and needed someone to run the Merch table. I contacted Jonathan and asked (and begged a little) for the job. If I got my own plane ticket and willing to help put up for the Hotel room... the job was mine. I accepted.

I got more involved with the site again, writing articles, running the twitter account, I was re-energized. As the trip kept nearing, I got more and more excited. I had already decided that I was going to move to LA the following summer, but this was the first time I'd ever actually see the city. I had developed many friendships with scapists and was curious to see how we'd get along. While i predicted that I'd hang out with a bunch of the scapists alot and only really see Jonathan here and there, I couldn't be further from wrong. I didn't anticipate that London and I would get along super well, in the end he was the one of the two people I became closed with. Perhaps it was just because we were forced to spend lots of time together between driving to San Diego and manning the booth together... but I'd like to believe it was because we both respected each other as creative minded people.

Regardless, July I'll be finally moving to LA. It's something I've said I'd do for over 13 years, but it's actually happening now, because of one man and his website. Thank You Jonathan London, you're one of the biggest inspirations in my life and I hope you have the Happiest of Birthdays.

In your honor I dedicate the 5th song in the 25 songs of Christmas to you; It's the Mark Hoppus and Ben Fold's covering the Blink 182 classic "Happy Holidays, You Bastard"